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I think this is the most work I’ve put into a single image thus far. I decided to practice with 3/4-turn heads and bodies after reading a tutorial on how to dress the female torso, and of all things I created a dance between Life and Death:
This also marks the first time I’ve done an image for a contest where two characters are interacting with one another rather than posing side-by-side.For today’s entry into the Opposites Attract Contest, my submission was based on War and Peace, with my usual brand of wordplay. For the Peace character, I created Serene, using a technique I borrowed from one of last month’s COtW selections (sideways anime nose for closed eyes). There is a purpose behind her mask, that being evident in the War-based character Siren.
Serene is a white witch who shares her mind and body with a Shrike (a banshee spirit) named Siren, who escaped her war-torn dimension and came to Earth looking for a better life. Although a violent race by nature, Siren’s people believe that names are power, and in turn Siren believes that because of their similar names, she and Serene are soulmates.
Unfortunately, Siren’s time on Earth has shown her that many humans are just as quick to battle as the Shrikes, and frequently takes over Serene’s body in her haste to suppress conflict (which she does to the extreme, often killing her opponents and causing massive property damage before Serene can regain control).
So to keep her “soulmate” and herself calm, Serene engages in almost constant meditation. One day it may come to pass that Siren herself takes up meditation. Then perhaps the two can live as one in a state of perfect balance?It’s time for the Opposites Attract Contest! My first entry is a play on words featuring the classic angel/demon dichotomy:
Knight is a black suit of armor possessed by a fire demon that manifests itself as a sword and shield.
Dei (whose name is latin for “God” or “gods”–my suffix skills are seriously lacking) is the angel/light-bringer of the duo.
A further dichotomy in this image was an unintended consequence of the color choices I made on Dei. While Knight seems to have greater dimensionality, with his sword providing an angular focus that comes edge-first at the “camera,” Dei comes off as almost paper-thin–even unreal–as though she were a news clipping pasted into Knight’s universe.Took me long enough, but I made some progress in the Faith Heller story. It’s one page of progress, and a text-only splash page at that, but it’s progress. So to tease you a little bit, here’s what I have of Faith Heller #1 thus far:
Page 1
Woke up this morning (7:36 Pacific Time) to find my Lena Black in the Top Five poll. Guess the extra F/X work paid off. Thanx, JR!
*Commence with all-day nerding out*
Mmmm. Breakfast….
One last entrant for the Public Domain Comics Contest (I was smart enough to do the comment post first this time)….
I noticed three heroes on the list this week that bore more than a passing resemblance to Marvel’s Captain America. So in my upgrade tradition of “Streamline and Kick More Ass,” I combined them as best I could into the patriotically paletted Three-Star General.
Like TV Cap and Major Triumph, he has a symbol of his name on his forehead, and like Major Triumph and Rusty Ryan, he has three stars on his chest. The sectioning of the costume is mainly Cap-inspired, and (although you can’t really see it through the clone on the left) he has a wrist-mounted shield similar to Major Triumph (remember, TV Cap didn’t use a shield). The main difference is that unlike these World War copycats (and TV Cap as an unpowered city crimefighter), the Three-Star General is a high-tech war hero. I replaced Captain America’s silly ear wings with a dual Bluetooth headset that 3SG uses to coordinate the actions of his two holographic clones, which he projects from the discs embedded in his suit’s elbow pads. The throwing shield has been upgraded to a miniature UAV (or drone, if you prefer) that he can pilot at long distances through a virtual reality haptic rig built into the lining of his suit.
He is a decorated soldier with a shining history of hands-on field work, but before becoming the Three-Star General, Robert “Bob” Buchanan gained a quiet degree of fame as an ace drone pilot. He did his own drone maintenance, even on the software level, and used his spare time to perfect the tech that would become his Three-Star General costume.I’m feeling uninspired by the Gale Force series these past few days. I will finish the story at some point and do more images (the Wizard and witches have yet to be re-imagined and I’m pondering a group shot of Dorothy’s troupe). But for now, I’ll get all you Forumites up to speed on what I have entered into this week’s Public Domain Comics challenge.
I started with the Atom Wizard, a non-powered crimefighting nuclear genius with two previous incarnations to draw upon. The second Atom Wizard had no costume, so I used the first Atom Wizard and the contest’s leading image as my inspiration:
As you can see, I paid homage to the original Atom Wizard cover with this one, but I streamlined the costume a bit. Unless you’re Superman, a cape and saggy underwear don’t cut it as a costume anymore (even the Man of Steel got his Super-Diaper modernized out in his latest movie), and the silly oversized blue gloves had to go. So I went with a red torso and carried the blue throughout the rest of his suit for a more ass-kicking-friendly look. The mask and logo persist as requested.After running into a perplexing plethora of protagonists with painfully patriotically paletted pantaloons placed upon their persons, I came across the yellow-tinged Flame Girl. Sure, her costume still contained traces of red and blue, but the yellow was something new, and as you know, I have a thing about fire-based superheroes. Flame Girl was the first superheroine I clicked on that didn’t bore me to tears at a glance. But she still needed an upgrade in the kick-ass department, so I did this:
I got the idea that maybe the new Flame Girl would be a daredevil motorcyclist (carrying over the Ring of Fire gimmick from the original), and so made her boots and gloves more streamlined and extended the blue piping through the upper body, making her costume double as a motocross racing suit. Having her mask on under the helmet also kind of gives her that “glasses-no-glasses, Clark Kent-Superman†secret identity thing that persists even though it makes no sense.Next I submitted Kor-Sekra’a the Alien Scarecrow, whom you may recognize from the previous post. So I won’t repeat myself any further.
I thought my Clockwork project could use another addition, and when I saw that Icarus was on the list this week, I did a re-work on a character that had been collecting dust on my hard drive for months, coming up with one of my stranger concepts:
She has no backstory, but yes, Lady Icarus (codenamed Three O’Clock for the purposes of Clockwork) is a three-eyed angel ballerina in a pink unitard and fake wings. I think watching Black Swan while I was drunk had something to do with it.For my next entry, I thought I’d try to do more intensive effects stuff, and I had this idea for a spider-woman (no, not the Julia Carpenter, etc, etc, etc. Marvel Spider-Woman) crawling up the side of a building and stopping to stare in through a plate-glass window:
Lena Black is the daughter of Lenore Black, who had the power to spin webs from her fingers and transform into a giant spider. Unlike her mother, Lena was born in a state halfway between woman and spider, and has yet to figure a way to transform one way or the other. She survives mostly by keeping to the shadows and feeding on small rodents throughout the city. Her six eyes give her a second sight that lets her see the true nature of people (those of a corrupt nature are usually normal thieves and murderers, but Lena has squared off against her share of demons, werewolves, vampires, etc. in her search for an end to what she believes is a family curse extending back to Ancient Greece). At night, she goes about the city hunting corrupt souls, wearing a belt fashioned from the skulls of her victims as a ward against supernatural evil.Note: it’s time to play “Spot the Poe Reference!â€
Finally (unless I get inspired by something else before Sunday morning rolls around), I followed the now-much-hated convention of rebooting through gender-swap (although in this case, the character design was so laugh-inducing it begged to be done).
Boy King and Giant is one of the goofier-looking Golden Age teams. For one thing, Boy King is a stupid superhero name. For another, it looks like Boy King has the same tailor as Baron Zemo and the Rose…I mean, what kind of parents dress their son in purple chainmail, red gym shorts, and blue leather thigh-high boots? Is this meant to distract the villains into spleen-rupturing fits of laughter while the kid’s pet statue steps on them? What’s with the cumbersome furry cape? Time once again to streamline the character and up the ass-kicking factor.
Eh, maybe not so much with the streamlining or ass-kicking…you be the judge.
The streamlining here is in the fact that I combined Boy King and Giant into one character (the Golem Queen), and less so in the costume itself. There’s still the thigh-high boots, the purple top, the regal cape, and the red…um…shorts? I just decided the costume would look better on a female hero, and it does. I know, I’m a sexist pig like any other comic book…um…artist? out there, but who cares?
As for the ass-kicking, her costume isn’t exactly the battle-ready skin-tight unitard look that’s conducive to hand-to-hand combat, but Golem Queen is actually an intellectual hero learning from the spoils of war. Her costume (she’ll eventually be able to change it to something less unweildy as she develops her powers and finds herself in more hands-on fights) has that Magical Girl Anime feel to it, which is enhanced, I think, by the weapon she carries.
On with her backstory: Regina Grant was an archaeologist hired by Eldritch Thule, a German historian, to locate a legendary Biblical artifact known to some as the Spear of Destiny. When Thule supplied her with an archaeological team of his choosing and insisted on accompanying Regina on her expedition, she grew suspicious. But as this was potentially a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, she reluctantly agreed to his terms and they began excavating for the Spear.
Regina was lucky enough to find the Spear of Destiny first, but Thule was close at hand, grabbing the Spear at the same instant as Regina, and the two were locked in a tug of war which she was somehow able to win. She could feel a strange power surging into her body from the artifact in her hands, and brandished the Spear at Thule and anyone else who tried to advance on her.
Thule revealed himself to be Heinrich Himmler, the presumably deceased former head of Adolf Hitler’s S.S. squad, and current leader of the ancient occultist Thule Society, of which his team of archaeologists were all members.
He ordered his men to kill Regina Grant and take the Spear by force, and as they drew their guns, Regina closed her eyes and wished she could survive this terrible situation. The Spear of Destiny glowed and the sounds of gunfire were followed almost immediately by gasps of bewilderment as lead ricocheted off of stone.
With a prayer, Regina Grant had become the Golem Queen, a royal figure with skin as resilient as stone and the strength of ten men.
Himmler and his Thule Society fled in fear but they would return time and again until either she or they were no longer living.
As Regina became more skilled with the Spear of Destiny (which could be stored or retrieved from a pocket dimension by uttering the word “Longinusâ€), she discovered it also gave her the power of flight and could be used to conjure golems from any rocky surface nearby. The Golem Queen currently lives in seclusion somewhere in the Swiss Alps, developing her powers which she mostly uses to rescue people from avalanches without thus far alerting them to her presence.
However, repeated sightings of the Golem Queen’s stone “subjects†have caused word to spread of mythical rock creatures roaming the countryside, so it is only a matter of time before the Thule Society rears its ugly head once more. And when they do, the Golem Queen will be ready for them.Hope you enjoyed this little walk down Public Domain Lane.
Kor-Sekra’a is the last of an endangered alien race of phytopaths (those who can communicate with and control plant life). They were the ones responsible for bringing the Twim and their control suit to the land of Oz, and created the technology that would inadvertently unleash the tornado that brought Dorothy Gale to Oz for the first time. Like many who survived encounters with the monkeys and the Twim, Kor-Sekra’a was left without a home when the poppy fields he lived in were razed to the ground by the monkeys’ energy cannons, and sought refuge in the Western Wood.
A small history lesson: He has lived for thousands of years, but Kor-Sekra’a is mortal. Early inhabitants of Oz viewed Kor-Sekra’a as a god, assuming his phytopathic abilities and advanced technology were works of magic. They erected straw effigies of their adopted god to watch over their crops, calling the stuffed guardians Scarecrows, in their primitive backward speech.
At some point, Kor-Sekra’a fell into obscurity, as the Ozians’ understanding and dependence on technology grew to replace their respect for nature. They began to use the control suits to deforest the land en masse and strip-mine the emerald-rich soil beneath to erect their city. As the cries of the fallen trees came to be too much for him, Kor-Sekra’a did something that he had never before had the strength to do: he called upon the ground itself to swallow up every last TWM and control suit (but as you know, there is one that wasn’t accounted for, and was later passed by succession to the present Sheriff of Oz), every last piece of technology he could think of that wasn’t necessary to his own immediate survival. The Emerald City would persist, but without technology Oz reverted to a Luddite monarchy, caught in the middle of a war between the extradimensional beings who ruled the four corners of Oz.
One day a man named Oscar Z. Diggs found his way through an extradimesional portal and landed in the Emerald City, using his knowledge of Earth-realm technology to assert himself as ruler of Oz, preying on the superstitious nature of its citizens but in so doing, the appointed “Wizard of Oz” provided a measure of safety and security to his subjects and united the four corners of Oz against their seemingly magical oppressors until the day Dorothy Gale and her three companions (and her little dog, too) exposed him as a fraud, forcing the Wizard to leave Oz for his own land. But when his balloon once again malfunctioned and Oscar Diggs fell into a chasm in the North, his actions would plunge Oz and the Earth realm into chaos.
Back in the present day of Oz, Kor-Sekra’a sat to the far edges of the Western Wood, warming himself by the light of a fireglobe (Phytopath technology that provided heat without danger of igniting their bark-like skin). He had just recently trapped a deer and incinerated it to the blackened pile of carbon that would sustain his existence for the next month, the smell of charred venison in the air and a thick, dark column of smoke the only signs of his presence. Kor-Sekra’a knew he would have to move quickly to avoid capture by the monkeys and TWM units that were surely on their way.
A sudden tug in the back of his mind; the trees of the Western Wood had passed word (or what passes for words when you’re sharing thoughts with a tree) of a fiery battle just east of his position, and of four strangers coming directly towards him with a TWM unit following in their wake.
Kor-Sekra’a thought back to the trees, telling them to block the strangers’ path long enough for him to escape, but not to retaliate against them in any way. But it didn’t do much good. When he turned to make his escape, Kor-Sekra’a came face-to-face with a girl dressed in the style of the Eastern villages, and fell back in surprise. The girl seemed to radiate heat from an unknown source, which made Kor-Sekra’a reluctant to take her hand when she offered to help him up.
The rest of the strangers soon joined the girl, Dorothy and Tynmen helping the strange camper to his feet. Upon hearing his tale, including his involvement in the creation of the Twim, Shin Lao growled in anger and moved to attack, but Yong-Xi was able to calm him with a touch and bid Kor-Sekra’a to continue. Dorothy’s eyes brightened at the mention of the tornado portal and asked if he could help her return home. Kor-Sekra’a said he could not, having buried all but the most essential technology hundreds of years ago. But he knew that if he could find his Brain (the central computer that ultimately controls all other Phytopath technology), he could put the TWM units and flying monkeys out of commission and possibly build a tornado machine that would return Dorothy to Kansas, along with anyone else who wished to go with her to defeat the witches.
With their tales told once again, Dorothy, Tynmen, Shin Lao, Yong-Xi, the TWM, and Kor-Sekra’a (whom Dorothy insisted on calling the Scarecrow for his resemblance to a lost friend from her first visit to Oz) made their way to the Northern Mountains in search of “the Scarecrow’s” lost computer.
