Secret Identities designs: Part 2

Here's the second part of the presentation of the character design process for the Frontliners, the heroes of SECRET IDENTITIES, the brand new Image comic by Jay Faerber, Brian Joines and me.

It debuts this Wednesday, 18th of February!

Check out Part 1 also.

 

 PUNCHLINE is a wise-ass with super-strength. In her civilian identity, she's a struggling stand-up comedian.
Yeah, she was a difficult one. I know I wanted to base her on Samantha Wright but we had a lot of trouble settling on a costume design all three of us, Jay, Brian and me, liked. Her first [D] we had to change cause her logo was too similiar with another hero's. And then, after Image's suggestion, we tried to modernize her look a bit. I had a small breakthrough [V] when I went back to the stand-up roots of the character and incorporated elements from Eddie Murphy's Raw and Delirious appearances. The whole thing came together when I combined these with Wright's sportswear [W].
I quite like some of the other costumes too though, I hope to bring them into play. I see Punchline as someone who'll have various outfits down the line... but I wanted to keep it simple for the first story arc.

 THE RECLUSE is a part dark urban vigilante, part pulp hero adventurer with a spider motif and an ancient curse hanging around his neck.
I nailed this guy's look pretty quikly. I was just asked to make him younger-looking and I changed a few details of his costume to make it more "pulp-y". My favorite detail is his handgun that he carries for no practical reason. It means something for him to have a gun. Because reasons. Secret, story reasons. 

 HELOT I usually describe as a heavy metal album cover come to life. A hard as nails, Spartan-LOOKING cyborg warrior on the run from his slave-masters. He doesn't really care to be any of these things, especially the “warrior” part.Well, as you can see, Helot ("Spartan" was just a working name) wasn't always a cyborg. We were looking for a super-soldier type of character but the cyborg angle gave him the edge his was missing. The man inside the helmet, I was pretty set I didn't want him to look Greek. There's an in-story reason for this that'll make perfect sense when revealed. The other reason was that I wanted to make sure that Greek neo-nazis, who try to adopt all things ancient Greek, hated the character.

 VESUVIUS is a former Roman Centurion caught in the blast at Pompeii who was dug up a few centuries later as a creature made of molten rock. 
My main problem with this guy was that I did not want him to look like Clayface on fire. He was big lava monster but the way I saw to make him different that all the other lava mosters was to bring in his Roman heritage. The rocks on his body resemble a centurion armour. He initially had a head that looked like a Roman helmet too but that made him look too aloof. Between the cracked rocks and the flames he is a very fun character to draw... quite relaxing really.

So that's our team, the Front Line. And here's the image that accompanied our pitch at Image. Crosswind and Punchline were redesigned after that.

SECRET IDENTITIES #1
THIS WEDNESDAY