angelfirehime

[angelfirehime]

And here she is, the star of the show!  Except that honestly, she’s not.  I find her incredibly awesome- a cringe-inducing cocktail of mid-2000s edgelord tropes, used completely without shame or apology, without irony or nuance.  She’s just exactly what she is.  She is also, despite supposedly being competent and helpful, the only character in the story who doesn’t have supernatural powers.  Or at least, she never shows any.

I don’t know where I had intended to go with this character.  She’s got a bunch of occult tools and knowhow but doesn’t get the chance to do much.  Maybe she WAS supposed to have supernatural powers and the chance to use them never came up.

We also never get a good explanation for why she tolerates Jason.  He’s always so happy to be around her, but she shows no interest in him whatsoever.  Like I guess I was just writing poorly disguised Billy and Mandy skits but I didn’t even try to explain their friendship.  All we know is that she knows about the muffin incident, and holds it against Jason.  So she must’ve been there for that.

Goodbye, Scary Molly.  I will probably never draw you and your dumbass hair helmet ever again.

[angelfirehime]

I originally was going to give Achi a human skin color (probably generic white like all the others) but I have no idea what a ‘dark nymph’ is really supposed to be so why not get weird with it?  So now she’s like an imp or something.

This character got very little explanation, so she’s got loads of untapped potential.  She was apparently powerful enough that she got Allison killed, and doesn’t seem to be dead, which suggests she might be immortal.  What are her motives?  What are the full limits of her powers?  Why does she target kids?

What I find most interesting is that while Allison seems stuck in the same shitty robe for eternity, Achi has gone out of her way to modernize her look.  Perhaps she’s vain, constantly changing her look to keep up with the times (although I don’t know what she’s going for with that outfit) even though she isn’t a part of human society.  Or does she disguise herself as human and live amongst us?

I also find it funny that she’s referred to as ‘Achi the Dark Nymph’ so frequently like it’s a full official title.

[angelfirehime]

Allison’s kind of hilarious if you actually pay attention to her backstory.  She comes from thirteenth century England (although I can’t really hear her with an English accent in my head), she’s an apprentice mage, because that was a thing then, but her outfit seems very confused.  It’s like she took a grim reaper’s robe and tied it off like a kimono.  She’s basically a towering pile of questionable assumptions about European history.

She’s also kind of a weirdly sexualized character.  With that ribbon around her waist she’s got a very emphasized figure, and she’s awfully flirty with Jason.  I don’t know how old she’s supposed to be (I guess she’s 800+ but you know what I mean) but Jason’s fifteen.  I don’t think I want to explore that route.

If I remade Scary Molly, I think I’d play with Allison’s weird admiration for Achi.  Like maybe they have a friendly rivalry that just goes too far sometimes.  They definitely have some history.

[angelfirehime]

There’s not much going on in Scary Molly, but all the characters in it are characters that never got recycled into anything else, so I feel its important to draw all of them.  I don’t know for sure what I intended for their colors, but I know my own general design sense, so I can make some pretty good guesses. Let’s start with Jason.

Jason’s the most remarkably average a protagonist as you can get.  He’s just like every wacky pervert boy character in Animagamistworld, but without the superpowers, until right at the end where he gets superpowers.  I can see a little bit of prototypical Matt in his shaggy, shitty haircut and overall lack of shame.  For his powered up form, I decided he should look a little older and more athletic, because this kid has literally nothing going for him.  He needs to actually look like a main character.

If I redid this story concept, I’d start it with that throwaway line about Jason selling his soul for muffins.  I’d construct some actual circumstance where that could plausibly happen, then bring Scary Molly in to somehow fix the problem and restore his soul.  But then!  He’s got a secondhand soul, bought and returned.  And that, by the internal rules of their setting, would make him a magnet for weird supernatural shit.  And then comes Allison.

I think the fact that his transformation is vaguely angelic has a lot of potential meaning in that scenario.  His soul is lost, returned, then exalted into this holy monstrosity.  But why?  Because an eyeless, spooky, wizardish ghost gave him a sword.  The weird gem on the hilt has kind of a sinister look to it.  Are Allison’s intentions entirely pure?  Does she REALLY need to turn Jason’s body into a weapon to save the day?  The more I think about it the more I’m tempted to actually write this.  But I’ve got enough on my plate now.

[angelfirehime]

Molly and Jason arrive at the mall, which is having a cheese sale.  “How do you know Achi’ll be here?” Jason asks.

“When evil is afoot, so is Scary Molly.”

“I won’t ask.  Ready to defeat the Dark Nymph?”

“Let’s rock.”  The two charge forward.  “Destroy!!!”

Jason strikes a pose.  “Achi the Dark Nymph, prepare to be defeated!”

“How heroic,” Molly snarks.  “Excuse me while I vomit.”

“Eh?”  Achi gives them a bewildered look.  “Who’re you?”

“Uh,” Jason points to himself.  “I’m here to kill you and break a curse, ‘cause a ghost chick told me to.”

“Moron,” Molly whispers.

“Oh, you’re working with the wench?”  Achi makes bedroom eyes at Jason for some reason.  “That’s not a problem.  Renei, Miya, Mina, attack!”  Her three conspicuously designed minions stand in a row, gazing menacingly at the reader.  “These three were deadly before the curse!” Achi brags.

So that’s it folks!  That’s all there is of Scary Molly.  I stopped writing it right before a fight scene!  Maybe I had realized this plot was stupid, but more likely I just didn’t want to draw a fight scene.

I suppose it’s just as well, because if Achi’s last line there was supposed to mean what I think it does, this was gonna get real stupid.  See, those three little girls are all OCs and they all have dumb as fuck powers and backstories and whatever.  This story as it stands is mostly self-contained, every character’s origins and motives have nothing more to them than what you see.  But if Mina (wavy hair with the bow, a psychic), Renei (short-haired with pokeball pendant, a martial artist), and Miya (side ponytail, she turns into monsters) were to fight with the abilities they have in their own canons, then I’d have to explain that shit.  And that’s a can of worms not worth opening.

If I made this story now, I’d definitely leave those three out of it.  I’d also opt to NOT write a plot this dumb with characters this bland, but maybe Scary Molly herself can be salvaged.  She’s a really stale combination of Gaz, Mandy, and possibly a dash of Creepy Susie, but that’s a cliche funny enough that it could work if I owned up to it.  Achi the Dark Nymph is kinda interesting too, if only because her personality and motives are extremely vague.  I could do anything with her.

Buuuut I probably won’t.

[angelfirehime]

It turns out ‘over here’ was the local mall.  It’s a poorly drawn yet vaguely lavish place with a Grecian statue fountain and a disco ball.  Several zombified children, most in costumes of some sort, run wild.  One of them has bitten Achi’s hand.  “Get off!” she shouts.  A little girl dressed as Princess Jasmine hisses at the reader.

This splash page is pointless in the story, but for my personal development as an artist it was a good idea to draw some actual settings for once.  And this one isn’t even that bad.  The perspective is warped, but at least I used rulers for the straight lines.  I like how those escalators have no internal mechanisms, they’re just magic stairs that need no support or structure.

[angelfirehime]

Allison’s face appears on the sword’s jewel.  “Of course!” she barks, “What’d you expect?  Now, go!  Hurry!”

Jason holds the sword up to his face, nearly chopping Molly’s hair helmet in half.  “Okaaay...” He gazes skeptically at the jewel in his own sword-hand.  “That’s kinda weird.”

“Watch it with that thing!” Molly yells.

“Achi will be where the most zombies are.  Hurry!!!”  Allison strikes a really shitty, ineffective pinup pose.  “I’ll be waiting for you...”  Jason pops an angel boner.

“She’s totally shameless,” Molly groans.  She takes Jason by his non-sword-hand and leads him towards the plot.  “C’mon.  The Kid Zombies are gathering over here.”

Meanwhile, over there, Achi the Dark Nymph floats above three angry little zombie girls and makes them jump for candies.  “Y’want it?!  Huh?  Jump!”

Oh hey.  Those three kids at the bottom are other OCs of mine.  Alright then.  Was there a shared universe going on here?  Probably not.  Just in case they show up in other comics I’ll tag this page with them.

[angelfirehime]

Scary Molly looks up at her companion with awe and possibly admiration.  “Dude...!”

Jason has turned into the world’s shittiest Final Fantasy summon.  He has angel wings, chest armor, and boots with cowboy spurs on them.  The sword of eagle’s whatever is now fused to his right arm.

“Gah!” he gahs, “It’s stuck to my arm!  Get it off!”  He flails wildly with his non-sword-arm.  “Get it off!  Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff...”

With a deadpan stare, Molly holds up a mirror that she pulls from nowhere.  Jason continues to flail.  “Get it...huh?”  He sees himself in the mirror.  “Wuzzat?”  Turning his head, he realizes he has elf ears now.  For...some reason.

“The sword...” Molly whispers.

“...is magic?” Jason whispers back.

Oh my god the cowboy spurs crack me up.  Some suits of knight armor did come with spurs, but they look incredibly out of place on this mostly fantasy-inspired design.  And they are supremely overdetailed.

Also, if you include the ones on the sword Jason now has six wings.

[angelfirehime]

“This is your fight!” Scary Molly shouts at Allison.  “You go out there!”

Allison shrinks weakly.  “I’m delicate!  I can’t fight!”

“’Cowards die so many times before their deaths.’  You disgust me.”

“But I’m already dead!”

“I don’t care!!!  I’ll be back.”  Molly goes outside.  “Wait up!”

“You gonna date me?” Jason says cheerfully.

“NO!”

“Hi,” Jason says, possibly to the audience.  His motives are unknown.

“Let’s find this Dark Nymph person,” Scary Molly says.

“How’re we gonna do that?” responds Jason, with misplaced pseudo-italics.  Suddenly, the weird jewel on the sword’s hilt starts to glow!  And then the rest of the sword also glows!  “Hold on, the sword’s doin’ somethin’.”

“Hey...”  The scowl lifts from Molly’s face as she grows concerned for Jason.  “Are you okay?”

Jason begins to glow ominously.

Do all my high school stories end up this way?  With some unremarkable asshat of a teen boy suddenly getting glowy powers for no damn reason because a girl likes him?  How predictable.

[angelfirehime]

“Behold!” Allison crows proudly, “My ultimate creation!”  She shows off a really...really tragically fucked up looking sword.  It’s got four wings on its ass and some kind of evil jewel hilt.  Half the blade is shaped like hot rod flames.  My god how do you even hold that hideous thing.  Allison then names the abomination; “The Sword of the Eagle’s Vengance: Achi’s Downfall!”

“A sword with a subtitle,” Scary Molly says skeptically.

“You made THAT in an hour?” Jason exclaims.

Allison puts it into Jason’s hands, which seems both unsafe and badly drawn.  “I give it to you, Sir Jason.”

“The sword’s horizontal, if you couldn’t tell,” the author feebly clarifies.

Allison rubs her ghostly corpse cheek against Jason’s face.  “You’ll defeat Achi for me, won’t you?  Pweease?”  He gets a ghost boner, immediately.

“Why you filthy...” Scary Molly glares at the two, and it’s not entirely clear who she’s mad at or why.

“Don’t worry, Miss Allison!”  Jason takes Allison’s hand, “I’ll do it!”

“Good!”  She pushes him...up the stairs?  Were they not in the basement?  Whatever.  She pushes him outside.  Allison hides behind a couch.  “I’ll stay here.”

“Hey!”  Jason stands uselessly outside.

Hey, Scary Molly’s front door ALSO has a needlessly elaborate lantern!  Weird.  I guess that’s how I thought houses should look.

So anyways, that sword is extremely Deviantart and I’m almost proud of how dumb it is.

[angelfirehime]

Scary Molly brings her two companions down into a basement.  The standard array of handyman tools are displayed on a pegboard, behind a guillotine, some candles, an imprisoned skeleton, and the Bucket of Evil.  “Here you go,” Molly says, “Help yourself.”

“Do you have an anvil?” asks Allison.

“Yep.”

“10 pounds of raw steel?”

“Yep.”

“A spellbook of the Dark Arts?”

“1608 Edition.”

“Holy water?”

“Heck no!!!”

Allison curtsies.  “Thank you, Miss Scary Molly.  I shall be done in one hour.

And so they WAITED...

“I’m bored,” Jason says from between the panels.  He reenters the scene to point out a window (in the basement, an hour’s walk downstairs).  “Moll, a zombie ate your mom’s garden.”

Molly spends the hour meditating, evilly.

“Gaaarg!” Gargs the angry witch child, as she bites entire chunks out of an old-timey lollipop, far too huge to plausibly be Halloween candy.  She is still in Jason’s home, where his mother (who apparently was there the whole time) stands on a stool.  The angry witch child shakes her lollipop at the poor woman.

“Jason!” She shrieks, “Get the rifle!!!”

At some point during the hour of waiting, Jason starts harassing Molly.  “One date,” he barters.

“No.”

“Half a date.”

“No.”

“A kiss?”

“No.”  Somehow, Molly gets him into the guillotine.

“Are you sure?” he nonchalantly insists.

“Yes!” she says, from under an executioner’s hood.

Finally, after a damn hour, Allison emerges from whatever the fuck she was doing.  “I’m done!” she cheerfully exclaims, “Come see!”

So if I were writing this today, I’d have either Jason or Allison remark on how macabre Molly’s basement is, and then she’d respond that this was all just up for Halloween.  Y’know, because you’d expect the opposite.  But I think this was all supposed to be legit.  I wonder what kind of evil she’s got in that bucket.

Also: Jason’s mom owns a rifle and is willing to shoot a child.  Maybe she’s the REAL goth in this story!

[angelfirehime]

Scary Molly turns her head to reveal some really fucking cumbersome-looking spider earrings.  She correctly identifies the ghost.  “Ghost,” she says accusingly.

“Told ya she’s good,” Jason says, his arm around Allison’s shoulder.  Since she is a ghost and potentially non-corporeal, there is a nonzero chance that this is a hoverhand.

Scary Molly glares angrily, as anime veins pop up on her head.  “Did you sell your soul for muffins again?!” she snaps.

“No!” Jason blushes.  “That was a one-time thing!”

“Muffins?” Allison asks.  She is ignored.

“Allison needs to use your basement,” Jason exposits.

“Sure,” says Scary Molly, “Just don’t mess with the candles.  I don’t feel comfortable when nothing’s burning.”

“Is she always this frightening?” Allison whispers to Jason.

“Yeah,” he blushes, “Isn’t she beautiful?”

Scary Molly guides them to a really fucked up looking stairwell.  A giant arrow sign on the wall indicates that the stairs go down.  “Down here,” she says.  She is seven feet tall.

Later......

The three heroes are still on the stairs.  The stairs are jagged and non-euclidean, like sinister teeth.  “No Need for Rulers!” an unknown voice declares.

Allison shudders, her hands drawn in close to her chest.  She looks back up the stairs towards where they came.  “How long have we been walking?” she asks.

Jason is unperturbed.  “I dunno.  An hour?”

“Undisturbed by Allison’s eyes,” the faceless voice says, while pointing at Scary Molly.  She is four feet tall.

Okay, somehow, unintentionally, I recycled this poorly drawn hallway for a setting in Laserwing.  It’s a ramp and not a stairwell there, but it still has the poorly angled railing and the giant arrow sign on the wall.  I guess I’m just that bad at coming up with designs for ominous basement pathways.I should’ve written the story of Jason selling his soul for muffins instead of this one.  Maybe the fact that he has a sold soul accounts for why ghosts will randomly wander up to his house.

[angelfirehime]

Jason and the ghost girl stand outside, gazing into Jason’s house where that baby witch is running around aimlessly.  “She’ll leave,” the ghost says, “Eventually.  But she’ll eat all your food.”

“My mom’s gonna freak,” Jason whines.

“Unfortunately,” the ghost sighs, “This means I will need a new place to prepare.”

Jason gets weirdly happy all of a sudden and takes the girl’s hand.  “Leave that to me, miss!”

Later...

The two arrive...somewhere...and the ghost girl has her hood up again.  Jason smiles at someone.  “Heya, Moll, nice costume.”

He gazes fondly at an amazing character design.  An angry goth girl stands defiantly before them.  She has skull barrettes, a shirt that just says DEATH on it, and pure black sailor moon boots.  “It’s not a costume, moron,” she insists.  “What’s with the Grim Reaper over there?”

Jason smiles.  “This is...uh...”

“Allison,” says Allison.

“Right.  Molly, this is Allison.  Allison, Molly.”

“That’s Scary Molly.” she hisses.  “I sense supernatural forces.”

There she is!  The character so Good that I named the whole story after her.  Look at that.  She’s literally a teenaged Gaz with skunk hair and pointy anime boots.  Scary Molly is the culmination of everything I thought goths should be.  I should revive this comic just so I can draw her a lot.  She’s perfectly Terrible.

[angelfirehime]

Achi the Dark Nymph flies past the window that our heroes have just stepped away from.  The ghost turns to her host.  “Pray tell, how old are you, kind sir?”

“Fifteen,” he says.  “And call me Jason.”

“That’s good,” she responds.  The ghost peeks out the front door.  “Only children 12 and under are affected.  The change is triggered by the moonlight.”  They step out into the open night air.  “Be very careful.”

Suddenly, a child appears!  The small girl wears a typical witch costume.  “Raaawr!” she says as she approaches them menacingly.  The two heroes squeal and gasp in surprise.

The child sniffs the air, then runs past the two and into Jason’s home, where she devours all his trick-or-treater candy directly from the bowl.

“Oh, great,” he whines, “It’s in my house.”

Finally, one of our two protags gets a name.  ‘Jason’ was kind of a default name I would toss at characters I didn’t care about.  It’s the name my mom would’ve given me if I were born a boy.  So if you see a character in my works that’s named Jason they’re probably a nothing man who doesn’t matter.

Also, wow is that a detailed lamp in the last panel.  Who has a fancy lantern like that mounted right next to their front door?

[angelfirehime]

“So what?” the boy asks, “Kids are always candy-sucking monsters these days.”

The ghost sighs.  “It seems I shall have to show you.”  She clasps his hands in hers, and he immediately gets a creepy ghost boner.  She leads him to a badly drawn window.  “Look out there,” she says.

“Whoa...” he gazes out onto the street, where a bunch of mutant children with demon eyes attack a hapless adult.  The grown-up cries for help, but nobody comes to her aid.

Above the scene some kind of witch-elf floats through the air.  She shows the children below her hands, which are on fire.  They hiss and growl up at her.

“Is that Achi the Dark Nymph?!” The ghost wonders aloud, “She’s cut her hair!  Looks good.”

Achi smirks.  “Heh heh heh...this’ll be fun.  Time to attack!”

The ghost’s comment about Achi looking good is kind of amusing.  I don’t know if I had been trying to build up some kind of friendly rivalry between the two or just tossing out a cheap joke.  Maybe the ghost girl has a begrudging admiration for Achi?  Or maybe she just has strong opinions about hair.

[angelfirehime]

The ghost maiden jabs herself in the face with her Achi puppet.  “I stumbled upon Achi’s evil plan to turn the world’s children into evil zombie slaves of EVIL!!!”

“I was able to break her concentration, causing her spell to be weaker than planned!”  She flicks a very small rock at the puppet, then makes an ‘ow’ noise for it.

“Oh, no!” she speaks in a voice for ‘Achi,’ “My beautiful spell!”

“Instead of permanently turning children into zombies, the spell lasted only until midnight, and only under certain conditions.“  She wiggles the puppet for herself around dramatically.  “Achi set her zombie slaves on me, and I was killed!  Oh no!”

“This is where zombies would be, if I had more little puppets,” she whispers into empty air.

“I like puppets,” says a voice between the panels, presumably the author’s voice.  “They funny.”

“That was on October 31, during a full moon, when Venus and Mars were perfectly aligned.  Just like tonight.”  She pulls out a microphone, somehow, and speaks into it with one pinky up like an anime would do.  “The curse shall come into affect tonight.  I must avoid any deaths!”

Somehow, possibly through ghost magic, the two puppets stand by themselves behind her and cheer.  “Yay!  You can do it!”

The boy stares at this embarassing scene with skepticism.  “That was...interesting...I guess...”

“When they are zombified,” she continues,” the children will become hostile and seek out sugary foodstuffs to devour...it’s horrible!”

I’m never sure how to transcribe a single character’s non-linear conversation with herself.  They’re always awful and I’m sure I did it a whole lot more in comics to come.  I’m sure it seemed funny and clever at the time.  I hadn’t quite grasped yet that in a visual medium, even when you could put the word bubbles anywhere you want, the dialogue still needs to make sense sequentially.

Also, I probably stole this plot from a Disney Channel Original Movie, but I can’t remember a specific one that did this.  It probably happened though.

[angelfirehime]

The dead-eyed girl gazes sadly at her host.  “Nay, good sir, I am a lost soul, a ghost, one might say.  I have come from the realm of the dead...”

“...To eat our brains???”

“Ah...no, not really.  I come to warn thy people of a terrible curse; the very curse that killed me 800 years ago.”

Completely assured of his safety, the boy switches right back into ogling this dead girl.  I like older women... he thinks to himself.

“May I tell you the tragic tale of my death?” the ghost asks.

“G’head.”  The boy prepares to have grim sexual fantasies about her death.  She talks pretty! he thinks.

“Very well!”  She procures two shitty puppets, one of herself and the other of some other girl, who has angry eyes.  “I was an apprentice mage in England, long ago.  This is me if I were a puppet.”

The insufferable puppet show begins with the ghost girl puppet wandering around alone.  “One night, on All Hallow’s Eve, I was picking berries in the woods...”

“La, la, la...” says the puppet.

“...When I ran into the evil sorceress, Achi the Dark Nymph!”

“Mwahahaha!” the Achi puppet shrieks.  “I am evil!”

I can tell that all of these characters were made up on the spot.  ‘Achi the Dark Nymph’ sounds particularly uninspired.  Also, why were all my male characters the same gross creepster template?  What the fuck.