Samurai

JOE: Jup is the only non-orc in the war-band, he's' an outsider and the other orcs are mistrustful of him. A perfect comparison would be Toshiro Mifune's wandering samurai in Kurosawa's Yojimbo. I came to this piece for inspiration out of desire to move away from the traditional depiction of the red-bearded, nordic-inspired dwarfs, with their battle axes and horned helmets. ( ironically, Mifune played the title character in the film, Red Beard). Samurai's have the mastery of swordplay and code of honor that I thought would be a good fit for Jup.

STAN:  I'm pleased that Joe didn't go for the traditional, not to say clichéd, depiction of dwarves.  And the samurai aspect certainly rings a bell with me - I'm pretty sure it was one of the influences in the ragbag of my subconscious.  Mifune had a unique screen presence, and was equally convincing as fool or hero.  He was unforgettable in Seven Samurai, and perhaps even more so in Throne of Blood.  It's nice to think that something of his spirit made its way into the graphic novel.   

JOE: Jup shaves his head and dons the Wolverines uniform to fit in with his orc brothers at arms. If he were to put on the garb of this native dwarf race, I imagine he'd looksomething the this:

Contrast

JOE: Boy, I sure do have a lot of drawings of Haskeer beating the living crap outta people.

JOE: But my all time favorite sketch is this one of Haskeer sitting on a barrel, enjoying his pipe full of pellucid. I love the way he is still such a badass, and yet there is something dainty about the way he's holding that pipe.

STAN:  That "dainty" pose is a very nice touch.  One of the things I love about the graphic art is how a little detail can speak volumes about a character.  At times like this I wish I could draw a straight line .  

Berserker

JOE:  Haskeer is the one orc character that went through the least amount of changes, through the entire process, his basic design is unchanged. The proportions vary, but the squat nose, heavy brow and cleft chin (not naturally occurring, I've always pictured him taking a axe blade to the chin) remains consistent. The mace was also an early decision, but the type of mace, even up to today, varies from drawing to drawing. (Although in the graphic novel I went with Haskeer wielding two smaller ones for throwing). Haskeer is essentially orc prime, and all of my other orcs are variations, or at times deviations from him.

 STAN:  Yeah, orc prime - I like that.  Judging by readers' feedback, Haskeer's one of the most popular characters.  You might think that's odd, given his tendency to act like an insensitive oaf and the fact that he's not exactly the sharpest sword in the scabbard.  But somehow there's something endearing about him.  I've a soft spot for the big chump myself.  

Buddy Cop Film

STAN:  Conflict breeds drama.  For a warband like the Wolverines, conflict's a daily occurrence, so there's plenty of drama in that respect.  But inevitably there are tensions within the band too, and no more so than in the relationship between Haskeer and Jup.  Haskeer's usually the antagonist, his animosity partly based on the fact that the dwarves tend to be more pragmatic than idealistic, and many fight for whichever side pays the most.  This isn't the case with Jup, but Haskeer occasionally has doubts about that.  They also have different temperaments - Haskeer can be reckless where Jup exercises caution, for example - but at base they share certain things in common, like a love of combat and loyalty to the band.  There are times when either would happily slit the other's throat, but when the chips are down their instinct is to co-operate. They've saved each other's lives on more than one occasion.  It's a classic love-hate thing.

JOE: "One's an orc, with a violent steak and a head full of concrete, the other's a dwarf with precognitive powers and chip on his shoulder. But when these two have to team up and fight there way through a fantasy world full of monsters, fanatical holy warriors and evil sorceresses, things are gonna get a little nuts!"  That would be the the trailer if they ever made a movie about Haskeer and Jup.

Larcher

JOE:  General Larcher is one of the handful of characters created solely for the graphic novel. I also took the most liberties with him. He is a formidable enemy for Stryke and his war band and tries to match their ferocity on the battlefield. Despite his musclebound physique, he is terribly insecure and if there were performance enhancing drugs in his time and place, he would most certainly use them and then deny it up and down. He almost has a sliver of respect andawe for the orcs he's be charged with obliterating.

STAN:  All stories, no matter how epic, are best told through focusing on the trials and tribulations, the setbacks and triumphs of individuals embroiled in the greater plot.  (Think Shakespeare, War and Peace, The Lord of the Rings . )  You risk losing reader empathy unless you zero in on your main protagonists and tell your tale through them.  Which means that to some extent your characters stand not only for themselves but also their race, their culture and the sweep of history carrying them on.  So apart from being a character in his own right, General Larcher, like Kimball Hobrow, represents something bigger.  In Larcher's case it's the cause he supports, and to some degree a certain type of military mind - the inflexible sort.  But he isn't without his doubts.  The certainty of his faith and the rigidity of his soldierly thinking are somewhat at odds with the grudging respect he feels for his opponents, the orcs.  He's a bit conflicted.    

JOE:  While developing Larcher, I continued to play around with the Uni uniform. I looked at Nazi officer's uniforms to add little touches to the Uni's garb. The Uni collar and belts and boots are all inspired by some of histories greatest monsters.

Followers

JOE: When it came to the Uni Soldiers who fight for Kimbal Hobrow's fanatical religious cause I automatically thought of the European Crusaders in the Holy Land in the 11th and 12th centuries.

STAN: This is an interesting example of Joe adding something - or, rather, expanding on something - that I didn't go into too much detail about in the novels.  I simply implied that the Unis wore some kind of uniform, but beyond saying they favored black I didn't give specifics.  Joe's beefed that up, and given their appearance an appropriate uniformity.  (Pun unintended!)

Demagogue

JOE: I'm changing things up a bit, I've got a lot more drawings of Stan's misunderstood protagonists, but for the next few posts I'm going to focus on some of the antagonists.

JOE: Kimball Hobrow is described as tall and gaunt, clad in all black with a stovepipe hat. My first thought was, "evil Abe Lincoln?" My thoughts soon turned to the overzealous Puritans from books I read in High School, The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter. I can't help but to compare one piece of literature to another, and then it hit me. "I'm going to model my Kimball Hobrow after Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab in the film adaptation Moby Dick."  This is how I operate. I look at one person's visual adaptation of a piece of literature and use it in my visual adaptation of a completely different piece of literature. Stealing someone's idea and using it in another context is what makes working in the visual arts so much fun.

STAN:  I knew Joe's depiction of Kimball Hobrow reminded me of someone!  (And on the trivia front, John Huston's 1956 version of Melville's classic had Ray Bradbury as its principal scriptwriter, of course.)  I don't think I had any particular model in mind when I came up with Hobrow, though what goes on in our subconscious should never be discounted.  Somehow, and certainly not consciously, an element of the wild west seemed to creep into certain facets of the orcs series, and no more so than in the character of Hobrow.  It was only after I created him that I saw a kind of Judge Bean aspect in there.  Some people assume that I'm being critical of all religion in the orcs books, or indeed faith itself.  What I in fact had in mind were the extremists; the fanatics who try to impose their unbending beliefs on others.  Kimball Hobrow was my attempt at personifying that.