I think I mentioned it before but I agreed to do a 10-page TMNT story for Free Comic Book Day next year and it’s taking me longer than I expected so I haven’t been able to draw much Shadoweyes. I’m hoping to finish the TMNT story in the next two weeks and then it’ll be full steam ahead on Shadoweyes, I promise!!!
I was searching through my old laptops trying to find more old artwork, and I found this other old drawing of Razerback from when I was a teenager. I have no idea what her costume is here, what is up with that one full sleeve with a green stripe? And I’d forgotten that at one point she only had stripes on her legs/lower half, not her arms.
ANYWAY, WHERE WE LAST LEFT OFF, we were doing a Heroes Unlimited campaign in which my friend’s character Morgan had a baby named Scout who she hid away in a parallel dimension to protect her from the government. BUT, I have a crucial update: when I was going through old files today, I found my expansive, impenetrable note files for the campaign, which jogged my memory. Razerback didn’t get Morgan pregnant (she did still have a huge mutant dick though), it was another character named Sire whose power was “xenogenesis,” which meant inducing spontaneous pregnancy in others (icky, I know). The files also say that he got Razerback pregnant but I don’t remember what happened with that, I don’t recall her ever having a baby, too, just Morgan.
Here’s a screenshot from the text file. It also mentions a character named Kim getting spontaneously pregnant but I don’t remember what the deal was with her or mutant baby. God what an insane storyline, what was I thinking? Haha. Also mentioned here is “Steffy’s door”; Steffy was another superhero called Wish who could wish for things and they’d come true, and she helped Morgan by wishing for a way to keep baby Scout safe, and created the dimensional doorway to the parallel world (called Universe-010 apparently). Also interesting to note here are Lea & Carlos Mendoza, Casey Jones-type vigilantes, and Mendoza would eventually be the surname of the vigilante Noah from the Shadoweyes comic. Double also, one of Scout’s school friends is listed as Jenny Kalvin, who would go on to become a school bully character in the comic jokingly called “Hoots” because of her owl-like looks.
ANYWAY, in the game storyline, Scout’s powers eventually manifested and she could transform into a Ninja Turtle-meets-Alien creature similar to Razerback, and fought crime as the brooding angsty vigilante Shadowknife in a dark dystopian city.
I ended up being so enamored with the character and the set-up of her living with her single mom that I started thinking about what if I turned it into a comic? At the time I was still working on Wet Moon and I believe I was doing stuff for Vertigo around that time, so I didn’t have time to draw anything else myself, so I thought I could write it for a different artist. I approached an ex-colleague of mine, who I won’t name out of respect, and she agreed to work on it with me. Her work was really inspiring to me, and inspired much of the initial visual style of Shadoweyes, the colors, and the overall feel/tone of it (I won’t post any of her concept art here but believe me it was great). I felt like we were both firing on all cylinders, inspiring each other and putting together something super special and fun, but we eventually had a major falling out that I won’t go into, and Shadoweyes was left kind of adrift at first after all that happened. I almost abandoned the comic completely, I felt like I didn’t want to do it without my collaborator, but soon enough I got my mojo back, I went ahead with it on my own and drew it myself.
Here’s some early concept art from 2007 when my collaborator and I were hashing out how Scout should look:
Below are some costume variations. My collaborator really liked the tiny underwear look in the lower left, that was her favorite and how she’d usually draw Scout, but I always felt it was too silly and overly sexy, so it was one of the first things to go after she left the project.
I first got a Wacom tablet in 2007 or so, and I’d intended only to use it for lettering (prior to Wet Moon vol. 3, I used to hand-letter everything), but I ended up being so inspired by my collaborator’s loose, expressive digital artwork that I gave it a shot myself and I ended up loving it. It was tough to learn, you can probably see how rough and janky these old digital drawings look, but at the time that was part of the appeal for me. I wanted to loosen up and this forced me to do so.
Above is the first drawing I did of Scout in her human form. My collaborator originally drew her with a more grunge sort of look but I pushed her into more of a mall goth/emo/sporty goth style.
I tried my damnedest to find the very first drawing I did of Scout when she was only in the Heroes game and hadn’t made the comic leap yet, but the pic must be long gone. She was originally colored dark grey but somewhere along the line she became purple. I eventually changed the purple/green color scheme after I realized the neon green wouldn’t be possible in print, it only works in RGB color on a computer monitor, and I didn’t want to make her eyes a more muted color. That’s what led to her eventually being blue instead.
Also around that time Corey Lewis put out his super cool book Sharknife, and I thought Shadowknife and Sharknife were too similar so we changed the name to Shadoweyes instead (a process I poked fun at in the first scene in the comic where Scout and Kyisha come up with various possible codenames).
For the comic, I dropped all the crazy convoluted backstory from the tabletop campaign and kept it simple, just Scout and her mom and a few other friend/enemy characters, and kept the origin of her powers a mystery.
Before I wrap up part two, here’s a later drawing of Razerback from around 2010 (I think). Put some clothes on, Razer!
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART THREE!!!!!!
Shadowhistory has been a fun and interesting read so far. Interesting to read that the characters for Shadoweyes evolved and matured over such a long period of time. I got acquainted with your work through TMNT so I don't really mind waiting for new Shadoweyes stuff while you do some more work on Turtles.
Nice! It’s cool to see the beginnings of such a cool character.