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.

I debated whether to post some of the next few sketches. They’re really sketchy sketches. I try to post art here that doesn’t take a lot of head scratching to figure out what’s in the image. They’re from my end of ’99, beginning of ’00 sketchbook and many of them deal with the development of the character of King Roach.

King Who?

Yes, another unpublished, in development comic series. You may have noticed how fond I am of monsters. King Roach is an attempt to develop a series that features lots of monsters, particularly giant monsters – monsters that cause lots of property damage just by moseying down the street.

I wanted a kid to be the hero. But I didn’t want him to be standing on the sidelines cheering on his pet monster/robot/superhero, while said pet actually fought the other monsters. I wanted him to be active and involved. So, obviously, he should be one of the monsters. Obvious to me but apparently obvious to no one else. I can’t think of a giant monster story that has the featured kid turning into one of the monsters. The closest we seem to get are stories of kids piloting giant robots who fight monsters.

So, this page features early sketches of our hero both as a human and in monster form at the bottom of the page. He’s the humanoid monster, not the dinosauroid. Not sure who the little girl at the top of the page is supposed to be. She looks like one of the pharmacist’s kids.

I think most of us can thank God that we aren’t hideous radioactive mutants like this fellow here. He’s a sketch of the mutant from The Day the World Ended. Of course, if you can’t thank God that you’re not a hideous radioactive mutant you either don’t believe in God (and why should you?) or you’re a real weirdo (yay!). Either way, happy American Thanksgiving. May you eat well, enjoy the company of friends and family and get a good nap.

I’d planned to be productive. I’d start sketching something out. I’d decide it looked like crap. I’d sketch something else. Crap. Sketch again. More crap. I finally did this Kachinaish fellow, decided that he wasn’t that bad and gave up drawing for the day.