Father Will Come And Set Me Free

Author notes

Revelation #9 Page 1

Air Raid Robertson

on May 19, 2009

This is the first page of a sequence regarding the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The second page will appear tomorrow, with pages three and four following in the same pattern. This piece was done with Micron pen and Prismacolor marker. Like most of my black and white drawings, there isn't any digital tweaking.

The excerpts of scripture come from the King James Bible. I'm not Anglican, but I used this version of the Good Book because I think the verses of the King James have the most poetry in them. There's a certain ring to its language that I like.

There's a variety of ways that I could've rendered the First Horseman. I decided not to make him the personification of pestilence since he isn't actually mentioned as such in the Bible. (That label came later on in the Middle Ages for obvious reasons)

One popular theory is that the First Horseman is supposed to be the Anti-Christ, so I made him resemble the classical interpretation of Jesus. I favored this idea over the speculations that the First Horseman represents either Nero, Saladin, Germanic barbarians, or Obama. (Some reasons why are more clear than others)

You may notice that the First Horseman is clad in something resembling armor of the Crusades-era. That's mostly because I put the Second Horseman in that type of armor and thought that it looked cool. Not really knowing the sartorial direction I wanted to take with Horsie the First, I went with chain mail once again.