One of the last big things Jeff and I did together was a book called "The End of Mastorism." Yeah, we did a couple things afterward, but this was the epitome of everything we had done, and what little would come afterward. And the whole thing hinged on a character called… PROSELYTE! Proselyte, in many ways was like the Anti-Monitor of the Mastorism Universe, he was to become the "be all, end all"– though admittedly, he creation was much more influenced by the Hal Jordarn/Parallax story going on in Green Lantern at the time, than Crisis on Infinite Earths. In fact, right down to his name. We opened up the dictionary to the "P" section and picked out a good name for this fella.
It's also worth noting that the original stories had a bit of a "religious" tone. We had the "Church of Mastorism" and stuff like that, so the name made some sense in that context. Wanting to keep the name, I stretched a bit to have it make sense (see panel one), but… really… its not that big of deal to to me, since we already have characters called arbitrary things like "Mastors" and the "Phantom Lord" and whatnot.
THIS Proselyte, though, is much different from the older one. For the truly curious, you can head back to the filler pages between pages 66 and 67. The second one features John John standing over a very dead Proselyte (quite literally his last appearance). I went through a few design phases. It didn't make sense to me to have him dressed up as a super hero, especially given the way he is summoned/appeared, though I did retain some of that. There were just a couple minor features that I retained and build a fairly new character off of that. These are all very recent design changes. I'll have to scan my design process from my sketch book so you can see how I came to this… but basically, i felt it was a lot more fun if I made him into some kind of supernatural monster, vs just a reallly tough guy.
ANYHOW, enough of that historical garbage… here he is, I was looking forward to drawing him with his "mouth open" in full glory so it was quite a bit of fun there. Not sure if I'm 100% happy with the background decision– It was originally going to have other ghosties swirling around (much like that "summon the auras of the dead" page with Matt) but ultimately, I felt that it detracted the focus from the HORROR that is PROSELYTE! So you got some cheesy 90's "speed lines" instead.
Alright, I'm getting to work on the next page, so I'm gonna cut this off, but not before saying thanks for reading and commenting… and your comment replies to follow!
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DAJB - Yes. I think there's another saying for that, too, but this is rated T!
mushroom - are you SURE that's what you hope?!?!? heheh
azuJOD - Hey! I've never heard that before. Neither has Matt, apparently. But so true!
Ben - Thanks buddy!
darkwaterfrey - OH! That's the phrase I was telling DAJB about!! hahah!
NickGuy - Thanks! Reminds me a bit of Dave Gibbons…. well I wish anyway.
Scorpious - Trouble!
repoman - Thanks! Stay tuned to see what he does (or look at the page I'm posting these comment replies to, i guess)
julio - Thanks! Thanks for checking out Mastorism! I went and check out your comic… cool! I didn't have to much time to dig through the archives yet, but I'll get to it.
jazzcop - Thanks, thanks and thanks…. oh and… YOU KNOW!
Jabali - Isn't he though? I kinda wanted him to still appear ominous and scary before he bears his teeth!
Aghammer - Thanks! Glad I got the "scary" reaction from some folks. That's what I was going for. And SUPER BIG THANKS for turning your friends on to Mastorism! That's the best. Hopefully we will cross paths at a con someday!
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