Reaper Remake

In a previous post I mentioned briefly that I would be redoing my graphic novel, "The Reaper"... I've begun story-boarding the new take on it in the hopes that I can finally create it in the fashion of my original vision... which I know, George Lucas used the term "original vision" A LOT while he was destroying his once loved franchise and smearing it in the face of his once loyal public... I, on the other hand, actually had a very good idea originally... what was ultimately created was a shadow of this. But in any case, I've done a good chunk of work on this to date, but I'll just show off a few things I was playing around with... which may or may not be used in the end...

First of all, new Canaanite Logo... the original logo resembled the Crescent Moon of Islam just a little too much, I'm not about to associate myself with that sort of mockery, this novel was never supposed to have any religious propaganda, but it came off a little anti-Muslim as I was rushing to throw some Canaan imagery together... if anything, it was supposed to be more reminiscent of Soviet Communism... So I'm rectifying that mistake... The image is the profile shot of a Ram's head. It's the most common imagery associated with the Canaanites of the bible that I could find, and generally, there's something sinister about the imagery of a ram's head... they do look a little evil... Ram's and Goats... But at the end of the day, the most sadistic animal, in my opinion, is the Squirrel... I'm serious, don't trust them.

Given this new logo, I decided since the "reaper" in the comic is basically smearing out Canaanite Leaders, the book's logo should represent that a little more... So I used a few ideas from the original look of the titles in the book and mixed it with the concept of wiping out Canaanite heads... This also captures the look and feel of the novel, which was best represented in some of the earlier pages of the the last attempt... and I know you ALL read it... just download the pdf from the last post already!

There's a new character I'm adding to the story named Samson, if you've read any of my other posts or browsed around the sketches in my portfolio, you've probably come across this figure. I originally drew him for a friend's band, but that idea ended up falling through, so I started to doodle him a lot more in the hopes I could use him for something. I know, the name Samson isn't all that original, but the graphic novel is a loose interpretation of the biblical Book of Judges... Samson was a judge, hence, he's going to have a counterpart in the story... I don't think I need to worry about a lawsuit from him, right?

All the character's names come from Judges... including the character "Barak"... no. No, no, and NO. He is in no way a representation of Obama. I created his character in 2006(I'm from NH, I didn't even know who the man was until last year), and the Book of Judges named him WAY before the President's time. So I ask that nobody even allow the thought to enter their head that Barak is in any way, shape or form related to the President. Please. Pretty Please. The fact that he is African American is a coincidence. So don't. Aight? Good.

I've created a little promotional image for the novel... more like a rough sketch with color.


So yeah, just a little update on what I've been working on. I hope to start making some serious progress on this, it's something I've really wanted to do for a long time.

I said don't!
~ Mark

The Reaper

In order to graduate from UMass Lowell, we had to undergo the wonderful trials of Senior Studio. Basically a semester devoted to one project of our choosing... it had to be perfect... not A+ perfect, just B- perfect.

My project came in the form of a graphic novel titled "The Reaper". The plot was completely distorted through painful hours of critique by students and professors who knew... well... nothing about graphic novels and who cared very little about my "vision" for the story. In the end, the style was changed, the plot was changed... and my pride was diminished. Nonetheless, it did turn out quite well for what it was. Stylistically, I was pretty impressed. It went from traditional comic drawings to a more typographical visual with an impressive Communist color scheme.

The story is a loose interpretation of the book of Judges from the Bible; Where a nation is under duress from a terrifying enemy, cries for help which comes in the form of a new, fearless leader. Before long the nation turns on the leader for his violent tactics against the enemies and ultimately adopts the religion of their former aggressors. Under the rule of new leaders, the nation is plagued with violence and discrimination, which gives birth to a new savior, a ruthless entity who many believe to be an Angel of Death.

Due to time restraints and setbacks from obnoxious and irrelevant critiques, I was never able to complete the story and had to call it "PART I"... Overall, the story, though only being a shadow of its former vision, turned out really well and would ultimately become one of my favorite pieces of work. It was like a breath of fresh air to do something very different from my usual drawings and it even helped me typographically, as I was forced to place an emphasis on text rather than drawings.



My only real complaint is that I had to change a great deal of plot in order to please my professor and was almost forced into applying political undertones, religious depictions, etc... Enemy's had to be "terrorists", Moab had to be an American city, etc, etc... Along the way it almost appeared anti-Muslim, which was not even REMOTELY the case. I plan on redoing this novel in a more true-to-vision form eventually. But for the time being, it's a fun piece of art, and also my longest running comic spanning over 100 pages. Yeah... Part One.

As the book progresses the style goes through a few drastic changes, still type-heavy, but more sketched out, photo-edited, trippy imagery. The reason for this was the plot involved a hallucinogen being forced upon one of the characters, so visually I needed to compliment the story.



Anyway, the full pdf can be downloaded here at 6amcomics.com... also on the site, you can find a pdf of the original look and feel I was going for in the novel called, "The Lost Pages"... it also has more character development on Azriel (the main protagonist) and some differently colored versions of some of the final pages used. The style originally planned was closer to this look and feel:



Traces of this look can be seen in the beginning pages of the novel, mainly because the ruthless "critiquing" came soon after I had already begin the first few pages... c'est la vie.

All in all, it's worth checking out, and it will DEFINATELY be worth checking out once it's redone in its former glory.

For Joshua!
~ Mark