Divine Image, The fan-comic

Don't make me the only person posting their fan stuff - it leaves me feeling selfish and attention seeking. I know you've got some fanart or stories somewhere so go ahead and show them off! (We'll be supportive I promise)

Anyway. I'm going to list my comics here and post new ones when they're done. It won't be that interesting because just about everyone here has already read them, but what's useful is that it gives me a place to ramble on about how or why I write and draw these things.

01 'Absolute Power'
02 'When Life Gives You Hammers'
03 'Something Is Rotten In The NeverhoOd'
04 'Misery Loves Company'
05 'Weasel Chase 1'
06 'Soliloquy'
07 'Monologue'
08 'Welcome To MY World'
09 'Oooh, What Does THIS Button Do?'
10 'The Best Medicine'
11 'Forbidden Fruit'
12 'Weasel Chase 2'
13 'Secrecy The Human Dress'
14 'Lowdee Huh'
15 'The Clod And The Pebble'
16 'Story About Good, Story About Bad'
17 'The Sick Rose'
18 'The Game Of Petty Spirits'
20 'You See These Shackles, Baby'

The reason I started the comic in the first place was basically to tell the story of a fancharacter. I have a weakness for making fancharacters and trying to explain what makes them interesting. So a few ideas popped into my head of funny little scenes between the fanchar and other canon characters, a storyline built up, and I ended up having to go all the way back to when Hoborg first lost his power in order to tell an actual story with a proper beginning.

What sucked about starting it was that I knew I'd be going through a learning curve. I was used to drawing Neverhoodians by that point, but I knew that with all this practice, I was bound to change my style eventually and over time the pages would look different. But I didn't really care, because I'd been in a bit of a fanart rut for a while, and drawing 'Hood stuff was just so enjoyable that I kept going regardless.

This is the poem that the comic is named after:

It came up during my study of William Blake and this instantly struck me as being very close to the Neverhood story. It became my favourite of Blake's work. (Several pages of my book of Songs of Innocence and Experience ended up covered in Neverhood scribbles of varying degrees of sanity...)
What it basically means is that God is perfect and holy and all that, and human being are imperfect replicas of His form. We are all unique but we are all based on God's mold. Same with all the Neverhoodians, who are based on Hoborg but who all have little differences that make them individuals.
And because the replicas are imperfect, they are open to negative feelings that God does not experience - it takes a human heart to feel cruelty. The 'human face' part was very interesting because it's directly applicable - think of it as Hoborg vs. Klogg. Hoborg has no face. Klogg does and that means he's open to jealousy. The 'human dress' part is obvious as Hoborg doesn't wear clothes, but his creations do. So, it seemed to me that Neverhoodians were the Divine Images - a replica of their God where mistakes had been made along the way.

By the way, I'm not being insane and making this stuff up. Doug studied Blake too (while listening to Terry Taylor's old music, no less) and based the game on the Songs of Innocence and Experience. I just happened to be learning about both at the same time.

So. I might as well go through the pages and give commentary, because I feel like it... if you're still reading, then well done, you get a cookie. Feel free to skip any of this because I can see why it might not be interesting.


01 - The first one is the easiest I've done so far, probably because it was all so new at the time. The title is that old quote, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" which sounded especially fitting because it can be taken literally. It was absolute power that Klogg got hold of the his corruption was so absolute that it mutated him.
02 - Klogg's not actually a god so it made sense to me that he didn't properly know how to create life. I liked that explanation for Hammerboy, given that he's lifeseed-shaped.
03 - Giving my explanation for the cannon sign and I needed Willie to come into it. Title is a famous quote from Hamlet, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark". Hamlet was something I was also studying for the A-level so I felt like bringing in references to it, plus I was incorporating the same theme of revenge as Hamlet does, and there were similarities in the storyline (ruler gets usurped by someone close to him), so at this point, I decided that the comic was pretty much an amalgamation of everything I was learning in english literature. O-o
04 & 05 - My explanation for the existence of Weasels and their reaction to the music box. Also Klogg gets a bit better at using life seeds.
06 - Arg. This one has been the least fun. Hours of tracing. Tried to help myself remember the meaning of 'soliloquy' by making it the title - it's when a character speaks openly, yet the other characters can't hear them, which in a way is what was happening there. (More Hamlet stuff)
07 - Like no.6. To remember the meaning of 'monologue' - it's a speech by a character who is alone. Big exposition for validation of my character. Klogg is lonely all by himself and needs somebody to torment.
08 - Ew. This is one of those ones where I hate the suckiness of the art. Most of the early ones are like that though. Title is a line of lyrics from a song in the Neverhood sequel, Skullmonkeys, from the 70s level.
09 - The worst thing about this one was that I needed a background reference, but I was away from home, so I had to play through the entire game to get to that flytrap room. It took about 2 hours.
10 - Oh man, I really did have fun with that one. Perspective continues to be a bitch, though.
11 - This is where the most major art change happened. I discovered a fine tip marker pen to outline in. The difference was so great that I wanted to go back and ink over every previous page and reupload them, but I didn't because the earlier ones would still have been worse off in other terms as well. Title is a reference to the connections between The Neverhood and the Garden of Eden, of which there are too many to count.
12 - WHY is there all that junk in the castle entrance hall. WHY. It was hard to draw, dammit.
13 - This is the first page that starts coming up to standard. The art was good and I started using speech blobs, so it's all readable. I succumbed to including the whole 'Hoborg wearing a bra' thing. Title is a line from The Divine Image (poem above) which was appropriate because 'dress' used in modern terms indicates female clothing. And he's wearing a skirt. And as the comic indicates, the bra is somehow Klogg's as well. He's actually a cross-dresser. Oh jeez... why do I come up with these...
14 - This is solely for plot purposes. I took the opportunity to try and gather some sympathy while I was at it. Title is the name of the song that you hear when you go and check Klaymen's mail after Willie is dead - Klogg sends you letters, and in that page he did the same thing. Also using a song title was extra appropriate because that page revolved around music.
15 - The start of my explanation for Willie getting back to the throne room. Title is another Blake poem, which is about a clod of clay (v. appropriate) who by nature is impressionable, and a pebble who by nature is not. The pebble is rather jaded and emo while the clod is optimistic and happy - like the 2 characters in that page. Also, 'clod' can refer to somebody stupid, so it's just Willie to a T.
16 - I was planning to draw the whole page as if it had been done by Willie himself, right from his mind, with deformed looking people and very childish colouring. I couldn't bring myself to do that because I'm too much of a perfectionist, and I didn't want my only picture of regular Klogg to be all crap. (Turned out not to be my only picture, but whatever.) So it ended up with just a few chibis.
17 - Messed up a few times in drawing it, but never mind. Explains how Willie ended up in Cat Head Mountain. I can't resist finding my own explanations for everything that happens. Title is a Blake poem about a flower that is infected by a worm and turned rotten at its heart, which becomes a bit clearer in the next one.
18 - Willie's back inside the castle and guess what he found there. Kleo can't help revealing Willie's new hiding place so it's a bit crushing for her to be forced into betrayal. At this point Klogg's influence has made her incapable of being really normal, hence the sick rose thing. Title is explained on the page. It comes from "Deceit is the game of petty spirits, and that is by nature a woman’s quality".
19 - The revenge stuff starts getting attention. Title is related to Hamlet again. It's just like that whole cartoon format where the characters are bitter enemies and spend all their time thinking of ways to get back at the other one, and as Jimp put it, each retaliation is more extreme than the previous. Things are starting to escalate.
20 - I got to have fun designing a weird costume. The part of SexyBack with the lines 'You see these shackles baby, I'm your slave/I'll let you whip me if I misbehave' stuck with me as being rather relevant to this thing. I had another future idea to cover the 'whip me' part but it seemed a bit too druggie so I think I'm gonna leave out that part...

So. That's what I have so far. I've come a really long way with these and it's hard to believe how much of my art book I've covered - I'm over 1/4 of the way there now, because there are about 70 pages in all and I'm attempting to fill them all in by the end.

Also, I have planned out the actual plot all the way, so I know exactly what's going to happen. The reason I don't know how long it'll be is that I try to fill in pages of gags and jokes and whatever I think of at every opportunity. So I'll do a bunch of jokes, then advance the plot a bit, then do some more jokes. There are quite a few pages I've planned out so I can see them clearly in my mind, and I can't wait to get around to drawing them.

If you actually read this far you must be mad, and you get more cookies.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. The best thing about making this thing was the time I was recognised for it by my friends. We were at our prom and they awarded these prizes for really random things, including the 'best undiscovered talent' award, which I got nominated for because I started drawing these at school and a few people saw them. I was really amazed that they had taken enough notice to nominate me, and it felt really special. That's why I now feel qualified to pass it off as 'award nominated'. <3

Yay, a more convenient way of finding specific parts of the Divine Image comic!

>_>



Will you feel less "selfish and attention seeking" if I post a topic for my comic, too?

Yes, do it do it do it! (And you can talk about your thought processes so we know where you're coming from with it and we'll appreciate it more. )

Right, I'll get right on that

21 'You Can Never Have Too Many Evil Engines'

That's my take on where evil engine number 9 originates from. Although Zen beat me to that point. ;P

No prizes for catching the Gear/Catscratch reference. Hah.

You gave Evil Engine Number Nine an origin, I just made Klogg over-sensitive to it.

*catches the Gear/Catscratch reference*

The First Rejected Idea

There may be more of those to come.

22 'Agnus Dei'

It's special to me, for reasons I listed in the comments. The sheep splatter was tough to draw though. >.>
Title means 'lamb of God' which usually refers to Jesus but this time, it just literally means the sheep. Who were made by someone posing as God... just so he could kill them. I liked the religious connotation and also, it's the name of one of the movements of a Requiem I learned to sing while I played the game and started drawing the comic... so maybe I'll be able to work all the other movements' names into it as well.

The Second Rejected Idea
Which pretty much follows straight on from Page 22.

I also drew this, which is somewhat relevant.

23 'The Last Klay Action Heroine'
Not a lot of title ideas. 'Last Klay Action Hero' was the tagline for Skullmonkeys... somewhere.
If you look at the 3rd panel on its own, it's really kinda funny. Good thing he didn't turn around at that point.

24 'The Pulling Of The Final Straw'

Nope, couldn't really think of a good title this time. Now I get to launch into a section that follows canon rather closely.

"Oh my God!"
"Yes?"

That's PURE WIN right thar.

Lol. I started thinking nobody would actually pick that one up. I got it off my old english teacher... dunno how he thought of it, but another girl did this very dramatic 'Oh... my... GOD' and without missing a beat he went 'Yes?', in total seriousness.

To be honest I didn't notice it right away e_e

That reminds me of someone that used to be in one of my classes. The teacher asked if we had any nicknames we wanted to be known by, and this one kid said his was "Master".

"I have a question."
"Yes, Master?"

Heh, that reminds me of one of the jokes in Harry Potter... it's something like Harry says "Yes" and Snape corrects him, "Yes SIR." And Harry replies, "there's no need to call me Sir, Professor"...

Oh yeah, I remember that....XD

25 'Rebel Without A Cause'

FEELING SORRY FOR KLOGG WILL MAKE JESUS DISAPPOINTED IN YOU.


Oh, and here's something else. I like messing around with digital art every now and then.