Paul Gadzikowski
| Fan | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Paul Gadzikowski |
| Alias(es): | scarfman, herofthreefaces, heroof3faces, akotas, AfterMASHseasn3 |
| Type: | artist, writer |
| Fandoms: | Doctor Who, Star Trek, DC Comics, M*A*S*H, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Good Omens, et al. |
| Communities: | http://arthurkingoftimeandspace.com/3faces |
| Other: | |
| URL: | pgadzikowski at Archive of Our Own scarfman at Dreamwidth paulgadzikowski at Tumblr heroofthreefaces at Tumblr scarfman at Pillowfort |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Paul Gadzikowski is the writer and artist of the Doctor Who-centric webcomic The Hero of Three Faces, "fanfiction, but it's comic strips with stick figures, but they're triangles". The Hero of Three Faces has updated since January 2007 on a variable update schedule including a summer hiatus.
Paul Gadzikowski is the son of Claire Gabriel and husband of Leah Bestler.
Background
Gadzikowski's fan publishing career began in the Star Trek fanzine era with cartoons and stories published in several 1970s fanzines including Berengaria and Southern Star. In the 1980s Gadzikowski wrote and acted with Chicago's Moebius Theatre and contributed Doctor Who fiction and nonfiction to fanzines including Shadowstar and The Sonic Screwdriver.
In the early 1990s he self-published three fanzines, a Star Trek: The Next Generation novella The Legacy of Kirk, a collection of Doctor Who crossover comic strips 500 Year Diary, and a Doctor Who/Star Trek "video fanzine" animated on an Amiga computer distributed on VHS tape, Mascot/Armchair Story Editor; these were distributed for a time by Bill Hupe and Peg Kennedy.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s Gadzikowski posted Doctor Who crossovers on Usenet at alt.drwho.creative and crossposted to the creative writing newsgroups for the crossover franchises, alt.startrek.creative and alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer.creative primarily. These stories were/are archived at a member website on the server of his ISP and a selection of them have appeared at popular free archive site Archive of Our Own alongside limited new works.
About 1999 Gadzikowski began producing his internet fanfiction in comic strip rather than prose form, converting in 2001 from scanned line drawing to MSPaint-generated "triangle figures" due to a scanner breakdown, archiving this work at the same website until the end of 2006 when the free server space with the ISP account maxed out under the terms of the time.
In January 2007 new triangle figure fanfiction comic strips first appeared under the title The Hero of Three Faces, initially at the now-defunct webcomics hosting site WebcomicsNation.com but ultimately in a subdirectory at the website of Gadzikowski's general interest webcomic Arthur, King of Time and Space (now concluded).
Example Works
Gadzikowski started a discussion about Fanlore and notability with his Tumblr post I searched my name at Fanlore this week.
The Hero of Three Faces
The Hero of Three Faces focuses on the time-traveling extraterrestial Doctor of Doctor Who, who is revealed to regularly cross dimensional boundaries to encounter people reflected on the Doctor's plane and ours as fictional characters as the Doctor too is fictional on ours, primarily characters from Star Trek and DC superhero comics but also many, many other franchises indexed on the webcomic's archive page.
The other franchises' characters assume focus often; the Doctor appears only in roughly half of the cartoons. Guinan from Star Trek: The Next Generation is also portrayed as traveling the crossover planes like the Doctor, for no adequately explored reason, sometimes accompanied by other Star Trek characters in the manner of the Doctor's companions.
The casts of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story visit crossover characters following the events of their screen continuities by means of a magic spell created by Willow Rosenberg.
Since 2011 the comic strips are presented in a "panel per screen" format intended to simulate the motion picture medium whence come most of the franchises saluted.
Whale Weekly
- Fanart of Ishmael and Queequeg which also discusses the artists' designs for the characters.