1. Somehow, I'm in a groove here. I have found a place where my art and the vibe of the game world align almost perfectly. I really like the character designs I'm coming up with. For example, I knocked out the Keeper of the Mystic Veil in about ten minutes, and I could not be happier with how he turned out. I could spend a few hours on this and I wouldn't be able to get it any better than this. Several of the designs have ended up feeling very iconic - they 'feel' to me like the Bruce Timm DC Universe without copying his style. The character designs he created for those shows were so simple and clean, and I've got some of that energy going, even though my style is very little like his.
2. I have detailed about 20% of the Doc Stalwart Comics catalog at this point; I'm starting to see the scope of the series over 25 years taking shape. I'm seeing the larger trends and stories, and how they sort of fit together in this huge narrative. The process is very much one of discovery. I remember that somehow as a teen I had copies of GI Joe 1 and 2, then had 5, then had 8 onward. I missed issues 3, 4, 6, and 7 when they first came out, and it was several months later when I was able to start tracking them down at flea markets, conventions, and comic books stores. I knew they were out there, and my imagination had started to fill in what they must be about. By the time I actually got to read them, they had earned almost a mythic significance in my imagination. Somehow, 'disovering' what happened in a Doc issue from the 60s, 70s, or 80s is very much like this; I know that they already exist 'somewhere', and I'm going through back issue bins in my imagination, pulling them out of the box, and carefully pulling back the scotch tape holding the bag closed. It's a surreal experience, but one that I'm finding strangely rewarding.
3. I've written before about how I always wanted to publish this huge, extended comic book over years. I wanted on a level I can't quite explain to undertake a legendary run on a book like Lee and Kirby on FF, or Byrne on FF, or Chris Claremont on X-Men... you get the idea. Doc allows me to do that in some way.
4. Doc has ended up being the perfect central character to pull the whole thing together. Having his comic book be THE story of this game world has made it small enough that I can build the whole thing (eventually), but big enough that it's a fully-developed superhero universe. It doesn't have the massive cast of characters of Marvel or DC, but it's got a fully-realized superhero world. I believe that by the time I'm done, this will be the most well-documented and fully-realized superhero game world ever created outside of actual comic books. It cannot imagine how it won't end up being the most well-realized superhero RPG world. It's very organic, because I've rooted it in an alternate history where the comics were 'actually' published, with all of the messiness that entails. Creating 'clean' superhero game worlds doesn't actually make sense in the context of the history of how comics have really developed.
Hi, Mike! I'm reading through these posts and enjoying them quite a bit (as always). The battle between Bronze Beacon and Pliant was fun, your character designs are clean and charming, and the world of Stalwart is one that I'd have tons of fun reading comic after comic.
ReplyDeleteI've got a backlog and was interrupted last week (first by COVID and then by a teacher's conference), but I plan to do a video on Stalwart for my YouTube channel, Play's the Thing, sometime soon. I won't be a huge signal boost (I only have 59 followers), but it's something. I also hope to play the game before then, so I have something concrete to say about how it works.
Again, it won't happen for a bit as I'm in the middle of a series that I have to finish right now, but here's where that content will eventually end up: https://www.youtube.com/@tgidragonfly
I'm thinking in about a month.
Awesome! Looking forward to it. Thanks.
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