Character Development Special: Schwartz

Meet Schwartz, the unprepossessing! Schwartz is Saralactra's chief minion, (and probably the only minion who could actually be called a minion...) An occult engineer aided by a team composed of his seven sons (none of whom take after him, thank goodness,) Schwartz is utterly devoted to Saralactra and may be the only person at present who really believes in her and her plans. The rest of the team is strictly in it for the pay. You could say Schwartz is Saralactra's Igor. (Schwartz and his infamous flyer first come to the fore in The Wayward Queen around page thirty-two...)

Schwartz has been Saralactra's minion/assistant ever since the early rambling story that preceded The Wayward Queen. Frankly, he hasn't changed much either in appearance, personality, or role. When Sara got hijacked into the Wayward Queen story, Schwartz tagged along. But of course some details needed to be hammered out, especially in the design of his flyer... Here's some of the doodles I went through to figure out exactly what Schwartz and his flyer should look like in the Wayward Queen.

Character Development Special: Saralactra

Behold the Dastardly Saralactra! The scheming mastermind behind all the chaos in the next hundred pages of The Wayward Queen! Occult Engineer Extraordinaire and unscrupulous meddler in Things Unknown! Her ambition knows no bounds, nor does her bossiness. She takes herself far too seriously, and aims to make everyone else do so as well. (The dress is her own design, to be worn when scheming and bossing.)

Saralactra technically goes way waaay waaaaaay back. I think her first iteration was when I was ten or eleven years old, and she acted as mega-villain in some half-baked story I was writing (the only thing I remember about it was that it was pretty much a rip-off of Lord of the Rings, but with a female cast. Yeah, don't ask.) Unfortunately I don't think I ever drew her back then.

Anyway, Saralactra lurked in the back of my mind for years until I started knocking around another story in College, the one which eventually led to the Wayward Queen. At this point Sara resurfaced as a villain once more. This time she was considerably less mega, being technically a student witch in the Abracadabra University of Magic, with a secret hobby of Taking Over the World. Eventually she gathered a bunch of ragtag troops in the chaotic land of Oblivion and invaded the realm of Queen Gwenevere. (I do not recall how she got the troops or the money to pay them.) (Yes, that story had a few plot holes...)

Here's a few remnants from that phase of Saralactra's existence... The dramatic pose is Sara as she sees herself; in actuality, she looked more like the picture seen here on her student ID tag. The two comic pages were from a brief attempt to turn that story into a comic... BONUS: these pages feature a really early Erroneous! (And some bizarre horses... Or mutant horse-camel things. Or something. OOOOH man, horse anatomy, I HAD NO CLUE.)

Later still, when I started planning the Wayward Queen, Saralactra resurfaced yet again to harass the rest of the cast. She is no longer a student (the Abracadabra U. angle was ditched after Harry Potter came along to dominate the whole magical school premise.) She IS still pursuing her secret plans on the side of whatever she's supposed to be doing. (At one point she was going to be someone's maid, but that didn't stick.) Rather than being a witch, she is now an occult engineer, and good at it; and, while not nearly as powerful or important as she'd like to be, is currently in a position to command a certain amount of funding for her plans (how she gets the funds is another whole story...) Is she a villain? Or just an over-ambitious meddling nuisance? You make the call!

Here's some of the doodles and sketches that came about during the development of Saralactra Phase Three, all done around 2005 - 2006:

Character Development Special: The Red Witches

Time for another Character Development Special! Meet the Three Red Witches: Chic, classy, cunning, and possibly nefarious. They are first fully seen on page twenty-three of the Wayward Queen... (but they may be lurking on earlier pages.)

There are three sisters, all redheads, all witches, all flawlessly dressed. Minerva is the snooty one:

Athena is the nerdy one:

And Bellona's the ho:

The feathers do serve a purpose, which shall be seen later in the comic...

These ladies go back to the rambling make-it-up-as-you-go-along story that first spawned the Queen. Back then, they didn't have very defined personalities, but they did have red hair. (And really, if you have red hair and a black wardrobe, what else do you need, right?) Here's some of what I have from that incarnation:

Later, when I started developing the Wayward Queen sometime around 2005, I resurrected the Three Red Witches and added them to my cast of (more or less) villains. Of course if they were going to make the cut, they were going to need personalities. Here's a mess of doodles and sketches I made in the course of fleshing them out:

And here's the semi-official sketches I used as rough model sheets when drawing the first batch of comic pages:

Character Development Special: The Singlebeeste

The Singlebeeste, currently wreaking havoc in my webcomic "The Wayward Queen", is so named because there is only one of it. And one is enough. This tenacious creature has a bottomless appetite, and can be found raiding kitchens, larders, and pantries wherever food is left unguarded. Once installed in a kitchen, it can be quite difficult to remove.

Yes, those are totally ear-wings. Yep, like Dumbo. Six limbs seemed strange, so I figured "hey, why not evolve ear-wings?" aaaand... yeah. This happened.

The Singlebeeste is another character with a rather long history. Like the Queen and Vitalia, it goes back to an earlier story I dabbled with as a sophomore in college. In its earliest form, it was a rather vague camel-like creature (actually, it changed every week, but the camel-form is all I have records of.) Here's an ancient tiny doodle, and some early comic pages from a short-lived comic based on the early story (yes, Vitalia was pretty obnoxious back then.) (And a princess.) The Singlebeeste was originally "tamed" by the then Princess Vitalia, and became sort of a companion and mount... How and why it was tamed never really made sense, but most of that story made no sense anyway.

Later, when I started developing the Wayward Queen around 2005-2006, the Singlebeeste happened to fit nicely into the plot, so I added it in. And redesigned it completely. Here's some of the development doodles for the current Singlebeeste... It seems to have changed from a winged-camel-thing to some sort of horned-dog-bear with ear wings... I'm not sure which version is more goofy and implausible, but this one's cuter.

And somewhere along the line I toyed with the idea of having Vitalia ride around on the thing again... Unfortunately this doesn't seem to fit the current plot. But I reserve the right to make it happen sometime, somewhere! Because, this scenario is too cute:

Character Development Special: Slope and Mrs. Bailiwick-Stout

Time for another Character Development Special! This is Slope, the Royal Publicity Manager, and Mrs. Cornelia Bailiwick-Stout, head of the QPC (Queen Preservation Committee.) Both of them made their first official appearance on page ten of The Wayward Queen. The QPC is ostensibly dedicated to preserving the Queen’s safety, but their real agenda is to prevent the Queen from wandering, concerned that she endangers herself and the stability of the realm by continually straying from the palace. Their efforts have so far had no effect whatever. Slope is in agreement with the Queen that government ought to be entertaining. Between them they probably present a considerable hazard to the good management of the realm.

Slope goes back pretty far, to the very first story featuring the Queen... The first two doodles are from waaaay back (the mini color cut-out Slope was part of a set I made to track the cast of the old story.) The weird hat and rotund figure made an appearance early on. The other doodles were ideas I was knocking around while developing the plot for The Wayward Queen. In the end, Slope ended up being based pretty heavily on a guy who used to run a local business in my 'hood - the dude had a way of looking totally mellow and unfazed no matter what chaos was going on round him. I thought that was perfect for Slope. The last sketch in this bunch was the first official version of Slope, which I used when I started drawing the comic. I've changed his outfit since then, but for Chapter One he's wearing the old outfit, obviously. (I don't think he'll have an opportunity to change before Chapter Two.)

Mrs. Cornelia Bailiwick-Stout was one of those rare cases where I pretty much drew one doodle and said "yeah, that's it." (Granted, this was back in 2006 when I had a more slap-happy approach to development - nowadays I would probably do a few more doodles just to be sure.) So here's doodle #1 and the first official version based on that. She hasn't changed much.