Project #2 - Warlord of Barsoom

This is an adult comic project that I worked on in 2017 after/while reading the John Carter books. I made a page for it, though never listed it on my site index.

http://androidarts.com/barsoom/Barsoom.htm 

Anyways, last year (2020) I listened to the audiobooks again because I'm running out of books. Incidentally this was 70 years after the Burroughs' death, which in the EU should have put all of his works into the Public Domain making them safe to use for derivative works.

John Carter seemingly gets his fantastical powers on Mars, partly due to the lower gravity which makes Martians weaker than Earthlings. Their depictions somewhat betrays this idea though. Carter is actually not an ordinary human to begin with, but some kind of immortal, which was never explained as far as I've read. 

There's a 2007 movie called The Man From Earth which still stirs in my mind, and I decided to rewrite my origin story borrowing from that, also including ideas from another long dead author. I invented yet another Main Character for my rewrite.

Included here is a new WIP script (in LibreOffice .odt format) and additional concepts. The script is actually just a prologue/origin bit that got out of hand, I haven't really thought much about the Barsoom part yet. It's all rather clumsy writing I'm afraid.

Image notes

Martian rocks: I won't be going for a realistic Mars of course. There will be canals and spectacular rock formations, moss, forests and other vegetation to differentiate locations. Some real Martian rocks do have a curved, wind-cut/sculpted look to them though.

Uruk: This place is a desert now, but it was once quite green and lush, with lakes and canals. The city had a long history of activity/construction, from the time of Gilgamesh, and onward, so I can take some liberties in how I lay it out. Fashion could've changed a lot too so I don't have to use the most typical outfit for everyone.

The Vassal (likely Gilgamesh): "I'd bet my beard on it" is apparently an ancient thing. I read that beards could be used as payment of debt. Supposedly fashionable men spent a lot of time sculpting it with a heated iron, making those little swirls that you see in ancient depictions. Like I said earlier, I don't think fashion stayed the same over thousands of years, and the later surviving depictions of people might be romanticized. Still, Gil's gotta have a beard. Maybe he loses it in a bet to MC and takes on a more youthful appearance. He's an impressive specimen of a man, being Gilgamesh and all. In my setting he's more pleasant than the historical figure and have not yet risen to the position of king.

Priestess: During this time, the vocation seems to have been synonymous with prostitution, though I don't know if this will outright be the case for my priestess as she's been assigned a building outside of the city. She's short, round and a little chonky. A friend of the Vassal. 

The Witch: A french woman, long, slender and pointy/sharp in form, to contrast Priestess. Not a real witch, but perhaps a bit wicked.  

MC/Main Character Inan'Akee: I had a pretty specific look in mind for this character, but had to spend a little time searching with the pen and didn't really end up where wanted/envisioned, but at this point I've forgotten what I was initially going for so it's moot. Quite by chance she ended up looking a bit like other anthropological portraits that I found too late when done, so maybe the early choices I made had some verity. She's a hunter gatherer with mixed heritage, some Nepalese and Asian + European (tiny bit of neanderthal). I wanted protruding forehead and eyebrow-bones. Since I couldn't at all find reference for this type of face I used one of those generic face gesture sheets just for seeing where wrinkles and such go. MC is the type of character which makes unflattering faces without a thought, partly because of her primitive origin. She got "cool scars" after a fight with a sabre tooth tiger (maybe the last). She's somewhat muscled and perhaps unusually tall for the time (160cm) as she was quite the adept hunter. Her face, though worn by hardship and lack of attention, still has a rather girly look. At any rate, I wanted to avoid doing a the-most-beautiful-woman-ever super face as often seen in videogame promotions and such. Maybe just about 20. People back then could live to old age but on average barely lived to see 30. Like John Carter (or The Emperor of Man) she is an immortal, or rather, becomes so in the prologue. 

WIP Script: Attached.

Judgement

Making a comic is very difficult (so many disciplines to master). The only way to learn is by doing though, and it's probably the ideal way to do visual world building, which is something I enjoy.