Today is January 23rd, 2024 and the anniversary of my first long term attempt at webcomic that I started when I was fourteen. Despite having shelved it long ago back in college, I still privately celebrate it every year in my heart as a personal milestone, as the comic in question; "Faeries Bible" was the first time I committed to a single project for any long period of time, running for 7 years with 150 pages plus 2 short 10-12 page spinoffs.
I don't do something every year but decided to indulge myself by drawing a tribute, not of Faeries Bible characters specifically, but a tribute to all the stories and OCs that came before it from the time I was 11 to the time I was 14, at the point I stopped calling each story my first, my second, my third, etc. story. There were many ideas that never left the concept phase, but these were the ones I stuck with long enough to be considered stories.
So this year I decided to indulge some old (fictional) friends.
Shadow and Bugsy from Shadow's Quest
I'm pretty sure I mentioned this in a previous Shadow's Quest post but I really really wanted to/intended to redeem Bugsy. I just really liked his Moth-like appearance and the idea of Shadow and Bugsy making amends as half siblings coming from an abusive situation where they felt (at least on Bugsy's part) that they had to turn on each other to keep their standing in the demon family.
Judging by the art style it looks like I drew this during chapter 2 or 3 of Faeries Bible so I thought I was going to return to Shadow's Quest eventually at that point. He looks very different than his original appearance in the beginning of the comic, but I guess that's a combination of art improvement and being upgraded to a party member rather than a potentially killable side antagonist.
Also he looks less thotty than he used to...
Seeing as I had redesigned him once already I decided to do one of my warmup doodles as an exercise is re-redesigning him looking less like "Just a guy with wings and Feelers" inspired a bit by Final Fantasy X's Magus Sisters as well as "What if my OC's Rubette and Bellamy had a son?". Admittedly I think I have use for this design for a different story idea though
There is actually a colored version of this somewhere out there. I know I had put it in the Gaiaonline art arena, but my old Gaia account is in deep sleep and I'd have to wrestle to get it back and I am too tired and drained to do so right now...
I call these the "Pink Pages" because the paper has discolored to a pink hue.
Prior to starting the actual chapter 1 comic pages of Shadow's Quest I drew this in the back of a school notebook as sorta a random middle chapter as a pilot. Prior to this Lily and Shadow pick up a party member in a perverted young swordsman for hire named Koi Rosa, and later encountered a rogue who fucked them over on a quest named Kai. This would be them reuniting with Kai, Kai's Monk friend who's name escapes me, and the dark haired waitress named Hirosai who was a gunner.
This time there are actual word balloons and writing so I don't have to try and remember what's going on here!
The original 15 pages of Shadow's Quest chapter 1!
So... the original finished pages are lost to time... I remember having them on my Freewebs.com (later Webs.com) website but the Wayback has proven useless in the search for them, so you'll have to just follow me on the best of my memory here...
Page 1-2
Lily Bell, a healer from a temple is passing through or maybe the temple sent her? She encounters a town resident who basically Volunteers her to kill the demons that have been wreaking havoc in their town. Approaching the tavern the small silver haired boy exits and hides behind her.
A big ugly horned fire demon exits the tavern, followed by a smaller moth-like cloak wearing demon. (Can't remember the big guys name but the little guy was called Bugsy)
Page 3-5
Lily hides the boy behind her and the big demon sizes her up before rubbing her ass and deciding she has good birthing hips and that he'll kidnap and marry her. Lily is completely ill-equipped to handle a fire demon and is lifted up by her arm. The boy comes to her rescue casting a fire spell and outing himself as some sort of magic user. The big guy, angry about this, picks the boy up by his head and whips him back at Lily hard enough to break his neck. Lily, regaining her nerve, manages to place a talisman on the fire demon that turns his own internal fire magic against him and burns him to death. Bugsy is hardly bothered by this, throwing off his cloak and flapping his wings to blow the big demons ashes away.... Only to have his cloak back on next panel...???? and fly away with some ominous words.
Page 6-9
Lily is terrified to see the boy is up and moving, having assumed him dead or at least paralyzed. He explains that it happens all the time which is just as sad and bizarre. Lily learns from him that the two demons were supposedly his older 'Brothers', though Lily doesn't believe that to be literal as the boy, Shadow, is clearly an Elf and the demons are super NOT and don't even look related to each other. In this world it's not uncommon for some demon tribes to kidnap people as slaves and force a family position onto them to legitamize ownership or something so Lily believes this is the case and decides to take Shadow under her wing on her journey (to where I don't remember)
Page 10-15
Somehow Lily's backstory gets brought up. She had a normal life with parents and she even had a sibling on the way. Her parents where killed in a demon raid, but two of the demons took pity on her and eventually left her at the temple that taught her holy magic. Shadow goes on to somewhat be a surrogate for the baby brother she never had.
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I am genuinely amazed at how bad these pages look now that I'm older.
Even with a ruler I could NOT draw parallel straight lines to make panels and gutters, and my confidence with word balloons was so low that I just opted to 'remember what they were saying'. Lily's hands are constantly missing and I don't know if she was supposed to have long sleeves that covered them or if I just chose not to draw them? Also delving into Lily's backstory so early I thought it was later? We'd find out that Shadow is, infact a fire demon and the demon that took pity on child Lily was actually Shadow's father and the King of the Fire demon tribe.
I actually remember my older sister and her newly acquired photoshopping skills was supposed to digitally redo the panels and add the text and word balloons but... like she just traced my already bad panel lines with the line tool rather than straighten and clean them up! And instead of proper world balloons she'd just right floating text with a line pointing to the speaking character and I genuinely felt so disappointed but didn't want to hurt her feelings about it that I just... stopped drawing the comic because I'd rather drop it than it look like shit or confront her on the really not good cleanup job.
There's another unmarked page that was supposed to be a scene of Bugsy reporting the big demon's death to two of his demon 'sisters' who also threaten him in return as they are scary bitches and he shirks away in a smaller form. I actually really wanted to redeem Bugsy and have him join the party!
Seeing drawings like this the memories start coming back to me. I feel like in my original diatribe about "Shadow's Quest" I didn't actually explain the story well, alopng with the other stories I was rambling about... mostly because I couldn't fully remember them. This charac
I can't remember her name, but she was from a set of identical twins that where like rivals to Sumiko; While Sumiko was some sort of servant/avatar to Byakko, the Phoenix twins where that but to Suzaku.
During the first of 3 arcs in the story a lot of the main cast would be picked up and a mystery would be set in place over the origin of the character Shadow, meanwhile the second arc, after Shadow's Identity as a fire/water demon hybrid with very important parents the second arc would begin and it had SOMETHING to do with going on a pilgrimage to find the chinese gods of Suzaku, Byakko, Seiryu, and Genbu where Sumiko would be added tot he cast.
I can't remember WHY they needed to find those Chinese gods tho. Hopefully in my scanning adventures I remember one day? And remember the third arc...
