Grrl Power #1266 - A triad of Triads

Thank you for the support! You guys are awesome!

They're speaking Chinese, BTW. I forgot to put the <brackets> around their dialog. I have no idea what the symbol on the carpet says. It could be praise for Puyi, the last emperor of China. It could also say "carpet."

I was going to make these groups kind of generic bad-guys in case any of them get, well, butchered on upcoming pages, but then decided it would be a good exercise for me to stretch my character skills since I think some of my male characters look a little samey. Granted that's a large part due to the fact that I draw a lot of lantern chinned muscular guys. Actually, my biggest problem is probably drawing samey looking women who can only be told apart because of their hair and outfits. I think a lot of artists have that problem though, because the standards of beauty for women are much narrower than they are for guys. The subtle differences between, Scarlet Johansson's face and Charlize Theron, for example. Yeah, even I could probably tell them apart if they were both shaved bald, BUT, if I'm drawing a face that takes up 1/6th of a panel on a comic page which takes up 1/9th of the page itself, the subtle differences don't have a lot of room to shine. If someone is doing a caricature at that scale, then maybe. If someone is drawing "standard hot woman" but also trying to do a likeness, then... it's going to mostly come down to hair and costume. Maybe body language if that's the sort of thing the comic pays attention to. It also depends on someone's style. I would say mine is like 3/4 American comic standard, 1/4 anime, except when I'm drawing someone like Sydney, then those ratios are reversed.

Anyway, let's play the "Who's the most dangerous person in that room" game. (This is me pretending I'm not the writer and seeing this page for the first time.) It's definitely not baldy in panel 1. He looks like a guy who thinks he's tough. The kind of guy who is okay at beating up mouthy hookers or slapping around innocent shopkeepers who are late on their "protection" payments, but is destined to find out that swagger isn't enough when the bodies start to hit the floor.

Toothpick-hands-on-hips next to him has a shot at being... well, probably not the most dangerous, but he's got that "main character through humorous misadventure" vibe. He's less "marksman kill 20 henchmen" vibe and more "accidentally shoot the bulb above the tank of gasoline that causes a spark that burns down the entire cocaine processing facility" vibe.

Okay, let's cut to the chase. It's not gunslinger or thigh-neck or the henchwoman with the guandao. It's definitely the old guy in the pink bathrobe. It has to be, right? He might be the wizened advisor type… No, he's for sure got poison throwing needles or trained ferrets or something under that coat.