rainbow orchid fan art

I’ve been picking away at this picture for nearly a week, in the little gaps between my work, and finished it this morning! It features my take on Josette and Eloise, the lovely and capable French Tayaut twins from Garen Ewing‘s remarkable adventure comic, The Rainbow Orchid. Here, they’ve just uncovered a slightly dishevelled French-made Spad XIII aircraft in their hangar and get set to fix it up. Thanks to _w_o_o_d in Brest for advising me on the French text, which roughly reads:

-So, Josette, what do you say?
-Just need to put in a bit of elbow grease and we’ll get this baby off the ground!

I was very pleased to learn the French also use the phrase ‘elbow grease’, and on the word zinc, our good Frenchman commented:
“Zinc” means the same thing as in English, but is also an old slang term for a plane, in use since World War 2 at least. But in different contexts, it can mean the counter in a bar (which used to be covered in zinc).

Hooray, Garen, and good luck with your continuing work on The Rainbow Orchid!
Keep an eye out for the first of three parts of this book, which Egmont will unveil sometime this year! Garen’s also doing a remarkable story called Charlie Jefferson and the Tomb of Nazaleod for the DFC. Don’t forget to subscribe so you can catch that story and all the other amazing things coming out in the weekly comic! Lots of good things happening in British comics these days… it’s all very exciting!

Edit: Note from Garen: By the way, Tayaut means “tally-ho!” (which is why I chose it) – though more precisely it’s used to alert hounds during a fox hunt. I’m using it more in the context of “here we go!” or “the game’s afoot!”. French pilots did use it in WWII, apparently.
See Garen’s notes on the Tayaut twins