Shadowgirls

With the last site we had we realized that there's a few questions about the comic that we, as creators assume that people pretty much already know. Occasionally some questions get asked that kinda hit us out of the blue that maybe we didn't get across well enough in the comic or perhaps they're questions that was simply false assumptions. It could be anything. And especially now that the old page entires aren't around anymore, and we have a few new readers, there might be some questions that might be needing answered. So I figured I'd start an "Ask the Creators" thread for any questions people might have. Think of this like an ongoing FAQ thread. So if you got a question, ask away.

Now we're not going to spoil upcoming storylines, so be smart with what you ask. If we don't answer something, or we give a simple generic answer… Then it's just simply either we don't want to tip our hand for what we got planned, or we're still working out the details.

So if you got questions about the comic, or the universe in general, ask away and if we can, we'll answer you.

I'm a jackass?

Post edited 2:00 am – February 26, 2010 by Dave Reynolds

Short funny version: I was watching Gilmore Girls one night while crying and eating a bucket of chicken and I thought "You know what would make this show great? Fish monsters."

Long boring version: I had a blog post that told the whole story, but that's kinda missing at the moment. Shadowgirls' initial concepts started with me back almost a decade now. The comic originally didn't have a lot of the original concepts that people's come to like in the comic now, such as Becka, Chrissy, Jack, the Deep Ones, ect. It went through three incarnations before we go the version we know and love today. (At least I hope you love it. Or on a good 'friends with benefits' relationship with it.) 

The current version came about as an evolution of an older idea that I decided to go ahead with. The older versions had Charon as a younger (early 20's) college teacher involved with various incidents that sometimes bordered on the disturbing and creepy. It got to the point that I just simply wasn't nihilistic enough to draw an ongoing series that dark. I actually almost completely shelved the idea totally at one point. I had gotten burnt out, because I have been trying to make the concept work for me for almost five years and I couldn't get anywhere with it. It's like I knew something was there, but I just needed the help sorting the pieces out, and I just couldn't do it. And my friends and creatives peers were not the most supportive.

After watching 'Something Wicked this Way Comes'. The relationship between Charles and William Halloway just struck a chord with me. Especially the part about Charles and Jim Nightshade considering to ride Mr. Dark’s carousel to cheat aging. And I started to think about it all… A lot of the fear of aging is impatience and the regrets of paths not chosen and a desire to relive the experience again. But that’s price of adulthood and aging: We get one shot so we better make it a good one. This lead me to thinking about teenage pregnancy and the changes in responsibility that women must go through when they have a child at that young of an age, whether they’re ready for it or not.

And then I thought about the idea of a main character, pregnant at a young age. Memory loss with no idea who the father was. Small coastal New England town… Fish monsters. (Somehow, fish monsters just made sense to it all.)

Becka started to take shape. I based a lot of her looks and mannerisms on my then teenage friend Jessica. (She's grown a bit since, since I used her photo for inspiration for the Charon Wallpaper here.) However, I won’t lie. I got a lot of crap over this new direction. Almost every single friend and peer gave me grief over this new mother/daughter dynamic. One in particular actually said "Dave, this was the worst idea you have ever come up with. Your last idea was better than this." (I'm glad I ignored them all.)

Summer 2005, (Year of the Unicron.) I approached D.Rod at Wizardworld Chicago and he had given me a copy of his Starkweather miniseries. I read his script to issue one when I was coloring it a few years back. He had a wonderful sense of direction and dialogue that appealed to me. I asked him if this would be a project he’d be interest on. He told me to send him what I had and he’d look it over. I sent him a eleven page series pitch. (The average page length for these things are usually THREE.) Obviously he liked what he saw, otherwise you wouldn’t be here right now.

He took the premise I gave him, totally deconstructed it, and rebuilt it, stronger and more cohesive than it had ever been before. The Charon/Jack/Christmas Triangle. The Lindsey betrayal and redemption. The Deep One Offsprings. Mother Hydra being Mistletoe. Fides and the Insiders. A whole crapload of what we all identify as SHADOWGIRLS was created by D.Rod.

So that's roughly the story. Someday, I'll retype up the original blog entries and post them somewhere for everyone, if they're curious. In the meantime, here's some of the original concept art for the series from the "pre-production" days of issue #1.

That's directly pulled from the link. It's what was in the original showing.

We got no plans right of the bat. We want to. We like him. We just got no set plans right away.