The Daughter of the Sun

In the third interlude that just came out yesterday (I try to do one a year), I recount "The Daughter of the Sun" fairy tale.

The fairy tale originates in Italy, and like most it was an oral story that was passed down for who knows how long.  It was originally written down by Domenico Comparetti in the 1870's.  Then in the 1950's Italo Calvino wrote a book on Italian fairy tales and folk tales and he added a few elements to the story. 

The basic of the fairy tale is that a royal family had a daughter whom mystics said would bear a child of the sun's by her twentieth birthday, so they locked her in a tower where she wouldn't see the light of day.

As fate would have it, she does end up having a daughter of her own by the sun, but the baby is abandoned in a field before her parents find out about it.  The baby is found and raised by another royal family and she falls in love with her adopted brother, the prince.  

As her origins were questionable, the Prince's family wouldn't let them get married and instead was set up in her own cottage, where she exhibited all sorts of unusual powers and abilities and the story goes on from there.

Much of my adaptation is from Comparetti's original version, although I left out a chunk of the story that I didn't feel I needed for my telling.  In the original version the prince went through several engagements, in my version he went through only one.  Calvino introduced the concept that she could become immaterial and walk through solid objects and I kept that element as a homage to him.

I added my own element to the myth as well, as in both prior versions there is no mention of her ever meeting her birth mother, but I added that one in.  In the original version, when the prince became ill, she revealed her true origins to the court, but there was no explanation as to how she could have known them as she was abandoned as a baby, so I made a different explanation for the ending; plus of course tying it in with my universe.  

I had read the story a few years ago and I knew I wanted to incorporate it into my universe for a while, and now seemed like a good time to fit it in!

Here's a link:  Interlude 3

Issue 32

 Issue 32 is out...here is one panel from the book!

This issue is a shorter issue, in this we deal a little bit with the friendship between Titan and Magno and see how their friendship is slowly unwinding, which causes Magno to make some changes in his life.

We also see how the relationship between Titan and Crossbow is slowly growing. 

The main story though revolves around Cat and his confrontation with Ebon Wolf, a member of the IPG with a hatred for Cat's entire race.

Their fight is interrupted by the arrival of Cormorant, a new character who I've been teasing about for over a year.  Originally I introduced the character on Instagram back on July 11, 2019 and the plan was to introduce him in the comics in summer of 2021, but then the stories I originally planned changed a bit and his actual debut got pushed back to issue 24 (the January of 21 issue), but that was just an introduction and now I am actually starting to use him in the books.  It was a longer journey for him to get there than I thought it would have been, but I think the wait will be worth it.

Issue 31

 Issue 31 is out now.  This issue is the first one that I'm also publishing on Instagram, I'm hoping that some people will read it as that is where most of the followers are.

While I enjoy doing this comic, it gets a little frustrating at times as no one is really reading it.  I can see the number of views on the photo hosting site and on YouTube and hardly anyone is reading the book.  I don't know if I'm doing well or not with the story as I rarely get feedback, so while I think the story is good (and yes, I know the artwork needs improving), I don't know what anyone else would even think of it, even if someone didn't like it - and told me why, at least then I'd have an idea.  

I'm not complaining, just making an observation.....

In this issue the mysterious Water Wonder reveals his presence to the team, Phantom heads out to find out where his son is and Titan lets the others know that they are back.  

Flag

 One of the things I thought about a while, but totally forgot was that I wanted to create a flag for my characters, which will debut in the comic soon, although I did a sneak peek of it on Instagram last week.  Here's what I came up with:

Portraits

One of the things that I've been thinking about doing for quite a while are more realistic portraits of the characters to give a better understanding of how they look in my mind, as opposed to how they look on paper.  

I had a few ideas for that and then I found the Artbreeder website, a fun and unique tool to check out.  I dabbled on there one night and came up with this portrait of Cord:

Nope, not a real person - this is a life-like face that I created using the Artbreeder website.  While I thought it was really cool and I was happy how it turned out, I decided that I wanted to do this in my own way, so I took the image above and drew it in my style and this is what I came up with:

I was also very happy with this and am now working on some more, the next one up will be Master Mind, but I'm not done with hers het. 

Issue 30

What I can say about issue 30?  It's probably the shortest issue that I did.  When I did this issue the laptop that I had been using stopped working and I had just gotten a new one and finally went out and bought a drawing tablet, which I'm still struggling with!  The end result was an issue with less than 30 panels - if you can call it an issue just to wrap up the Time-Hopping storyline and introduce a character called The All, who will play a role later on in the series.

Here's the original character sketch for The All:

Issue 30 - Here's a link to the issue if you want to read it - trust me, it won't take long!

Issue # 29

Issue 29 brings an end to the Earth-Hopping adventures of Titan and Phantom.  In this issue they get to Alternate Earth 14, a world where the Roman Empire (in the classical sense) never fell and where organized religion was outlawed.

This led to the creation of the Godboy, a sum of all religious energy and dogma for the religions that never formed on that Earth.  The island of the Godboy has an emotional effect on the heroes and they decide to return to their own Earth where Phantom discovers something about himself that he decides to keep secret - but for how long?  You can read it here if you'd like: Issue 29

When I was creating the draft for the Earth-Hopping storyline I had several ideas that I wanted to touch on, and originally the Roman Empire and Godboy elements were going to be on two separate Earths, but I decided to combine them partially to save space and also because I thought I worked well together.  

My original intent was for these stories to be back up stories in the regular issues, but then I realized that it would be going on too long for Titan and Phantom to be away from the team; while they were only gone a week it would have taken about ten months of real time to cover that!  Which is why I decided to move it a long a bit. 

The other part that the story has touched on is Phantom being bisexual and how that plays a role in his life.  When I originally created the character, that was not an element that I had built in, but when I was getting ready to launch the comic almost 30 issues ago, I wanted to make sure that my universe was diverse in several aspects and decided right before issue 1 came out to make him bi, and this is something that comes to light during this storyline and will play a role in the future. 

It also deals with Titan being straight and for the first time he hints that he has feelings for Crossbow in a subtle way, which will also be explored in the future. 

On a creative note, this issue marked a turning point for me.  Originally this was supposed to be the back up story in issue # 28 (which was running long), but I started to run out of time and to have computer problems (as mentioned in a previous blog) so I decided to make this a stand alone issue.  This is also the last issue that I created on my old computer and the last that was penciled and inked on paper before my old computer stopped functioning.  

Enjoy the issue, and perhaps one of the most bizarre final panels in comic book history!