Chapter 23 IS LIVE!!!

Happy New Years everyone, hope everyone is as happy as me to be free from the horrible year of 2020. It’s a brand new year, time for new beginnings and new goals and (hopefully) new ways of life. As I said earlier, this New Years Day is the big debut. Chapter 23 is now live at this very moment and thus begins the Feudal Japan story arch, which I promise will be quite the impactful story as it will be introducing a number of characters and plot lines that will be playing an overall major part in the overall Kalwa story. We currently got the first two pages up on the website right now. You can tune in by click one of the thumbnails below, the first one will take you to the front cover, or if you just want to dive straight in, the second will take you right to the first page. And remember to keep checking back for more updates all this month.

Chapter 23 update!

I got the script back from my co-writer on Christmas Day and we are officially set to start up chapter 23. I think I posted the cover a few months ago, but here’s a wip of the first page, minus the dialogue. I’m pleased to announce that chapter 23 will officially debut on New Year’s Day this year, with a two page debut. This first page has actually already been completed and the next page is already being started.

Without going into too many spoilers, this next chapter will start a new story arch set in Feudal Japan, with Kalwa and Zack both learning to get back on ones feet, namely on Kalwa’s end. Well be introducing some new characters who will actually be having quite the impact on the overall story, show off some fighting styles and hopefully give some readers a bit of insight on what life was like in the feudal days of Japan. We’re also going to be tying off a little plot thread that’s been wondering around for quite some time which is what you’re starting to see here. So join us on New Year’s Day as we proudly debut the next story arch in this saga!

Illustration of the Day!

This was the first of the Kalwa Anime crossover, featuring Kalwa in the Dr. Stone world. The idea just came to me while I was drawing Kohaku from the show (seen on the green raptor site) about how Kalwa would look if she ever crossed over her and thus began this crossover series that I’m currently working to finish. Also it was real fun drawing Kalwa in cave woman garbs.

Stone World Kalwa

Page of the Day!

A call back to chapter 4. This was really the first time staging a real action scene and need for coordinated movement. Rachel’s whip in particular was a unique experiment to play with drawing it in various positions and trying to draw in ways that could feel natural. I seriously don’t have that many comics where people use whips (or at least I didn’t back then) so a good portion of the portions came from either videos about whips or imagination.

Page of the Day!

This emotional page from chapter 14. I’ve really credited this page as being a major turn around for the story as this is the first page in the series where we see Kalwa emotionally break down in tears. The second to last panel was the major vocal point which was a vitally important part of the page. I think when drawing it there were about three versions of this particular pattern before settling on the finished one.

Kalwa and Zack as kids

A quick little sketch I drew a little while ago when the original sketch fo the two got pretty popular after I reposted it. I’m actually thinking of going back to doing the Kid Kalwa mini comics again, a few ideas are starting to come to mind.

Rachel Face Chart

This was a character chart of made of Rachel quite some time ago. Even though I like her design, she’s possibly the most difficult to draw of the Desert Vixens. It’s mainly due to her hair, I find it really difficult to draw her hair consistently over the course of several panels. Usually when I draw characters in the sketchbook I tend to draw them once or twice just to have a note of their hair and I can form other angles while working on the comic. However every so often I wind up doing a character that I do need reference for, hence the heavy footnotes in the chart.

Chapter Look Back Chapter 19

So we come now to the final chapter of the whitechappel arch, and this chapter is split into two sections: explaining away the mystery, and horrible terrifying chase.

So the last chapter revealed that there was actually two Jack the Rippers, however this chapter indicates there may have been many more and that in reality there is no LEGITIMATE Jack the Ripper, but rather it is merely a name floating around the paper. As I was winding this story down in writing, I felt this was ultimately what it would lead to, and give a reason as to why this case has never actually been solved. Indeed according to history, the infamous letter that was found at the crime scene was proven to not have been written by the killer himself, but rather an anonymous reporter who really just wanted to draw attention to the crimes. In fact it is highly possible that Whitechapel murders were really no different than any other crime, they were just overly exposed by the media. This particular fact was played for both the story and the reader.

Indeed in the modern world, media tends to always hype everything. Possibly things in the real world are only made worse by media coverage, which only can help fuel the fire. While I am not trying to say that all media is bad or fake, I am saying that it’s coverage can heighten certain things to the worst, in this case the Whitechapel murders. As explained in this chapter by Victor, his murder of Martha Tabram drew great attention and led to imitators and more murders throughout the town. In addition this arch has stated that there was also growing mistrust amongst the police. With so much going on around town and the fact that there wasn’t one particular individual committing all the murders, it would come as no surprise that this case was never solved.

As much as we tried to follow history with this arch, one small fictional fact was created in this story, the fact that Martha Tabram was jewish. This fact has never been stated in real life (course much of Tabram’s life is unknown), it was our one forged fact in order to draw racist individuals into the pool of chaos. It should also be noted that even though we explained who killed Martha Tabram and Mary Kelly, we never explained who specifically killed the other canonical victims, whether it was Victor, Mathis or someone else. As noted there were many imitators who took after Victor’s crimes, it could’ve been anyone who may have been able to properly copy his work.

Getting off the historical side of things, it’s worth talking about Victor himself and the events he set in motion. Victor was in a way based off my own feelings as an artist, with a dark twist. His character was actually based more on an article I read some time ago describing and amateur artist and a real artist. The article noted that real artists will stick to their craft and keep working, while an amateur artist constantly seeks attention and tries different things. Many of these qualities were actually transferred to Victor as a character. While Victor has the passion and the drive to be an artist, he never really works hard at it. He keeps changing his craft and never really hones it to the point of perfection, rather he is constantly concerned with making a living and getting attention. He finally started to get the attention he always wanted with his murders and that’s ultimately what led him down the path he was on. In many ways, Victor is a mentally ill individual who craves attention more than he does making something beautiful. More will be said on Victor when he comes to the Creating Kalwa journals and his future appearances in the story.

Finally worth noting was the impact of this chapter. As seen is later chapters, Kalwa is constantly haunted by her deadly encounter with Victor. With this chapter, it was meant to mark the end of an era, in which Kalwa meets an opponent that she CAN’T defeat. Kalwa has now experienced real danger of owning a time traveling phone and it’s left her in a terrible state. So this would be the set up to the long running arch that would shape the remainder of the Kalwa story. But more on that later, thanks for sticking by our chapter look backs on the Whitechapel arch, and we will be doing more chapter look backs in the future.

CLICK ON ANY OF THE THUMBS TO READ THE CHAPTER!