Pistols at dusk

Another sneak peek into the eventful life of Jack Ember - or possibly I mean John Spark. Keep collecting these and eventually you'll have the whole of the Winter book. Incidentally, notice the Doc Strange influence?

Jack the lad

A couple of early drawings of Jack. The original design from the dummy issue of the DFC in 2006 had him in pre-WW1 army uniform and he ended up looking quite young and podgy. When we knew we had a green light (yeah yeah...) Leo and Martin worked together to come up with the more heroic look you see here.

The key thing was to give him a dashing hussars-type uniform - just the ticket for a young hero. His regiment btw is the same one that Coleridge briefly enlisted in: the 15th (Elliott's) Royal Dragoons.

I like the strikingly heroic poster image that Leo drew of him, although I don't think it will end up being an actual scene from the story because the giant lion is a touch too Narnia. But we do plan to have him astride a flying something before too long. Wait and see.

Tip of the iceberg

It's 1% inspiration against 99% perspiration, as Edison famously said. Putting up some of those Fangleworths images reminded me how much work we did to develop the Mirabilis story and characters.

Early versions experimented with a more modern style of army uniform:
which we decided just wasn't working. Possibly it would have been more historically accurate (the story starts in 1901) but I always go by Emerson's advice that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." The flamboyant hussar's uniform that Leo eventually chose is much more in keeping with Jack's dashing (over-) romanticism.

As you can see, in that very early version Jack looked about twelve years old. As we worked on character development, both he and Estelle became more attractive. And we opted to give Estelle more of a look that modern readers would find relatable. She cuts her own hair (with garden shears, as a matter of fact) and that was part of the character description from day one, so we were able to avoid any Princess Leia grannified weirdness.

All this work takes time, and even though it may seem blindingly obvious that the finished version is miles better, it isn't always obvious when you're groping your way through the maze of creative choices. More on this here.