A DISTANT SOIL: The Ascendant Chapter 1 Page 14

I’ve drawn some pretty rough scenes in comics over the years. A human slaughterhouse in Clive Barker’s Nightbreed, Thessaly peeling off Creepy Guy George’s face in Sandman, and the tortures of Hell in Barker’s Hellraiser.

But this scene creeps me out more than anything else I have ever drawn.

11 Comments

  • Colleen

    Note: Hatching, stippling and costume detail on this page is by hand. There are two small spots of patterned tone sheets in panel one, but the diamonds, spots, stippling and other details are entirely by hand.

  • Carla Speed McNeil

    My five-year-old’s fish died last week. Through his tears and self-recriminations, through the sound of the scar forming on his mind, I thought, “Well, that’s the great child’s ritual of the pet funeral. Better to start learning on a fish than on a person.”

    Poor baby. Yes, this scene is cold to the bone.

  • Carla Speed McNeil

    I did wonder, though, what the other adults are doing. Making sure they’re good and dead? Holding down the smell? The one on the left is making a throwing or pushing gesture– are they the attendants who remove the dead ones from their audience with the avatar?

  • Colleen

    They are making sure any residual psychic trauma is not leaving the immediate area. They are blocking fear and pain from leaking to others.

    There doesn’t tend to be any smell immediately after death. Unless you lose control of your bowels. Which I imagine also happens in this scene.

    Someone has to cart the bodies away, but they use telekinesis to move them.

  • Allan

    Still one of the most powerful and disturbing scenes ever to appear in a comic. The high contrast, Beardsley-influenced art suits the subject matter perfectly.

  • Allan

    Y’know, looking at thes pages again, Winsor McCay keeps coming to mind. Perhaps it’s the detail and colourful clothes. Are you a fan?

  • Kari

    It’s funny how Niniri is trying to slowly brainwash Seren into accepting his (horrifying) roll and becoming a puppet to the heirarchy, and Sere just drops him in the middle of the truth of it, traumatizes him for fun, and (likely) plants the seed for his future rebellion. Hm. :/

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