Today’s page has only an unfinished sketch of KR’s head. It’s still not the final design. Down the left side are the Jade Buddha, Dave and Sister D from Bugfuck Palace. On the right side are two characters that I don’t recognize (and so are probably just poor annonymous practice figure), the Buddha’s backside and then a sketch of Dave.

When I first imagined the King Roach series I was thinking of serializing it as a webcomic. So I looked around to see if there was already a comic (or a comic character) called King Roach. Turned out that there was. At the time there was even a website that featured the comic. Rather than get attached to the name I started thinking of something else. It took a while but I came up with another name that I like quite a bit better. I’m keeping that name to myself for now and continue to refer to the character as King Roach. That other King Roach doesn’t appear to be active at the moment. Someone still holds the www.kingroach.com registration but there’s nothing there right now.

More work hammering King Roach’s head into shape. The versions here are rounder, more streamlined – friendlier.

The sketches here that don’t look like KR represent various potential adversaries.

In a semicircle around this image are sketches for King Roach’s head. King Roach was the giant insect-like humanoid that Brian Daniels transformed into whenever he needed to kick monster butt. KR’s body shape was inspired by the long and lean mecha in Neon Genesis Evangelion. It took me a while to work out the design for KR’s head. I wanted him to be not human yet still humanlike. I wanted him to be able to have expressions and react to the insane things going on around him. We still got some sketches to go before we get to the final design.

This page is representative of a lot of the pages I haven’t scanned for this blog. I know what the sketchy lines mean. My mind’s eye can call up detailed versions of the images for which these lines are just suggestions.

This page got scanned because it’s got the first drawing of Brian that looks like Brian. The hair will change a bit but the facial features have settled.

In this, the series original incarnation, there were three main characters –

Brian Daniels, our hero (protagonist anyway) who turns into a giant monster. (For those of you who noticed – yes, Brian Daniels was the name of the scientist who transformed into the Alpha Beast. The name has been given to about a half a dozen different characters over the years, all white males. None of them have ever made an appearance in print.) His only appearance on this page is the center sketch. He’s the short one in the middle.

Lucas Braeburn, sidekick number one. He’s the one with the widows peak (mostly, in the upper left is an earlier, shaggier version) and the evil schemes.

Sidekick number two whose name currently escapes me. He’s the one with the glasses who wishes he could turn into a giant monster and thinks Brian doesn’t appreciate how cool it is to turn into a giant monster.

There’s also some guy with an earring and his mouth open. Probably some school yard bully.

Another of King Roach’s adversaries, this one a giant sword and sorcery type barbarian. With a hammer.

Another one of King Roach’s potential adversaries. I’m quite proud of the ridiculus amount of detail in this sketch. Imagine drawing twenty consecutive panels of that figure in action. Ye gods.

A sketch of one of King Roach’s adversaries. I had the idea that many of his enemies would be giant twisted versions of various warrior archetypes – giant knight, giant samurai, giant Aztec warrior, giant Maori warrior, giant zulu warrior, etc.

King Roach was supposed to fight a variety of monsters from small ones (a psychotic little girl with enormous telekinetic power) to Godzilla sized ones. Most of his foes were in the more managable 15 to 30 foot tall level – basically the size of the original King Kong. A few of those were other kids who’d been give the ability to turn into monsters themselves.

This creature was a teenage girl from an bad home in her premonster state.