Schlaab

Here’s a sketch of Schlaab, the 16th-century evil supervillain who heads up the Consortium, a cabal of fabulously wealthy financiers. Of course he owns a fluffy white cat. Schlaab intends to control the kingdoms that make up Europe by overthrowing their kings and putting himself in charge. Instead of military warfare, the Consortium will collapse each kingdom’s barter economy. He’ll buy up food at harvest-time and pay in cash, which will undermine the feudal system. Too little food, too much worthless money—pretty soon everybody will have to eat bugs. The Consortium then sells the food back at an inflated price—which includes land and power. Could his diabolical plan work?

England is the holdout. Their Magna Carta has made English people somewhat free of feudalism. Schlaab needs to assign an ambitious Consortium member—Doctor Johanne Faustus—to manage the downfall of England’s royal family.

The abominable Nine Circles

Elizabeth’s nemesis, Doctor Faustus, needs to get to sea so he can capture her. He’s without any kind of boat, so the demon Mephistopheles summons the abominable carack Nine Circles from the briny deep. Here’s my sketch. Of course, she will be crewed by devils.

More Elizabethan sea dog sketches

These aren’t exaggerated, I drew them straight from reference. I gotta say, some of these costumes look weird. Especially the guy with the huge pantaloons—how did he get any work done? Doesn’t he need to go aloft and climb around on the spars and adjust rigging once in a while? The guy with a cape slung over his shoulder is wearing what they call ‘slops’—big, loose cargo shorts made out of some durable linen or wool. That seems like a more sensible choice for pants.

Master Abbot character design

Here’s the pirate captain, Master Abbot. Side note: ship captains were called ‘masters’ back in those days.

The story called for a malevolent pirate captain, but this guy’s backstory took on a life of its own. Abbot became a way to point up the social upheaval of the time. He was the abbot of a monastery. That changed when King Henry VIII had a disagreement with the pope, declared the Church of England his kingdom’s new Christianity and dissolved the old Catholic monasteries. Abbot’s world was shattered. He decided to wage war on all mankind; he became a pirate.

Abbot is partially inspired by Captain Ahab who was obsessed with Moby Dick, the great white whale. Another inspiration is John Charity Spring, the demented Latin-master-turned-slave-ship-captain from the Flashman novels. I’m thinking about having Abbot speak in Latin Bible verses (King Henry replaced the vulgate Latin bibles with English ones).

I’m still fiddling with this design. He may be too skinny. I need to fix some drawing errors.

John Broadbeam

Here’s a rough sketch of a rough character—John Broadbeam, one of the pirates aboard Gloriana. He’s not a historical character; I made him up. Broadbeam will help Elizabeth escape England. I’d originally thought to cast Brian Blessed for this role. Broadbeam is a big, hearty character. As I’m drawing the storyboard, though, I realize a polyglot crew would be accurate even back in the mid-1500s. Beside that, I need a little visual variety. I can’t have all the big, hairy guys looking like Henry VIII.

So John Broadbeam is black. Should he be English-born or from North Africa?

Here’s Brian Blessed, skip to the 1:00 mark.

I don’t have a particular actor in mind for Broadbeam now. Maybe I’ll just keep drawing and get a feel for him.

Consortium boardroom sketch

As I mentioned earlier, I added to GLORIANA’s story: an evil cabal of wealthy financiers who want to take over the kingdoms of 16th -century Europe. Most of the architecture in Elizabeth’s world is Tudor-style. To differentiate the world of these bad guys, their architecture will be mediaeval Gothic. This is a sketch I did to help me visualize their world. Gothic looks heavier and more imposing than other styles.

If, like me, you’d been a student of art teacher Rolly Ivers at Cicero High School back in the 1970s, you’d have been given an introduction to architectural history. It was one of his passions. We all had 3-ring binders full of the mimeographed handouts he painstakingly assembled. I’ll always be grateful Rolly shared that with us. Because I have that foundation, I can whip out a sketch like this even before doing a bunch of research. Of course, I’ll look up Gothic interiors to amplify and fine-tune what I started here. But having a well of images in my head helps me to work efficiently.

Katherine Ashley

Henry VIII banished his daughter, Elizabeth, from court. I can’t discover why, except that Elizabeth did something to upset him or they had an argument. I don’t know if she were under house arrest or sent away. For my plot, I need Elizabeth to be banished to somewhere so bad guys can kidnap her.

In history, in real life, Katherine Ashley was Elizabeth’s governess. I decided to monkey with the truth and make Kat the headmistress of a school for young ladies, say half-a-day’s ride from Hampton. Now I have a destination for Elizabeth.

https://thetudorenthusiast.weebly.com/blog/the-life-and-death-of-kat-ashley
https://www.sparknotes.com/biography/elizabeth/section1/

Bad guy headquarters

A change I made to the story was to expand the scope of bad guys who are chasing after Elizabeth. Instead of one evil wizard and 2 hench-wizards, they will be backed by a whole group of wealthy financiers who are intent on subjugating the kingdoms of Europe. They are “The Consortium.” Of course they operate out of a menacing gothic stronghold.

This is the rough thumbnail sketch for Page 1, drawn at half the printed size.

Never say die!

It’s been quite a while since I posted! Here’s what’s been going on:

My original idea was to tell this story one page at a time, right here on this blog. It didn’t work out. GLORIANA is a saga, with lots of subplots, each involving a set of characters. It was too much for me to keep track of everybody. For instance, I needed some of King Henry’s soldiers to escort Elizabeth to a carriage after he’d banished her from court (that really happened). Where were these soldiers? I forgot to include them in the previous scene. Oops.

The other problem is I wasn’t easily able to design 2-page spreads this way. GLORIANA was a long-form online comic. After I started, I decided I want to make this a printed graphic novel instead. In print, the 2-page spreads need to look good. I wasn’t planning ahead. I’m an old graphic designer. If you’ve seen my picture books, you might guess that I design the whole project—thumbnail sketches of all the pages—before I start drawing illustrations. I blogged about that process at johnmanders.wordpress.com. Even before that, my picture book projects began with the author’s story, the manuscript. I was writing the story and drawing the pictures as I went along—an unwise move. Picture books are usually 32 pages. GLORIANA needs to be much longer than that. I was getting overwhelmed and I’d hardly begun.

So, I stopped working on it.

I really do believe in this project. I haven’t given up. I’m starting over. In the past months I wrote the manuscript. I had support and advice from my friends (thank you, Diana, Vince, Licia and Jenny!). GLORIANA is a tale of what-ifs: what if Elizabeth Tudor, after the big argument with Henry and her banishment, were chased by bad guys intent on assassinating her? What if these bad guys were part of a super-villain consortium bent on subjugating the kingdoms of Europe? What if the super-villain-wizard chasing her were a character from a popular play—a man who sold his soul to the Lord of Hell? How would she escape; make herself unrecognizable; where would she go? What if, during her flight, Elizabeth met real-life historical personalities who helped her? What if Elizabeth’s escape turned into an almighty battle between Good and Evil?

Elizabeth starts out as an unlikeable brat. I need her to become someone who values others. I need her to become a leader who would one day assume the throne of England.

The manuscript is finished. I’m storyboarding the graphic novel now. It looks like I’ll produce it in 16-page installments and self-publish. I’ll likely sell them on a crowd-funding site. If this is going to work, I need to find lots of customers! I will post updates here.

Thanks, friends, for your patience.

—Your old pal Manders