Tag: Faustus

Rage & Lust

Here’s some character design. Early in our story, the devil Mephistopheles convinces Dr Faustus to trade his soul for worldly riches and power. For instance, Faustus wants to eliminate the Tudor family so he can take over England. How will Mephistopheles make that happen?

Even the Devil has limits. Mephistopheles can’t kill people—instead, he lures them to their own destruction. He tempts them. His big weapon is Sin—the Seven Deadly Sins.

Here are sketches for Rage and Lust. Lust was tricky because I don’t want to make this comic book X-rated. What I drew here is a variation of the most lustful kids’ cartoon character I can think of: Pepe LePew.

Thumbnail sketches

The GLORIANA manuscript is written. You’ve seen that I’ve been designing the characters (I think I got almost all of them now). The manuscript needs to turn into a graphic novel—that means lots of pictures. I need to map out how I’ll tell this story visually. So I start with thumbnail sketches. Little rough drawings—no frills, half-size—whose job is to give me a starting point for drawing the tight sketches.

W’s Office and Mistress Hapenny

A couple of loose sketches. I’m trying to create a little world here. The climax of GLORIANA will be a showdown between the English and French navies on a body of water called the Solent. Leading up to the battle, Henry VIII will receive info about the French through his Royal Intelligence service. You met Sir Thomas Wriothesley in the last post. Here’s a sketch of his office. I’m taking a lot of liberties with Sir Thomas, so out of decent respect for his memory I’m calling him simply ‘W.’

Here’s a sketch of W’s secretary, Mistress Hapenny. Her duties include managing the homing pigeons used to communicate with the service’s field agents. In Tudor days, ‘mistress’ meant ‘lady of the house.’

Thomas Wriothesley

More character design! Rough sketches for Sir Thomas Wriothesley, Lord Chancellor who runs Henry VIII’s intelligence service. When Elizabeth goes missing, Henry taps Wriothesley to find her. Wriothesley (“Call me Risley”), or Sir Thomas, or W. In real life, he dressed kind of flamboyantly (he’s sporting a leopard-print scarf in his painting—I did his caricature here. For me, I want him to look more business-like. I designed him without much reference to his portrait. The modern men’s business suit would aptly tell us about his character but of course I can’t dress him like that. Still, I want him to be dressed somberly. Also, his body type in my sketches is beefier than Wriothesley’s own. I want him to look like a boss. The American actor Ed Asner often played bosses so his body type was my starting point.

The sketch with W leaning on his desk seems a little too aggressive. W’s character is trying to run an intelligence agency staffed with at least one loose-cannon field agent. He should be a steadying figure. His character is patient and efficient in the face of chaos. The third and fourth sketches are closer to what I’m after. I think the fourth sketch is the winner.

John Dee

Scholar, inventor, tinkerer, alchemist, magician, occultist, mathematician…John Dee spoke Latin and Greek, studied the weather—was there anything he didn’t do? Dee would have been in his twenties at the time of this story, but I’m making him just a little bit older. He’s attached to English Royal Intelligence ( he certainly was in real life). He will be the Tudor version of Q, Ian Fleming’s character in the James Bond stories, who comes up with the fancy weapons and inventions for His Majesty’s intelligence agents.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Dee

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.