Tag: webcomic

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.

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.

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

Gloriana 02

Swordplay! En garde! Thrust! Parry, thrust! Shift-ball-change, shift-ball-change, back-step!

Three boys against one girl hardly seems fair. Let’s see if she’s able to hold her own…

glor.02

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