It took me a long time to commit to doing Oberon for the letter O, although that was my instinct from the start. I worried that he didn’t represent the right kind of mythology for the series, being the King of the Elves. Oberon is based on the character from Frankish Merovingian legend Alberich (the name later became Oberon when it was translated from middle German to French). He was, as the story goes, cursed at his birth to be of dwarfish height, but as compensation for this was also given great beauty.

Inspiration for this illustration was two-fold. I went through a fairy phase when I was younger, everyone does, I think, so now I find it difficult to take them seriously. It was The Chronicles of Narnia that finally gave me a toehold on this character and the world that is his domain. However the actual look of the character was influenced greatly by Chicago Shakespeare Repertory “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that was unlike anything I had ever seen before or since.

Oberon has two Turtles.