Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Rustling Husk












I've been alternately too busy and too lazy to put together any new posts. This gives me the excu--opportunity to share with you something from one of my old notebooks.

This is the first sketch I did for the Rustling Husks. These creatures are homonculi hitmen magically created from thefrustrated death throws of flying insects trapped between window panes. This makes them angry and nasty. Their heads are paper wasp nests. They have no eyes. Their body's are likewise hollow, hidden beneath a long tan raincoat. They have metallic six-fingered hands and a blade tipped tail made of vertebrae. They speak in faint whispers lost in a buzzing sound of white noise. Ther movements sound like dry leaves or crackling egg shells. They smell like nutmeg and cloves.

Their weapon is a screaming cannon, a magical handgun made of bone which makes a sound like the distressed noise of screaming rabbits when fired. This gun is formidable because it teleports the hit region of its target someplace else, making it almost always impossible to heal.

These creatures appeared in XOMBI, a supernatural adventure comic book series I wrote in the mid-90s for Milestone Media. I will most likely be posting more about XOMBI in the coming weeks.

3 comments:

Stephen said...

Very cool, John!

Ade said...

Excellent stuff, I'd be interested in seeing more. Don't suppose they'd ever agree to "DVD extras" style additions to any future trade?

Also, I was very pleased to note the latest Brave & Bold solicitation featuring Xombi in the DCU.

Ade Brown

John Rozum said...

Ade, I'd love to have an extras section at the back of a trade paperback collection. I'd even settle for having some erroneous balloon placements and missing text corrected, but we'll be lucky to see XOMBI tpbs at all.

If they happen though, the plan is to include the completed, but never published, XOMBI HANUKKAH SPECIAL with art by Guy Davis.