Nicholas Blade appears in The Sentinels #5

The Silver haired assassin is going to make his debut appearance in the Sentinels #5 as well as a view of what's to come. A sneak peek at what's upcoming? Let's just say Rufio has been captured! Wait what?

Retraining

As many who are fans of me know I have erratic patterns when it comes to schedules and yes this is very very true. Well you see I've been so used to being lazy and enjoying myself that I've forgotten a bit of discipline from my old marching days.

Anyways here's to me getting back in form. I'm gonna start putting forth my effort to make quality content for the library and actually retrain myself to adhere to a schedule.

Sentinels #4 is up!

Tonya Harding faces the consequences of her actions and tries to keep her head on straight. And what's going on with Rufio? Why are his wrists bleeding?

Find out now!

Dreadskull #3 is up!

D'Angelo and crew find themselves accepting a $4 Million dollar deal in transporting Tori to Russia. Thing is how will they get the money? They may find the answer when they go to Port Winter, Tori's home town.

Find out now!

Okay back to once a week..

Forgot I work 6 days out of the week. Sorry people.

But to make up for it I'll make sure the reads are at least worth a bit of your time in both length and quality.

The Sentinels #3 is up!

In a confrontation with Rufio, X, and Everettia and Tonya gets to show another side of herself. What's up with her, did she snap?

Find out now!

Character Bio - Tonya Harding (Some Spoilers)

Tonya Harding is a leading protagonist in the series The Sentinels. Her dedication to justice and equality are as unrivaled as her guilt complex, while she's often meant well her efforts sometimes leave drastic impacts on the people around her. As well as her sense of justice is driven by her pride she has also will go to great lengths to hide her secrets.

Born to Patrick and Tera Harding November 4, 1980, Tonya was born with the Reaver gene. Her powers broke free accidentally when she was 16, during school when she accidentally destroyed her locker. She was reported to FBI and taken to Project Purity the very same day.

During the lobotomy, Tonya's vibrational based powers disrupted the laser based process, preventing any damage to her brain, unbeknownst to the operators. This gave her an extreme advantage over her Reaver brethren, who were incapable of complex thought. Sneaking into the databases one night she changed her new given identity of 'Rachel Rowe' from Dickinson, North Dakota back to Tonya Harding of Trenton, New Jersey. Inevitably getting caught in this incident Tonya put on the act of her life convincing the superiors to chalk the behavior up to sleepwalking.

For almost twenty years Tonya was forced to act as a Drone, thoughtlessly obedient. Taught to love and serve her country, a country that despised her kind. When she was 18, it was time for her to join the military with the rest of the Drones. As much as she wanted to light an American Flag on fire and go on the run she knew that being a national fugitive was a dead end. So she endured the atrocities of being a Drone woman in the military among those who saw her as a thoughtless and sexually exploitable object, holding on to her sanity by keeping a secret diary of her thoughts and experiences. However the experience wasn't entirely negative. It forced Tonya to mature and actually understand the value of equality for everyone, it made her into the Justice seeking woman she is today.

From her years in the military she transitioned into the government. She became the founder and leader of The Sentinels, an anti-gang unit in the Blackout sector. It was rare for a Drone to have such a high responsibility but Tonya's superiors agreed she was far beyond exceptional.

Catch more of Tonya in The Sentinels Weekly story series as she leads in the fight against Rufio.

A Week is Too damn long!

I like the response I'm getting for the weekly stories and I'd like to thank everyone who came and took a look! But I'm starting to feel like I'm cheating you guys a bit, the stories should be coming a bit faster than week by week for little chunks, right?

New schedule: Sunday and Wednesday! Weekly story releases for of course the ongoing series and maybe a couple extra thrown in if I have them completed. It's only right, you guys deserve content a bit faster.

~Grim

Dreadskull #2 and The Sentinels #2 is out!

So the Dreadskulls found the mystery woman so now what? What are they gonna do with her? What can she do for them?

Find out now!

Will what happened to Beetle and his men happen to Drive?

Find out now!

Attempting some inking and shading!

So this is my first attempt at inking and shading. Incidentally it's also a cover photo for Dreadskull #2 - One Million.

 

What's the mystery woman holding and who's she holding it too? You'll find out on Sunday!

The Origins of The Sentinels and DreadSkull and the upcoming Special Forces

The Sentinels is my attempt at a team based narrative but it actually stemmed from a solo character in the series named Nicholas. All of both current series were branched from his creation entirely.

Nicholas Blade

 Nicholas was actually the most recent protagonist I've created and it's funny because he didn't start off as a protagonist, he actually started off as an antagonist. Kind of still is really. His first appearance came from a brainstorm on my actual first series creation, Special Forces. He was a mercenary in New York who happened to be hired to kill the wrong person and the protagonist, Jamal, an officer in the Special Forces, was sent to bring him in. What followed was an odd philosophical and physical fight between the two. Their views clashed but they found an uneasy connection between Nicholas' dirty work and Jamal's sense of Justice. The fight itself was a great demonstration of Nicholas' speed too, he was able to fire a shot from a pistol and immediately slice the bullet in two with a Katana, simply as a show of skill. The battle ends up with the two of them being trapped in the abandoned building they're fighting in as it begins to burn to the ground. However there's a kid in the building, a runaway, that Nicholas saves and hands off to Jamal before the building collapses with him inside of it, Jamal barely lives along with the kid. Nicholas' final words were, "I've been in this situation more times than you can count, I bet. Like I told you before, the baddest always survive."

The whole story was eventually shelved but I actually wanted a guy like Nicholas to return. His pessimistic good heart bad world outlook made for some good story opportunities.

The original main cast of Ruin
In my early drawing stages

Enter the story of Ruin. A series based on pessimism and the examination of humanity and religious views and beliefs. Nicholas is home. The series started off very very very different than what it is now. For instance, a main character who will be introduced in The Sentinels #2, Christopher Hughes, was originally introduced as a villain with a purple suit, hat, and cane. A cane the clones... Ok so he was virtually a pimp, but I had to debunk the stereotype somehow, but it didn't work well with his thick Southern accent. He was able to handily defeat Nicholas with clever clone usage a couple times and as I developed ideas around him and designed his personality I realized he's a character that seems more driven to be a hero and a redemption artist.

So BAM! Another story change. This time the themes would stay put but roles were switched around. This time around Nicholas was casted in the role of desperate father trying to get enough money for an operation his daughter needs. His line of mercenary work was lead by people called Contract Vendors, middlemen who legally contracted mercenary work for others under a shady part of the government. But at this time all the contract Vendors in New Jersey had suddenly vanished (through means of a criminal mastermind killing or kidnapping them) but there was one woman who became a rogue vendor, someone who contracts illegally, because she needed to buy enough of her husbands company to keep it out of the wrong hands. The two of them meet and a story follows of friendship and betrayal. This marks the introduction of the Shadow Lady, Evelyn Shield,  a character I'm particularly fond of for many reasons, namely her willingness to cross her own moral boundaries to help save someone, which is why she became an illegal vendor. And her original plan was to have no ties to Nicholas after he completed the contract work for her (vendors got paid a portion of the contract.) And for a while this was the road I wanted to travel, exploring just how far people will go and what people will do for those they love. Nicholas is willing to do some dirty work to save his daughter and Evelyn is wiling to become a criminal to help her husband. The story started off with a crazy fight scene between Nicholas and Evelyn as a prologue to illustrate where the story was headed. Evelyn abuses her shadow abilities to completely overwhelm Nicholas combined with her amazing hand to hand combat. As I developed the relationship between the characters I realized that Evelyn just isn't capable of this, she just isn't. And this story was okay but I wanted something a bit more involved with these two working together.

Evelyn Shields, The Shadow Lady

So, BAM! Story has changed again. For the last time thankfully. I liked the idea of these two working together but I wanted it not to be great at first. At the time I was re-watching Justice League and was absolutely astounded by the character development and how balanced it was among so many characters especially in Justice League Unlimited. It was something I never noticed or appreciated in my younger age, I was too hooked on anime and thought anime was American. Anyway with a deep inspiration in my heart I found where I wanted to take the story and the next couple of characters came in like clockwork. This time the story was still themed around the pessimism and analysis of religion but I wanted the message of "The line between good and evil has no definition" to be clear as day. It went along with the theme of the two previous primary antagonists turning to protagonists. I was inspired to draw that out from the last arc of the Justice League where Hawkgirl's people invade. It illustrated that anyone can be a hero and or a villain and that's how Ruin was to be.

Tonya Harding

That's when I introduced Tonya Harding and Rufio Martin and Everettia Tallow  to finally completed the circle. Tonya originally started out as the supervisor of the Sentinels program which took incarcerated Reavers, supernaturally gifted humans (that society hates) and uses them as a deniable asset team to the government. Eventually that storyline got ironed into what is the Sentinels today. Tonya is now the leader of The Sentinels which was just a special gang unit, however when they get absolutely obliterated by Rufio and his men she decides to fight fire with fire and use some criminal Reavers of her own to combat him.


DreadSkull

D'Angelo

With Dreadskull, the main protagonist, D'Angelo,  came from Nicholas as well. In the picture above of the original cast of Ruin he's all the way at the end at the right. He was originally slated to be Nicholas' partner in crime. He was a man who always had a taste for destruction and whenever he showed up something was gonna get fucked up. But the problem I had with this was I really really liked D'Angelo and he seemed to be a character that was much more than just some wacky sidekick. More and more I inched him in different directions. But the real problem I had with him was What was he about? He just liked destruction. He didn't have any background developed, he was just the Russian Madman. Digging into what I liked and what I liked at that time was One Piece. I absolutely loved the dark storyline hidden under the bright vibrant art style. It seemed like an angle I could work with, D'Angelo was a man who craved living free and loved destruction. But it was still gonna take some work on his background, Why? Why would a man be so obsessed with chaos? I created an origin story that atypically involved mobsters. With this, I had D'Angelo set, he was the man who was hated at birth and got dealt the bad hand. Believing himself to be the cause of his mother's death D'Angelo grew up angry and hellbent on avenging her someday. But that type of pain changes a man, it made him attempt to quell the pain by going for thrill after dangerous thrill. Heist after heist. He's on a path of self destruction and he knows it and he doesn't care. This will be explored more in Dreadskull as the series continues. Will his decisions lead him to fortune or to the grave? Can his crew stop him or will they be dragged down with him? He's already in hot water right now, so stay tuned in for next week's chapter.

Special Forces Incoming

With those two titles off and running I decided to bring back the one that started it all. We all love our first creations and I'm no exception. Jamal Clarence takes center stage in the fantasy world of Special Forces. And because of connections with both series I have to split this series between Jamal's present and past. The reason being is that I want develop him as a character but his appearances elsewhere are further ahead in his timeline than i wanted it to be but he's important to certain parts of other series.

So The next in my flash fiction series will be Special Forces, similar in format to the Sentinels. Jamal is
commander in the Earth Special Forces which is a secret organization that deals with extreme threats like aliens or large supernatural disasters. He has to deal with balancing his private life as well as being the big man in leading a whole force.

The second half of the series is Special Forces: Street Level. Following Jamal in his earlier years after leaving the army behind and first joining the special forces. It's more of a personal drama as it leads up to his decisions to be a hero.

And that's how all my current series came to be. I really wanted to hare my thought process behind creating what I create. Thanks for the read and stay tuned guys!

~Grim

(Poem) A Vulgar Analysis of my relationships

I once met a girl

who only wanted to fuck

and I think to myself

just my luck.

Another girl

with no strings attached

who’d love nothing more

than to be flat on her back.

She can’t be controlled

heart’s an emotional basket

imagine a guy

who actually wants an emotional attachment.

It seems strange

like a blue moon even

a guy

who isn’t a sex crazed heathen.

But if we’re gonna take this route

I’ve already seen it

Might as well strap up

and make it scenic.

Couple sights to see

all of which aren’t new

It’s the same sights in my eyes

What does it mean to you?

Dreadskull #1 is up!

Follow the Dreadskull crew as they venture heist a weapons cache for a quick rip and run. But is it really that simple?

Find out now!

(Poem) Curtains

Curtains up

I’m nervous as hell

My time to shine but

why is the light so damn blinding?

I took a look at the crowd

only black silhouettes

each one had a voice

and I’m sure had a face

They watched as I grabbed the microphone

They eagerly waited word for word I’m sure

Watching me talk was something of a spectacle

perhaps an eloquent idiot

an educated buffoon

a combination of the two maybe

That I can’t see their faces worries me

That I can’t distinguish voice from voice disturbs me

what are their reactions?

what did they say?

Applause is just applause.

A tradition.

The curtain fell

And I’m every bit as nerve wracked

as when it rose.

Made a newer blog! Strictly for stories

I originally started this blog to tell the stories I wanted to tell but I find myself using this blog as a means to vent and release somewhat. But I really want to show off my stories too! But I don't want it to be lost within rambling of my personal feelings or things of the sort

To accommodate for this I grabbed a new blog strictly for telling stories. The main series that will be told is a series called The Sentinels, a team or supernatural convicts who're recruited by a desperate FBI agent in order to aid her in her justice seeking.

In addition I'll be doing character bios on this blog for different characters in the series. The series will be released on a weekly basis in number order. It'll be in short story like fashion and will even include illustration at points.

So please guys take a look, the first story has been posted and subscribe to be the first to know when the next part of the tale is available!

Thanks guys!

~Grim

Want more Drawings!

I completely forgot that I made this blog to showcase my- Oh screw it here's some more recent sketches

In a previous post I admitted my perfectionism and you know what that's quite a problem. So in order to get over it it's time to show my progress.