Alphadonjon: Q is for Queen Sonya the Huge

Okay, not only is my Donjon Alphabooks entry a few days late, but it's also kind of a cheat. I mean, Sonya the Huge really is the Queen of the goblins by the end of the first volume of Dungeon: Zenith, and we do see her in that role in half of the first volume of Dungeon: Monstres, but I mostly the other characters call her Sonya the Huge, and not Queen Sonya the Huge.

She's a giantess. That absurd balloon on her head is the crown of the Goblin King. Maybe I should have put her on a palanquin borne by a brace of little goblins—if nothing else, that would have given you a better sense of her scale—but then it would have taken another couple of days, I bet, to get her here on the blog.

Sonya's actually pretty fun to draw. Maybe that shouldn't surprise me, since she's pretty obviously a Trondheim design, and his characters are always fun to draw. And I think I must have been taking a page out of Rob Ullman's book when I worked out this pose, though as usual I think I lost something moving from the sketch to the finished version.

(What did I lose? A little assertiveness? A little sauciness? Some junk in the trunk?)

Next week: I have to cheat a little (more).

Alphadonjon: P is for Papsukal and Pipistrelle

This week's Donjon entry for Alphabooks features two characters who have actually met (or at least seen each other) in the very incarnations and apparel I've drawn them in.

P is for Papsukal, the son of the Herbert the Duck (and, I think it's safe to say, Isis—I mean, those aren't duck ears and whiskers he's sporting). He's a nasty guy, all in all, and he becomes one of the villains of the Twilight storyline.

P is also for Pipistrelle, the little bat who accompanies Marvin and Marvin the Red on their end-of-the-world adventures, though I'm not sure I've ever seen her called anything but "little bat" in the American translations. A pipistrelle is, of course, the littlest sort of bat that lives in Europe; maybe the people at NBM thought that bit of knowledge wouldn't translate.

Anyway, look, here they are in the same panel together:

That's Pipistrelle flapping under Marvin the Red's ear on the right.

These Dungeon books are so much fun.

Next week: at least they didn't translate her epithet as "the Gross."

Alphadonjon: O is for Ormelle and Okto

This O entry for Alphabooks is a full week late. What can I say? I've been busy getting those Animal Alphabet postcards ready, but I'm trying to get back on track.

Here we see two characters in Trondhgeim & Sfar's Dungeon comics, Ormelle and Okto. O is for them.

Ormelle is a dragon lady, the mate of Marvin's son Baal in the Twilight section of the timeline. She's also the lover of Marvin the Red. She has a strong, independent personality, and she seems to know what's what. She's also hell on wings, when it comes to fighting.

I regret to say that I know less about Okto, except that he is a former bearer of the Sword of Destiny, and that he introduces himself like this when summoned from the mists of time:

I also don't have much in the way of notes of false starts this time. This is probably the dullest blog post about a chicken-octopus ninja that you're going to read this week.

"Next week" (in a few minutes): a little bat and a duck-cat.

Alphadonjon: N is for Narboni

This week's Alphabooks Dungeon entry is pretty much my only option, but I think he's pretty cool.

N is for Narboni. He seems to be an undead rabbit wizard. He wears a cassock and sandals, and his forearms are skeletal.

Narboni lives for the first seven pages of the first story in Vol. 1 of Dungeon: Monstres. He's one of the crew of monsters that William Delacour encounters, including John-John, then cons into accompanying him to locate the Dungeon. We haven't seen the last of this crew of monsters; not hardly. I think the only one of them that I won't be drawing is Metacarpus, the one-eyed zombie pirate cat with hooks for both hands.

Anyway, Narboni meets an untimely end (decapitated and then burned, since his severed head is still trying to cast a spell) before we can get to know him very well. I'm not even a hundred percent sure that he's supposed to be a rabbit.

The pose is a little awkward, but I wanted to make sure I showed off his free-bone forearms and his sandals.

I had a slightly different version, but then I tweaked the shadows a little bit. Probably the tweak is not even noticeable. I had a hard time figuring what color the shadows cast by eerie green Ditko magic would be.

What I meant when I said Narboni was almost my only option is that there really aren't many Dungeon characters whose names start with N. And this is just going to get worse in three or four weeks. I'm planning to cheat just a little bit when that time comes. You'll forgive me, won't you?

Next week: a sultry dragon lady and a chicken-octopus ninja.

Alphadonjon: M is for Marvin and Marvin the Red

For this week's Donjon Alphabooks entry, I am blessed with a double-barrel dose of warrior-sidekick awesomeness. M has got to be for Marvin and Marvin.

Although they are currently unarmed, they're ready for trouble. Or perhaps for a truly awesome rap battle (probably facing off against the Ill Lithids).

Marvin (the Dragon) is really one of the main characters in the whole course of Dungeon. He's Herbert's mentor and best friend in the Zenith stories, and under the alias of the Dust King, he is one of the heroes of the the Twilight volumes. He has a terrific blend of honor and pragmatism, of mischief and solidity, of wisdom and insecurity. He might really be the most interesting character in the whole series, not least because of the terrible sacrifices he makes between Zenith and Twilight.

Plus, he has a very metal wardrobe, doesn't he? For pants he wears a skull on chains as a codpiece. (Actually, he has several different outfits; this is the one from the very first volume, Duck Heart.)

Marvin the Red (a sort of demon rabbit) is, more or less, the Dust King's troublemaker sidekick in the Twilight volumes of Dungeon. He's a dangerous warrior in his own right, but he's impetuous, overconfident, and selfish. So in fact, like Hyacinthe and Herbert, these two wind up knowing each other well, but not when they're the ages they have in this image.

Well, if you're interested, here are my notes. It took me some work to figure out some good "fight-ready" poses, and I think these notes are hampered by the size of the scratch paper I was using.

And hey, we're halfway through the alphabet!

Next week: oh, just your average zombie wizard.

Alphadonjon: L is for Lothar, Luxor, and Lublino

My six-month love letter to Trondheim and Sfar's Dungeon comics continues with this week's Alphabooks entry, showcasing three characters from "Night of the Lady-Killer," the fourth volume (in the American editions) of Dungeon: Monstres.

L is for Lothar, Luxor, and Lublino. They basically appear only in this one volume. (Lothar has like a walk-on cameo in the second Early Years collection.)

Lothar is an enforcer of sorts for Dr. Hippolyte, who brings a lot of stray monsters into the castle that will one day become the Dungeon. (This volume is set during the same time period as the Early Years volumes.) All we know about Lothar is this: he's "faithful and devoted ... so long as you give him a deer every day to devour."

Lublino (the pig) and Luxor (the rat) are among Horus's classmates in necromancy at the college in Antipolis when Alcibiades arrives there. They're both pretty unsavory, to tell you the truth, and they probably deserve whatever Lothar has in store for them.

There wasn't a lot of "process" with this drawing. I didn't give myself much time to think about it. I wasn't planning to put Luxor and Lublino into the drawing until I realized I needed for Lothar to be doing something. It's easier to come up with a pose for these drawings if I have someone else for the character to interact with.

One thing I messed up between doodle and pencils, as I can see now: Lothar should be a lot broader than he is in my finished drawing. Maybe shorter, too, but definitely broader.

Next week: two of the most important and most dangerous warriors in the whole Dungeon series.

Alphadonjon: K is for Kadmion

I'm sorry this week's Alphabooks submissions are coming so late. I was traveling last week, and while I was traveling I was reminded of an essay deadline that had passed back on June 1. Immediately on returning home I had to pretend to be a scholar, instead of pretending to be a cartoonist.

Anyway, better late than never, right? The Donjon entry for K is Kadmion.

There's not a lot to know about Kadmion, apart from the fact that he's the Dungeon's head administrator. (He's in charge of things like making sure the monsters get paid or fed.) He has been an associate of Hyacinthe's since the latter's days running an underworld syndicate (before the Dungeon itself was conceived), and he seems to be stalwart and sturdy.

He's also a lot of fun to draw, as a character design. Some of the Dungeon characters seem to make sense to me right away, and it was easy to start filling my margins with Kadmion doodles.

I even drew him a bit during my recent travels. (Here, I am drawing him in Chicago, at the beginning of a layover.)

And yet, as much as I enjoy drawing Kadmion, I had trouble deciding what to make him do. I guess dungeon administration doesn't lend itself to interesting poses the way that monstering or Olf-monarching does.

I figured I could have him a little shocked by something unseen on a scroll. Then I realized that I should make the scroll reveal how late he was for his own deadline.

On Monday: a really great monster who somehow vanishes before the Dungeon is a Dungeon.

Alphadonjon: J is for John-John

My concession to the fact that I am traveling this week is that for this installment of Alphabooks I've only drawn one character from Donjon. Sort of.

You see, J is for John-John.

You can see John-John in the background of lots of the Zenith and Parade books, but it's only in the first volume of Monstres that you'll discover why he looks that way.

Do you remember when I told you that the Sword of Destiny can cut without wounding? Well, before he met Delacourt, John-John was a big four-legged potato of a guy. Then there was an altercation, from which followed an alteration.

John-John is a sweet guy, though, and although he's technically one of the monsters in the Dungeon, my impression is that he's a lot less dangerous than Grogro.

Some doodles:

Next week: the very model of a peristeronic dungeon administrator.

Alphadonjon: I is for Isis and Isidore the Scribe

Okay, this is another week in which I'm composing my Alphabooks posts at about 4:00 AM on Sunday/Monday, and I don't need to make an even later night of this. Let's be brief.

I is for Isis, the Kochak Princess, and for Isidore the Scribe, bearer of the Sword of Destiny.

In Dungeon, one woman turns out to be the love interest of both Hyacinthe (as the Keeper) and Herbert, two of the main characters in the series. If I understand Terra Amata genetics correctly, she even seems to have had children with both of them. And that's Isis, the Kochak Princess.

Isis is supposed to be sexy, but not in a cheesecake sort of way. Rather, her sexiness comes from confidence, competence, and self-determination, as well as a mysterious or at least checkered past. It's that last factor that's symbolized by her hip tattoo: she's been a member of a thieves' guild. (If you can't see the tattoo, maybe you can click to enlarge.)

So: there's your sexy cat-woman, as promised last week.

As for the sorrowful scribe: meet Isidore. He appears in the book occasionally when someone tries to steal the Sword of Destiny, as he is one of the Sword's former wearers. He wore it, however, for only twelve seconds before someone killed him and claimed the sword. (I haven't read the volume in which this story is told, because it's one of Dungeon's French-only publications. Maybe one day.) Anyway, that's why I didn't put the Sword around his waist: I figured by the time I could explain it, you'd be more than twelve seconds into this post.

Not much to tell beyond that. I include a couple of doodles so we can carry on the conversation about energy in the sketch versus the finished product. I know I like the facial expressions on Isis better in these sketches. Alas.

Was that my idea of a brief post?

Next week: I'll be traveling, but I'm hoping to schedule a post with a creature (or is he two creatures?) before I leave.

Alphadonjon: H is for Hyacinthe and Herbert

Here's the first of this week's Satisfactory-Comics Alphabooks:

With the letter H, in Donjon, you happen to get two of the series's main characters: Hyacinthe, known as "the Keeper" during the Dungeon's Zenith period—he owns and manages the titular Dungeon—is also the hero of Dungeon: the Early Years, wherein he goes from a naïve young student with romantic notions of derring-do to a savvy and jaded widower. Herbert of Craftiwich, on the other hand, is the protagonist of the Zenith and Parade stories, and a major character in the Twilight storyline as well.

During the Zenith / Parade segment, they know each other well, but I've drawn Hyacinthe here as a young man, probably before Herbert was even an egg, so this particular scene could never actually happen in Dungeon.

Hyacinthe's costume in this drawing is slightly different from the way he usually dresses once his studies are underway. In the city, he forms a secret identity ("The Nightshirt") under which to fight for justice (and woo a curvaceous snake-lady assassin), and his musketeer hat and sword really belong to that side of his personality, whereas the tunic is part of his daytime wardrobe. But I didn't want to draw him as The Nightshirt, because that would belong under N, right?

 You may be wondering why Herbert is merely carrying the Sword of Destiny, and seems to be threatening to pinch or flick any approaching enemies. Well, early in his carrying of the Sword, before he had done three great deeds of valor with his own hands, the Sword would not allow him to draw it, or to use any other weapons. Instead, he had to learn to fight with just sticks and feathers.

He gets to be quite good at them. And then, toward the end of the second volume of Zenith, he's reminded that, because he's a duck, his whole body is covered with feathers.

Alas, this talent only works against green creatures, but before long Herbert is more diversely competent (and better equipped) than we see him here. Eventually, the Sword even lets him draw it.

This drawing came together pretty easily. Originally I had thought about having the two heroes doing a sort of transgenerational fist-bump, but once I drew a doodle of it I realized that (a.) it would be hard to make it "read" clearly and (b.) posing the fist-bump would put them too far apart on the page for good drama.

So I opted for the comics cliché of heroes spotlighted against a wall. I promise I won't overuse this pose. It just seemed the best way to imply that they were both important and heroic.

Anyway, next week: A sexy cat-woman (hello, Google hits) and a sorweful scribe.

Alphadonjon: G is for Grogro and Gregor

This week's Dungeon entry in Alphabooks features a vampire and a monster, but I have to admit that I've already drawn a lot of scarier Dungeon characters.

I love these guys.

Grogro and Gregor are both denizens or employees of the dungeon. I don't think I've said anything yet about the economics of the Dungeon itself. Basically, it's a commercial enterprise: there are rumors of fantastic treasure inside, so adventurers arm themselves with their best gear and come from far and wide to raid the Dungeon. They almost all get killed eventually by the various monsters inside, and the adventurers' equipment is added to the hoard.

Gregor is one of the vampires who live in the dark chambers that not many other employees go to. (Yeah, that's what vampires look like in Donjon.) He appears in a few scenes in Dungeon Parade: Day of the Toads. Grogro is much more frequently seen, in nearly every one of the main-timeline books, and in fact he's the protagonist in the second story in Dungeon Monstres: Night of the Ladykiller.

I had a good time drawing this piece. Probably it helps that I am really fond of Grogro. He's a buffoon with a big appetite and a childlike demeanor, and he is one hundred percent fun to draw. He's been cropping up in my margins a lot this week.

I had all sorts of weird ideas for ways to pose the characters this week.

Eventually I just sort of settled on the idea that Grogro should be dancing. There's a great sequence in Night of the Ladykiller where Grogro winds up in an arena, fighting off a brace of gladiators with a broom and some flatulence, and I think some of the fun choreography in that sequence got me thinking about Grogro bumping butts with a vampire.

Next week: two of the most important characters in all of Dungeon.

Alphadonjon: F is for Farfalle and Fayez ul-Rahman

This week's Alphabooks entry features characters from way on the other end of the Donjon continuity. Although these two characters never meet, so far as I know, they both dwell in Terra Amata's end-times, in the era after the world has shattered and every place is a floating island isolated from other islands by a yawning void, a mile-deep drop, and a molten sea of lava down below.

Fayez ul-Rahman, the serpent guy, is the leader of the assassin's society called the "Specters" (of which Davraz is one). He turns on his master the Grand Khan and turns out to be quite a problem.

Farfalle, the ursine damsel, is the daughter of a Takmool on a floating island that has begun to spin end over end. The Takmool has constructed a mansion (and grounds) on a massive wheeled platform, which his subjects pull continuously on a circumnavigating track so it will never fall off the edge of the island. Anyway, Farfalle falls for Herbert the Red in the last (so far) installment of Dungeon: Twilight.

I figured out this pose pretty quickly, inspired I think by Fayez's slight facial resemblance to Kermit the Frog. (I figured that Farfalle would be fine for some Miss-Piggy-style unappreciated attraction.)

As with last week, I had trouble figuring out the mammal character's long snout. I think I'm just not used to drawing certain sorts of "funny animal" characters, but I guess this alphabet will in the end be good practice...

Later, I got the pose, if not Farfalle's head, more or less the way I wanted it. This version, though it was on scratch paper, wound up basically being my pencils for the drawing. (I traced most of this doodle to make the pencils in my notebook.)

Next week: one of everybody's favorite monsters.

Alphadonjon: E is for Elise and Eustace Ravin, Esq.

This week's Alphabooks entries are both going to be a little underwritten, because I'm just starting the first one at 4:20 AM. Both of my Dungeon characters this week come from the Early Years sequence in the series.

Have I already explained this? Donjon is being written into several different time periods at once. The "main" storyline, Zenith, features one character, the Keeper of the Dungeon, who is an old man; another set of books features the same character as a young man (well, a young bird). In the Twilight sequence, the characters of the Zenith storyline are old men. Then there's Parade, which happens between the first and second books of Zenith... Oh, it's complicated.

Anyway, in the Early Years there's a sinister taurine lawyer named Eustace Ravin, and there's a brave (but overconfident) young bird named Elise, who later becomes the Keeper's wife and is murdered by the Keeper's professional-assassin mistress. As far as I know, Eustace and Elise never meet, but here they are:

It took me a lot of work to figure out Eustace's head. Maybe I couldn't work out for myself whether he was a longhorn or a water buffalo or what; or maybe I just don't have enough practice drawing bovine snouts. But even with Christophe Blain's drawings in front of me on the page I struggled, on and off, all day.

Next week: a serpent from the end of the world.

Alphadonjon: D is for Delacour and Davraz

This week's Donjon entry for Alphabooks brings the last bearer of the Sword of Destiny that we'll see for a few letters, just in case you're tired of seeing that little red belt buckle. And in fact, after Ababakar's quick death, he's the only other wearer of the sword that we meet in while he's alive, other than Herbert the Duck, in the main timeline.

There's also a Red Guard assassin hanging out in the background this week. There's a snake under that cowl, I think, but we never see his face.

This week, D is for Delacour and Davraz.

I'm cheating a little, I guess, with Delacour's name (and initial), though that's what he's called in the Zenith stories that feature him. Really his name is William Delacour, so maybe I should have alphabetized him under W. If we were working with the French originals, he'd go under G for Guillaume. Or maybe under C for de la Cour? Anyway, this is where he seems to belong for me.

And let me tell you, he's a scoundrel in the most aggravating way. Delacour is self-satisfied, ornery, litigious, niggling, petty, selfish, cowardly, malicious, and manipulative. He's the last chicken you'd trust with anything.

Also, he has a detachable head.

The reason his head's detachable is revealed in the first volume of Monstres: the Sword of Destiny has one blade that kills, and another that cuts without wounding. When Ababakar Octoflea confronts Delacour to kill him for the Sword, Delacour offers to give it to him, to save his own life, but the Sword refuses. The only way to claim the Sword from its owner is if the owner has been beheaded.

So Delacour uses the sword to cut off his own head with the blade that doesn't wound. Ababakar walks off with the Sword, and aside from a need for a nice tight scarf Delacour is none the worse for the event.

Ohhh, what a bastard he is.

Initially I wanted him to look blithe, carefree, smug, and jaunty, and I tried a few different doodles hoping to catch that (and also show his head detaching).

Do you recognize my source?

It didn't really come across, did it? Probably because Leo doesn't have a completely detachable head.

Well, still:

Next week: well, probably some more poultry.

Alphadonjon: C is for Clementine the Ogress and Caroy

This week's Dungeon Alphabooks characters are both pretty minor in the grand scheme of Dungeon things.

Clementine the Ogress is, like Brock, a former wielder of the Sword of Destiny, briefly summoned by a quintet of vampire piglets while they're foolhardily taunting Herbert the Duck. She appears in just one panel.

Caroy, the weird fish-man that she's chasing in my picture, is one of the underwater soldiers of Shiwomeez who feature in The Depths, the second album collected in the Heartbreaker volume of Dungeon: Monstres. This is a story that—and I cannot emphasize this strongly enough—IS NOT FOR KIDS. This volume is drawn (really quite beautifully, if you like weird sea creatures) by Patrice Killoffer. It features some really ugly sex off-panel, some really upsetting violence (when creatures bleed underwater, their blood and guts fill the environment), and some very creepy character designs, as well as some generally unsavory personalities.

Caroy is a creep himself, and he gets a fitting comeuppance, pierced from inside by coral that grows at an incredible rate. Probably the reason why I have Clementine chasing him down is that I still want to punish him for his part in keeping Dungeon from being innocent and fun enough to put into the hands of a kid (or, for that matter, a teenager—seriously, The Depths is some unpleasant stuff).

Next week: a chicken.

Alphadonjon: B is for Boobooloo, King of the Olfs and Brock.

A week has gone by already? Well, here are two more crazy character designs from Trondheim and Sfar's terrific Dungeon comics.

 For this week's Alphabooks, B is for Boobooloo, King of the Olfs, and for Brock.

You may note that these fellows are both sporting the same belt and sword that Ababakar Octoflea was wearing last week. That's because they are, like Ababakar, both former wearers and wielders of the Sword of Destiny. Herbert the Duck, one of Dungeon's main characters, retrieves the Sword from Ababakar's beheaded body, and discovers not long thereafter that if anyone tries to take the sword from him — or if anyone merely touches his belt — Herbert will be transformed in a cloud of bones and ectoplasm into a previous wearer of the Sword, to avenge the transgression. (This is handy, because the sword won't let Herbert use it until he accomplishes three great deeds without it. Also, at least initially, he's quite a wimp.)

Anyway, Boobooloo is the first previous wearer of the Sword that gets summoned up, and he's a firecracker. Oh, he's small, but he's like a little basketball with fists and feet of steel. He shows up a few other times, including an extended appearance in one of the Monstres volumes set during the cataclysm at the end of the world.

As for Brock, well,

Now you know as much as I do. In the entirety of Dungeon, he appears in just one panel. But he's got a really fun design, doesn't he?

It took me a little while to figure this drawing out, mostly because I didn't know how these two guys would interact. Would they fight? They're like brothers in arms, because they're both wearers of the Sword. Maybe they'd high-five.

(You'll notice that at the brainstorming stages I'd forgotten that Brock was a snake from the waist down.)

Then I thought, "Okay, one guy is big and beefy, and the other one's a little berserker. Isn't there some sort of baseball metaphor for that sort of deal?"

Then it was just a matter of drawing. And taking away Brock's legs.

Next week, one more wearer of the Sword of Destiny, and maybe someone else.

AlphaDonjon: A is for Alcibiades and Ababakar Octoflea

I'm hoping that I will be able to draw one entire Alphabooks theme from the collaborative Dungeon comics (Donjon in the original French) co-authored by Lewis Trondheim, Joann Sfar, and a bunch of other great French cartoonists.

If you've never read any Dungeon at all, you can get started here.

In the very first volume of the series—indeed, by page four—you will meet two relatively minor characters whose names start with A:

That's Alcibiades the Gnomonist there at the bottom, who can normally be found managing the network of crystal balls that the Dungeon employees use to communicate.

Attacking him is Ababakar Octoflea, Prince Without a Principality, Whose Sandals Stomp on the Tombs of Kings, bearer of the Sword of Destiny. He dies a brutal death on page five.

But his death opens the path of heroism that defines the life of one of the series's main characters, and because of the weird chronology of the Dungeon books, you can also meet Prince Ababakar Octoflea in the first volume of Dungeon Monstres.