All moved in, but no internet yet. Were supposed to have it today, but long story short–we don’t. Maybe tomorrow.

But don’t fret. A new page of Bolt: 6:59 will post tomorrow at 2:00 pm as scheduled.

As I said in my last post, I’m trying to write a comics story by first designing the characters, which is totally backwards and wrong. But why not? Every story is different and gestates differently.

I’ve been working so hard on Mielikki the Ice Maiden that my other protagonist was getting a short shrift. Red-Eye is basically a thinly-veiled Green Lantern ripoff. That’s no secret. Check out this panel from Neon Girl #0:

Not terribly original. I thought the guy deserved to be fleshed out, so I started with a redesign that pays a more subtle homage to GL while still being its own thing. I came up with seven costume designs. Here are my four favorites. I’m leaning towards the last one. What do you think?

I’m trying to come up with a story for Casey Bohn’s upcoming superhero anthology. The first thing I did was look through my old sketchbooks for any unused ideas or characters I had floating around. And I found one: Mielikki the Ice Maiden. A character that has a story, I’m sure—I just don’t know what that story is yet.

Next step was to finalize a character design, since this character only ever got as far as a couple of rough sketches. I realize I’m working backwards here by designing a character before I even have a story, in the hopes that a story will present itself out of all the drawing. But what the hell. You have to start somewhere.

Here she is wearing a traditional (ish) viking helmet and a cape with fur-lined hood, and wielding a combination halberd and cudgel.

Here she’s wearing an outfit suggested by Robyn. You can see she’s more sylvan here, slender, with fur-lined hood, cape, and boots, chain mail skirt, and boobs popping out of the top of a corsety thing. She even has elf ears.

Here, she’s tall, lean, and muscular, and her outfit suggests medieval armor. (I think it does, anyway.)

Since Mielikki is a Nordic goddess, I originally had in mind a sort of larger than life, busty, muscular warrior woman. A female Thor, basically. Here’s my attempt.