Month: October 2019

Inktober Day 2: The Fire Pliers Pilferer

Posted on October 2, 2019 by eczarnik

For the second day of Inktober, I made another generic bad guy: The Fire Pliers Pilferer!

This pilferer belongs to a group of former farmers who were born with sticky fingers instead of a green thumb. His pliers burst into flames to ward off anyone who wants to take back what he acquires.

The pilferer’s shoresh root is לקח, which carries connotations of taking, acquiring and catching fire. If you mix the letters, you get definitions for agriculture among other things.

I’m not sure when this character might appear in “Milhamah.” I can’t really see him or his fellow members being directly tied to Bavel. The macrostructure obsesses too much with its own absurd conception of order.

But maybe the pilferers could appear in a farmland world around ‘Ever, where Ḥeleq might have a safe house. Part of the fun of making new characters is expanding the possibilities for your creative world!

October greets us with a guf

Posted on October 1, 2019 by eczarnik
Get used to seeing these bad guys in “Milhamah” Issue No. 3!

A third-rate Bavel guf is armed with a numbing needle.

This is a guf (plural: gufim). These soulless husks make up the Bavel Macrostructure’s shock troops and cannon fodder.
Giant corks replace what used to be their heads. They have the power to partially dematerialize. And they often fight with syringes that numb or weaken their opponents into blacking out.
In Hebrew, “guf” means body, but is also used for the grammar terms “first person,” “second person” and “third person.” Likewise, Bavel’s gufim come in three ranks; this one is from the third.
The guf’s shoresh (גוף) is associated with corpses, stopping things, plugs, vests, high boots, and gate valves. Mixing the letters also produces definitions of weakness, numbness, fainting and fading to black.

Inktober begins

Last weekend I started designing the first page of “Milhamah” Issue #3 after a couple of weeks of finessing the script. But in the meantime, I’ve also been thinking up characters, items and other new content to populate the “Milhamah” universe. I’ll be drawing them everyday during Inktober, so here is my first:

Inktober #1: Compassionate Vulture

Meet the Compassionate Vulture, a “caring” carrion eater who consumes the weak and dying just a bit early. But does she do it out of mercy, or hunger?

This will eventually be a generic baddie in the “Milhamah: Fighting Words” series. Its shoresh root is רחם — which encompasses compassion, wombs and vultures.

It’s a simple sketch, but I hope to do more of them in the days and weeks to come. So much of “Milhamah” is in my head, so the faster I can get the ideas down on paper, the more I can share with the rest of you!