Fyurgh

Fyurgh is the kind of demon that just likes to have sacrifices done in his name. If you call him up and show him that you’re willing to kill someone for him, he’ll help you out in whatever way he can (usually by killing someone else). He may not be good at possessing people, or undermining society, or even much of anything at all, but he’s a hard worker and that counts for something.

I’m going back to the Floaty Round Monster well pretty soon after the Tonguecatcher, but only because they’re really, really very easy to draw. This one is less of a Cacodemon/Beholder and more of an evil Slimer, though. Fyurgh looks to me like a demon Adventure Dennis would have slaughtered in about two seconds, but obviously he’d be a tougher fight for basically anyone else.

Jo Melville

Jo Melville is an ordinary person. She’s not a champion of justice or a fighter of evil, and she doesn’t want to conquer the world or anything. She’d be happy just going about her day like anyone else. But that plan is consistently ruined by a strange mystical power she has: namely, when Jo Melville sleeps, she opens a portal to mental realms through which all manner of spirits and demons can pass, allowing them to take a physical form on Earth.

This makes Jo a hazard in the eyes of people who want to prevent those beings from coming to Earth, it makes her a would-be tool for those who are actively trying to come here, and it makes her the Chosen One to at least one group of ancient wizards who are curious to know if it is possible for physical beings to go through in reverse, heading into the dimension of thought. Jo’s just wants the complication removed from her life, and as time goes on she may try more increasingly desperate ways to accomplish that.

The impetus for this sketch was just browsing through my character sketch folder and noticing a pointed dearth of people who wear normal-people clothes.

Last week I made a supporting cast for Valia, who is a character I sketched with little thought, but she then caught my imagination and grew. This week, though, I’m doing a cast for a character who came to me fully formed. I knew right from the beginning I wanted to tell the story that involves the Hateful King.

King Balus

The king of Thrakodacia, Balus is a very good guy. For his entire adult life Balus has ruled his country in politics, but also kept a secret from the rest of the world: his country has been at war with a demonic sorcerer called the Hateful King. Even now, in the Twenty-First Century, Thrakodacia is a scene of swordfights, monsters, flying carpets, and fantastic adventure. But this has been a drain on the good king. He’s getting tired of the battle and wants to end it once and for all, but will this cause a slip-up that could be his undoing?

Balus is unapologetically intended to basically be a Disney prince. He’s generically good and handsome, the perfect opponent for someone as bad as the Hateful King. He’s even got a cute pet bat that is unusually intelligent.

Lendela

Lendela is a sorceress ostensibly serving King Balus. She tends to come and go as she pleases and, of course, is absolutely cryptic about everything, but she has Thrakodacia’s best interests in mind, she assures everyone. It is largely through her efforts that the situation in Thrakodacia has not spread to the outside world, and it is true that she has long been training the country’s forces to fight the various supernatural entities. But still, she tends to come and go as she pleases and is absolutely cryptic about everything. But nobody knows where she goes and why she won’t just reveal whats he knows.

Lendela is the Merlin figure of this story. There’s a period in the evolution of the King Arthur legend during which Merlin was a sort of hybrid between Christianity and paganism that I would try to recreate with her. She’s strongly affiliated with the Orthodox Church of Thrakodacia, but she’s also into some other things that Balus and friends might find very unwholesome.

Prince Gravefiller

The Hateful King’s ultimate goal, naturally, is world domination. Obviously one person would have a rough time ruling the entire planet, so he wanted to start a family that would rule with him. He married another demon/human hybrid and, though the marriage did not last, it did lead to the birth of one child. Anticipating a great and violent future for his son, the King named him Gravefiller. Though he was not exactly pleased that the boy turned out so small, he never lost his hope that the Prince Gravefiller would be a fierce warrior and trained him endlessly in the ways of battle. As a teenager, the boy ran away from home.

After living in the wilderness for some time, the boy was found by King Balus’s men and brought to live with them. In this new home he found people who cared about him for things other than his potential as a fighter, and as a result, he was much more willing to fight. Joining the good guys in the fight against his father, Gravefiller is a fierce warrior after all.

I drew this guy and it wasn’t until I was coloring him that I realized he was basically a rip-off Etrigan. Oh well. Different skin color and background means it isn’t a ripoff, it’s an coincidental homage. Anyway, Gravefiller has a magic ring that can control fire.

The Bludgeon

Another red-skinned freak, the seven-foot-tall monster of a man has served the Hateful King for a long time, in a lot of battles, and has the scars to prove it. While the Hateful King is not a weakling by any means, it is right for a king to have soldiers, and the Bludgeon is the strongest and most loyal. The Bludgeon earned his title by surrendering himself fully to the King, becoming more a weapon and a tool than a person. He wants nothing more than to serve.

I have a great many more character ideas for this particular story and I hope to get them on here someday, but for now this will do and we’ll be back to the two characters a week after this, with the next approximate year’s theme.

The Devil Queen from Outer Space

Descending to Earth in a UFO that looks like a ball of flame, the Devil Queen from Outer Space is Queen Malefactra, an archmonarch of evil with a desire to conquer the human race and set up a hell on Earth. With an army of sci-fi devilry (robots made of skeletons, laser pitchforks, etc.), she has the means to do it!

When she’s not actively trying to conquer the world, Malefactra is a temptress looking to make deals. At the cost of your immortal soul, she can use her nano-magic to make your dreams come true, though it always seems to find some way to make sure it also furthers her own cause.

This was just an attempt at designing a character with that sense of fun that I think superhero comics need to embrace. The theatrics of hell symbolism and the grandeur of outer space invaders seem like a perfect fit for superheroes.

Flood

Alphonse Gordon was one of the founding members of the Strange Squad. In the 1960s the group was assembled from a group of scientists who had been mutated from experiments. Flood had accidentally transferred his consciousness into a body of water, which he soon learned to control and animate. Though he did the heroism thing with the Strange Squad, it was only for the money, so when someone else offered more money, he happily accepted and left the team. Though, deep down, he admits he seems to have lost out considering that the team has gone on to be an internationally successful organization and he is just a criminal for hire, he takes it in stride and continues working for whoever is willing to pay.

Another very easily drawn character. I would assume that being a living puddle would suck.

The Man Defender

Danny Adam Stark was just a regular guy in his early twenties until a chemically-infused pollution cloud caused a strange atmospheric disturbance and a bolt of lightning struck young Danny. After some time in hospital, his life continued. Over time he began to notice he was changing. He’d grown stronger and faster. He discovered he could jump almost a mile and shrug off a bullet to the face. Danny decided to use his powers to help those most in need to help: men. Danny sees society’s attempts to emasculate men as the primary cause of all the problems and if only the roles of the genders can be fixed, things will return to the way they were in the good old days. With this goal, the Man Defender will strike out against prominent feminists and lawmakers (especially females) who are trying to change things. He will break accused rapists out of jail, because the women were obviously asking for it. As far as he is concerned, he is the only hero addressing these issues of misandry and all the others are pathetic failures.

I’ve been doing a lot of world building stuff with the Supervillain Sunday sketches, which I enjoy, but I haven’t done as much addressing issues as I did with the Superhero Sundays. One of things a superhero story can do is use villains to represent real problems in the world. ‘Cause then we get to have a superhero beat up those problems, and that can be fun.

Hekkar

The demon-sorceress Hekkar is obsessed with gaining more power through a process known as “eating magic users”. Merging with the mystically altered flesh of those who use magic, Hekkar grows stronger, though what her goals may be beyond that are not known. But there is one who Hekkar can’t devour for power: the Conjuroid. The demon-fighting robot hero is the ideal defense against this demonic glutton, though as she is quick to point out, isn’t the Conjuroid just another being that destroys demons in its own quest to become stronger? Are they so different?

I admit, this one isn’t addressing an issue, really. I mean, sure, I worry about the threat of magicians being devoured as much as the next person, but the next person doesn’t care that much either.

Underchampion

In the city of Cemeteria there is a competition. Every year the city’s greatest warriors gather for contests of strength, speed, and intelligence with the winner gaining the title of Underchampion. Traditionally the Underchampion has been awarded a position as top soldier of the royal army, but the latest winner is not particularly pleased with the current government. Rejecting the traditional post, the Underchampion is actively leading a rebellious group against Queen Deathknell with intent to make the Underchampion the ruler of the sacred city.

I like this idea because in addition to stories about the Underchampion sending his forces against those of Queen Deathknell, I could also do stories of the two of them competing in the Cemeteria contests. On some level, I’m confident that this was inspired by the rivalry between T’Challa and Erik Killmonger in Black Panther comics.

Xaxhak

Mentions of Xaxhak can be found in ancient scrolls in the Mystical Library of Vodin, on stone tablets discovered in the ruins of a Scottish castle, and carved onto a wall at the scene of a massacre in the middle of Los Angeles. Cave paintings have even been discovered depicting an angry mouth eating human figures. Since as long as humanity has known, every 28 years, Xaxhak arrives on Earth with the intention of devouring 72 human beings. Unfortunately for Kelly Doukas, the twenty-eighth year has just come again.

When I drew Xaxhak (done with intention of having an easy drawing in addition to filling the supernatural being niche), I looked at the thing and though “This thing should be called ‘The Carnivortex'”. Unfortunately, looking the word up on Google, I found out that that was the name of some band’s album. Oh well. The choice to make her the villain for Kelly was just a whim of putting some things together that I didn’t intend, which has worked out well for me so far.