Emily Strange is a full blown product line with apparel and accessories appealing to the same kids who by the Jack Skeleton stuff. Often found at retarded mall stores like HOT TOPIC, Emily is now gaining popularity with publishers as the company prepares to launch a series of Illustrated books.
Now lets back up a bit...
I had a friend who rode for Santa Cruz in the late 80's early 90's by the name of Ross Goodman. Ross had an amazing board graphic of the 'Grave Digger' from the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland...
Another board graphic was Illustrated by Ross's friend and NHS artist at the time Nate Carrico. It was the Emily Strange design, Emily was a cross between his girlfriend at the time and an older character from Illustrated books, 'Rosamond'.
Some time in the mid 90's I saw Emily for the first time at a trade-show and was like WTF, thats an exact copy of Ross Goodman's NHS design. I talked to him about it later and he told me this story of him and his friend Nate calling the company Cosmic Debris and feeling out what they were all about. They talked about how great the character was and how they couldn't get enough of it... In conclusion to their conversation Nate explained that he was the original Illustrator of Emily and that they had stolen the concept from him. I think the company ended up sending Nate a bunch of product like stickers, binders, and pencils as some sort of payment.
Here is the original inspiration Rosamond next to the first Emily design. Don't the NHS Emily and the Cosmic Debris Emily look exact...
I guess they figured if they added their logo and flipped the image no one would notice.
