Sunday, October 10, 2004

New Character Weekend

Finally, I feel like myself again. I think I've got my medical problems taken care of, and am once more back on a diet that includes real food and alcohol on occasion. It'd been weeks since I was able to drink at all, and the other night, I found myself with a good buzz after drinking three beers.

I finally felt up to drawing this weekend. It's been weeks since I felt like I could get into the right mental place to draw, and I took advantage of it Saturday and Sunday by issuing myself a challenge. Y'see, I'd read a lot of comics on those long, sleepless nights I've had these past few weeks. I'd just go into my comics room, and dig out a nice, long run of a particular series, and read 'em in one sitting. I love doing that, but it's rare that I have that kind of time to just sit and read, say, a hundred issues of old Avengers comics or whatever. It passed the time, and helped me keep my mind occupied.

By choice, I ended up reading a whole bunch of Marvel comics, mostly stuff from the 70's and 80's. Classic runs of Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America... the list goes on and on. I even dove into my well-worn 'Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe" collection at one point. Reading those comics really reminded me of the reason I got hooked on comics in the first place. The characters, the universe, and the sense of wonder and escapism that came along with the Marvel Universe in its heyday.

A lot of that sense of wonder seems to be gone now, but that's a subject for another day.

The point is that, immersed as I was in what was my favorite era for superhero comics, I finally found the inspiration to create some characters of my own. I'd always intended to host as diverse a range of my own work on KarmicCalamity as possible, including superheroes. Part of the point of Karmic Calamity, for me, is to show what I'm capable of creatively. Hence, when I sat down to draw on Saturday, the only thing I could think of was 'wouldn't it be fun to just make up some characters?'

So that's who these guys are. They're the beginnings of my attempt to create the sort of superhero, and the sort of superhero comic that got me hooked on the genre in the first place, back when I was a kid. I'll be adding these guys, and more, to my creator page on Karmic Calamity as I develop the project, but for now, I just wanted to put Athena, the Fox and Gauntlet up here because, well, I'm a little geek and I think they're cool.






Gauntlet Posted by Hello


The Fox. I think I need more reference on crossbows. Posted by Hello


Athena Posted by Hello