When writer and artist Guy Gilchrist appeared at Hill Country Comicon outside San Antonio, Texas, in early March, he expected to draw plenty of characters from a variety of series and properties he’s worked on, ranging from “Muppet Babies” to “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
Yet Gilchrist’s most memorable sketch that weekend wasn't one of the characters he’s drawn thousands of times — as the author of the “Muppets” cartoon strip that ran in newspapers across the world in the 1980s — but instead a character he created more than 30 years ago for a newly formed Japanese soccer club preparing to take part in the country’s first professional league.
The request, from fellow guest artist Hiroshi Kanatani — a tokusatsu illustrator who’s worked on the “Ultraman” and “Godzilla” franchises — was for Pul-chan, the long-beloved mascot of the J. League’s Shimizu S-Pulse.