In Medias Res
Part IV
What if one guy was two superheroes? ALTER EGO is the story of the smiling champion WHIZ-BANG, the prowling vigilante THE BLACK DOG, and the man behind both of their masks. This weekly newsletter is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Alter Ego, by Nate Cosby, Jacob Edgar, Kike J. Diaz & Rus Wooton.
BIG NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alter Ego’s gonna be on Kickstarter! And you can sign up NOW for notifications: RIGHT HERE!
We’re not launching for a while, because we want to be pretty much wrapped up, so there’s very little lag time between you buying and receiving the book. But MAN, Jacob’s pages, plus the plans we’re putting together for the campaign, plus the surprise super-mega-ultra-star artists and writers that’re gonna be involved, is all pretty freaking cool. (Frankly, I’m a little baffled why said super-mega-ultra-star creators are wasting their time on us, but who’m I to judge.)
Speaking of Jacob’s pages, here’s a fresh new double-page spread from Chapter 2. Fans of The Rocketeer are gonna swoon at this part of the story…
On to this week’s entry…how Jacob and I developed The Black Dog…
PART IV: The Making Of A Man…The Black Dog
I love Batman. Because Batman is ridiculous.
Batman is a grown human man with a belt full of toys, and has pointy bat ears on the top of his head. This man is rich. This man is sad. This man wears underwear on the outside of his pants. This man has made peace with risking his life, and the lives of a few children, and goes swinging around town, kicking the crap out of criminals in the dark. It’s bewilderingly and charmingly childish, full-on-baby-wish-fulfillment stuff, and I figure that’s why I love Batman so much…because I was introduced to him as a baby, and if you’re a baby, and you are faced with any kind of obstacle, dressing up like a tiny cave animal and beating people up makes perfect sense. Also: Cool car.
So I love Batman. But when we started creating our “nighttime” character, the contrast to Whiz-Bang’s cheery daytime hero, I realized that big parts of Batman didn’t really fit what Jacob and I were gonna do. It was mostly the backstory…we had no need for a brooding origin, no thirst for vengeance required. Something else was needed…something meaner, more performative, more animalistic…more like a beast, or a ghost…
NATE COSBY: Here’s my idea for the night guy: The Black Dog
The reason: It’s a demonic entity in British folklore:
A ghost, with glowing eyes. If you see him, you’re SCREWED.
And, it just occurred to me that it’d be cool if he spoke in a British accent as the dark guy. A deep cockney thing, guttural and mean, to throw people off the scent of him being Whiz-Bang.
JACOB EDGAR: The Black Dog is great. What's behind the accent? Is he a posh Brit in the day time? Or has a history in England? Obviously we won't actually hear him, but I feel like most Americans are really bad at cockney accents. They just sound like Dick Van Dyke as a chimney sweep.
NC: The accent would be part of the “performance” when he’s Dog. Compared to Whiz-Bang, he won’t talk much. But when he does, he’ll basically growl words like Jason Statham, and he’ll use British terms and slang, so the reader can “hear” the difference.
JE: Ah okay, I'll buy it.
NC: Starting inspiration for me visually is Wildcat. Wanna lean into the animal shape with his headgear, further than just a cowl with ears or whatever.
There’s also the way that Scott McDaniel drew Nightwing. Dude was the most yoked acrobat ever. We want our guy heavy. Lumbering. But can flip around if required.
And let’s make him always seem mean and judgmental, like The Confessor from Astro City.
JE: Here's a really rough first pass at Black Dog to get it out of my system. The mask will probably take the most figuring out.
NC: REALLY, REALLY strong start. This feels right. LOVE the cape and cowl, feels unique. and imposing. And the body language is great…can’t remember if I mentioned specifically, but I could see him padding this costume, to make him seem thicker and more lumbering than he actually is (which makes his nimble movements seem all the more amazing).
-Can we try an all-black version? Gloves, boots, hip straps, chest straps, all blacked out? Leave the cowl as-is.
-I do like the two-toned cape, but my initial thought is to avoid any similar colors between W-B and BD. So maybe not red, or maybe a darker red.
JE: Couple quick passes on the color. Thought about adding more of the maroon to the mask, how that wood look if bad guys saw just the eyes and mask detail in the shadows. That's what the abstract blob off to the side of one of these is.
NC: Red cape, definitely.
This doesn’t change the design at all, but I think it’ll be cool for him to have smoke bombs in a satchel on his back…which is why he’s got the straps across the front.
I wanna try two tiny things, that I think would make it a little simpler and dynamic...
-Remove the red stripe above the nose.
-Change the jowls to dark, dark gray. Just light enough that you can tell there’s a difference between the jowls and the rest of his head.
JE: Here's a more refined pass. I tried out a couple new things. New version of the mask being the biggest change. I feel like it's more intimidating.
I really like how different the two look next to each other. They don't look like guys who would team up. Black Dog looks like Whiz-Bang's villain, more than anything.
NC: I prefer the previous version of everything. This new guy feels way too polished, too pretty. The only thing I wanted to change about the previous version was just to remove the red stripe above his nose, and make his jowls dark gray.
The best part of the previous design was the amazing cape and cowl combination. That headgear design is SO cool. I also want to maintain the boots, and the dark chest straps. And crucially, I want to maintain the “weight” of that design. You had him looking lumbering, bent over, which made him feel like a beast. The heavy headgear helped sell this idea too. That’s what we need to be going for…he’s playing a part as Black Dog, that of an eerily quiet animal prowling the night.
Also, this is subtle, but I’d also want to maintain the level of lighter gray you’ve got highlighting his body. Making him feel almost like he’s a super-dark gray, rather than black-on-black.
JE: Haha, will go back to the other mask. Agree on bringing the boots and darker straps back.
Here's doggie. I did a version with a new logo that looks more like his mask as well as one with the original logo.
NC: LOVE. It’s an absolutely fantastic design.
I think I lean towards the pointy ears logo, if only because it’d be a tiny bit odd for his head to look just like his logo, y’know?
And to play up the theatricality of his persona, let’s make his mouth and chin ghostly, so when he’s scaring people in the dark, all you can see are his eyes and chin.
And that’s that! Dog didn’t take nearly as long as Whiz-Bang, thankfully. Next week, we’ll get into the setting, character motivations, some nitty-gritty stuff. And, hopefully, a guest superstar conversation!
That’s all we got for now, aside from the important news that the gf and I got our Christmas tree last week, even though we have zero ornaments. So far, we’ve agreed on one:
Because who the hell doesn’t love Stitch?
See ya next week! Making comics is cool!
—Nate