Demon revealed.

I’ve been looking forward to this moment for quite some time for whilst dpk431 may have a lighthearted core (at least for the present), Demon is intended to be scary. Really scary (above and lovingly chummed from ReyGIF).

Think Balrog from The Lord of the Ring. Tim Curry from Legend. Satan from Doctor Who. Or Pauly Shore in just about anything.

The goal is for readers to really sit up and take notice. This is not your father’s webcomic. Nor Ringo Starr’s for that matter (didn’t I tell you the ’80s were awesome?)

So if any of you artists perusing this are intrigued, come on down and dazzle me. By which I mean, send your interpretation of this page or of Demon to me at jen@possiblegirl.com, and maybe we can spiff up the joint.

Page Eight Notes:

• “DEMON pokes his head through the doorway.” Yeah, I guess I’m not the first person to invoke The Shining.
• “Hello, Calgary. Am I early?” I wanted to try something a little different here. Demons from Hell who ignore the traditional Sturm and Drang and speak like a local. More on that later.
• “I think I’m going to need a bigger ‘buss.” Apologies to Sheriff Brody and the Taco Bell Chihuahua.

SFX (the script acronym for sound effect) represents one of my favorite concepts: onomatopoeia — a word that phonetically imitates the sound that it represents. Pretty cool, right?

But there is one particular facet that I find especially fascinating. Onomatopes are not the same across all languages, so whilst the English onomatopoeia for knocking is knock knock, in Batak it’s tok-tok-tok, in Mandarin dang dang dang, in Danish bank bank, in Hindi thakk thakk, in Polish puk-puk, in Swedish knack knack, and in Dutch klop klop.

Even more fascinating, at least to me, is that Marvel Comics has trademarked two onomatopoeias: SNIKT! and TWHIP! (left and lovingly burgled from Timothy Lim’s DeviantArt page, NinjaInk.)

Looks like someone around here needs to trademark DOOZH!

I wonder how they say DOOZH! in Mandarin?

Page Seven Notes:

• “Let’s talk about our big but.” A variation on, perhaps, my favorite line of dialogue in cinema. Well, that and, “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli,” but you probably already knew that.
• Speaking of dang, dang, dangin‘, whilst that form of greeting has been made popular by physicists, judges and frustrated writers, no one has perfected it until this feline. Heeere’s kitty!

Four panels. Crazy, right?

I’ll be honest. This was the plan all along.

Launch with a series of full-page panels to lull the unsuspecting audience into a false sense of security, then BAM! Panel City (not dissimilar to Spatula City). Panels. Tons of glorious panels.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Oh, and “panels three” be a tip of the hat to Warriors Three (left and lovingly pilfered from Collider) and, of course, Monty Python’s classic questions three.

Page Six Notes:

• Vertical vs. Horizontal. It took me forever to intuitively know the difference. Then it occurred to me. Horizon. Horizontal. Duh. My confusion stemmed probably from the vertical hold knob controlling the horizontal lines on TV sets back in the day. Or so I’ve heard.
• Excitement abounds. Indeed.
• “LCD CLOCK displaying the time as 4:31 A.M.” A not so subtle homage to Chris Carter and The X-Files.
• “A single BEAD OF SWEAT.” Not a torrent of sweat. Not anime sweat. More like nervous sweat.
• “Not good.” As far as I can tell, this line of dialogue is all mine. As in, never uttered before in the history of narrative structure. Oh, wait…

This is when the magic happens.

Two, TWO panels, ah ah ah!

It may not seem like much, but we have gone through 12 pages of single panels. That’s three months in webcomic years. OVER A CENTURY AND A HALF in ant years. Seriously. I did the math.

“Coincidence? I think NOT!”

And for the record, this is panel template #2: two 855×265 panels.

Gotta Catch’em All! (Above and lovingly snaffled from Imgur.)

Page Five Notes:

• WORN LEATHER-BOUND NOTEBOOK. Think Dr. Henry Jones’s notebook (Hitler signature optional). Or better yet, the notebook you wish you’d created whilst on vacation.
• “…tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth…” That would be Calvin doing his math(s) homework.
• As you have likely surmised, I spent quite some time selling (and buying) on eBay. Rating of 472 with no negative feedback (#humblebrag). And, yes, there is an artifacts4u on eBay. <sigh>

Calgary Smith.

Finally.

Think of him visually as Sean Connery when he played Allan Quartermain (left, and lovingly nicked from BBC America) in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (or as Peter Clemenza would say, “Leave the movie, take the image.”).

Now mix in a dash of an elderly Indiana Jones…

…and a pinch of old man John Constantine.

Then throw in an eye patch, a really badass one, like Charlton Heston had in True Lies.

And a cigarette.

A cool one hanging out of his mouth from when they used to be wonderful and didn’t cause so much cancer.

But definitely NOT when cartoon cats smoked and drank coffee. THAT would be too much.

Page Four Notes:

• “Classic heroic reveal” will, sadly, lack true movement in our instance, but if it didn’t, it would look something like this (scary), this (scarier), or even this (scariest).
• In the cool EYE PATCH department, I would also nominate Angelina Jolie from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Swoosie Kurtz from Pushing Daisies. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of great characters with eye patches, but for now, we are focusing solely on the eye patch itself. So apologies to Snake, Elle and Nick.
• By now, you will have witnessed a host of brilliant beard options for Calgary. So let me provide a few tips of what not to do: On. Those. Trays, or rather uno, dos, tres.
• That said, if you want to see the perfect stubbly beard, one only needs to sneak a glance (or three) at Mads Mikkelsen. Første. Sekund. Tredje (jeg dåne!).
• THE HOLY BLUNDERBUSS OF ANTIOCH. This is inspired by two things. “Farmer Giles of Ham” by J.R.R. Tolkien, my first encounter with a blunderbuss, and, of course, the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
• Oh, and finally… packing peanuts!

One of the most interesting challenges of writing dpk431 has been translating more traditional webcomic scripts into something that can be enjoyed on its own weekly textual basis.

In a sense, in a grandiose sense (left, and lovingly purr-loined from Human Stone), I get to create a new art form.

So instead of explaining in copious detail what the LONE FIGURE looks like in the very first panel, I get to experiment with slowly providing more information as we move ever closer, maintaining the air of mystery that a reader would get with a more traditional finished product, whilst still doing so in scripted format.

Groundbreaking? I don’t know, but I do know I’m not the first person to tilt at a windmill or three.

Page Three Notes:

• DOCTOR STRANGE’S CLOAK, EYE OF AGAMOTTO: When it comes to Doctor Strange, I gotta go all the way back to 1963 and the legendary Steve Ditko. And whilst the good Doctor rarely graced the covers of his original Strange Tales run, the very clever Howard Hallis skillfully imagines for us if he did. And if that doesn’t work for you, try using this guy as your reference. But never, EVER use the guy on the left. That way be dragons. As for the guy on the right, I have no idea who he is.
• SANDMAN’S HELM, RUBY AND POUCH OF SAND. Standard references apply. And cake. And whilst sometimes, the cake is a lie, other times the cake is not a lie. Or death.
• THE HAMMER OF THOR: Doesn’t get much better than this, this or this. Okay, it does get better, especially when Thor FIXES YOUR DAMN CAR FOR $45 #imnotcryingyourecrying — who says the ’80s wasn’t an awesome and surprisingly affordable decade.
• One would my expect my reference to the FIELD GUIDE TO DEMONS was a gag (I certainly did when I first wrote it), but apparently not. Nor it seems is the IDIOTS GUIDE TO MAGICK. Truth > Fiction.
• THE GODFATHER POSTER. By now, you probably know I like to go with the originals, like this classic beauty. And for record, here is Mario Puzo’s not-so-beautiful John Hancock. But, apparently, that can’t compare to the most reviled $20 autograph of all time.

The Spear of Longinus. The Holy Lance. The Spear of Destiny (left and lovingly acquired from Trip Advisor of all places).

As in, The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft. As in the inspiration for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Trevor Ravenscroft = Abner Ravenwood.

Mind = blown.

Page Two Notes:

• TRENCH COAT. Where to begin? How about John Constantine. Expand to The Trenchcoat Brigade and the Trenchcoat Detective Agency. And finish up with a bumbling inspector, Priyanka Chopra in a slightly over long trench coat, and a mysterious super model rocking Louboutins.
• THE SKULL OF THE LOCH NESS MONSTER. I’m not sure one could find a better reference for Nessie, but being a lifelong fan of the cryptid, I’d like to see the skull and neck bones posed like that of the ‘Surgeon’s Photo‘ from 1934.
• A STUFFED BIGFOOT in classic pose. Everyone, including Rihanna, should be familiar with the classic Bigfoot pose. And now, like the Zapruder film, an animated GIF has stabilized the famous Patterson-Gimlin footage.
• This collection of books is meant to be a little bit more modern than the previous stack. THE BLACK ARTS by Richard Cavendish (1967), A WITCHES BIBLE COMPLEAT (1981), A TREASURY OF WITCHCRAFT by Harry Wedeck (1961), THE TAROT OF THE BOHEMIANS by Papus (1892), and, of course, MYSTIC PLACES by Time-Life Books (1990).
• That said, let’s talk the THE ROMANCE OF SORCERY by Sax Rohmer (1914). Sax Rohmer is best known as the author of the Fu Manchu books. But he was also a practicing occultist, a member of the Golden Dawn, and the author of a single work of non-fiction, this book. Pretty cool, right? But not as cool as what might be the greatest movie trailer ever. Okay, second only to Italian Spider-Man.
• Photograph of A MAFIA DON petting a cat. Do I really need to provide more detail than this? Fine. If you insist, one more. A presto!

For those of you mystified by the cryptic stenciling reference, I congratulate you on having a life.

As for the rest of us, we’ve committed this ridiculous detail to memory (above and lovingly repossessed from the Twitter feed of a George Lucas fan from Japan. See how far and wide I search just for your visual pleasure?)

Now if you want to witness something else truly ridiculous, be amazed by Ralph McQuarrie’s breathtaking contribution to unsaid movie.

Page One Notes:

• I think it’s time we talk about the “camera” I’ve been referencing in script. If this were an animated film, the camera would have dissolved through the window from the prologue into the start of this issue. Orson Welles did a similar dissolve in Citizen Kane, and I think that sequence bears viewing as it very much gets across the movement I am trying to simulate in the first two issues. As I’ve said before, I no idea if this will work, but I intend to find out — or go down trying.
• THE CRYSTAL SKULL. All I have to say about THAT is THIS.
• THE HOLY GRAIL. Let’s face it, Monty Python did a much cooler grail than George Lucas. Too bad that grail wasn’t included in these LEGO playsets.
• NECRONOMICON. It’s all about Evil Dead, people. Courtesy of Tom Sullivan’s Museum which I actually got to experience in person quite a few years back.
• MALLEUS MALEFICARUM. Check out this sweet 16th century binding courtesy of the University of Glasgow.
• Montague Summers was a fascinating character in his own right. A self-proclaimed Catholic priest who relished his reputation as learned Catholic witch hunter, he also produced the first English translation of the aforementioned Malleus Maleficarum (1487) and The Discovery of Witches (1647).
• President Kennedy was actually more of a pointer (here, here and here) than a thumbs up kind of a guy, but I think the universal thumbs up gesture better gets across the immediacy of what I’m looking for. Surprisingly, there are not a lot of animated GIFs of the 35th U.S. President. Unless, of course, you want to watch the deeply upsetting final seconds of his life over and over again (don’t say I didn’t warn you).

Eventually, I’d like to turn the cover for dpk431 #001 into more of a parody of the Raiders of the Lost Ark teaser poster (above and lovingly raided from Warped Factor). One step beyond, so to speak.

If you look closely at the poster, you’ll notice a lil’ Indy dude sliding down a rope. Now imagine lil’ Dark Punishing Knight doing the same on the above cover. Or perhaps more accurately, swinging helplessly towards the oblivion of exit stage left.

Cover Notes:

• To be completely accurate, the title is actually a variation of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but let’s face it, Raiders is way too iconic a poster to pass up. Unless, of course, you go with the Polish variation.
• Shout out to the Adventure font (whilst under the influence of Photoshop) for the logo homage. And, yes, we have reached the outer limits of my Photoshop ninja skillz. Yeah, I said it. Ninja skillz.
• Speaking of ninja skillz, check out Jim Steranko’s original pre-production sketches for Raiders. And boom goes the dynamite.