Exclusive Patreon preview of... THE NEW COMIC? (Well, maybe.) (Patreon)

The first two pages of design roughs might be familiar if you're on the $5 tier or higher, as I posted 'em Wednesday for the DISTRESSED DAMSELS feature. Last weekend I drew a two-page story fragment featuring a winsome half-orc lass bedamseled by a hostile Dryad Druid, for a DiD commission request that ultimately went astray. (Turned out the premise wasn't really what the commissioner was looking for; I'm reasonably confident I can eventually unload those pages to somebody down the road.)

Howeva, I liked the look of the half-orc heroine, and in the course of this week started thinking about spinning her off into an actual comics project of some sort. The result is a still-in-development pitch for a fantasy RPG romantic comedy/ sex farce I'm calling Party of Two—as in, D&D adventuring party of two.)

Here's the basic concept: 

HE is a fierce, axe-swinging dwarf barbarian, manfully cultivating the stoic hardheadedness, bloodthirsty rage, and apocalyptic worldview required of a valiant but furiously death-seeking warrior bound for Valhalla—and soon.

SHE is a half-orc cleric worshipping a goddess of (tough) love, a good-natured healer whose relentless warmth, sweetness and affection—and horniness!—inadvertently but constantly undermines her dwarven partner's dogged attempts at steely discipline and coldblooded detachment. 

Can this starcrossed pair of dungeon-raiding, hanky-pankying monster slayers ever become more than just "adventurers with benefits?" Find out in Party of Two, folks! 

To be honest, not really sure where I'm going with this sucker. Right now I'm just thinking of brief little anecdotes with the obnoxiously cute couple, along the lines of the early shorts that started off Empowered. (In fact as I type this, I'm finishing up a page rough in Clip Studio Paint.) 

I do quite like the bite-size premise underlying this concept, as opposed to the much more sprawling and epic storyline I have in mind for my other fantasy RPG action-comedy pitch, which features a much larger cast and far more ambitious long-term plans. Party of Two is a modest enough "buy-in" that I could theoretically draw it myself, despite the slight technical issue that I do not currently have a viable means of producing finished artwork; I need to do much more experimentation with CSP to find some brushes that actually work for me.

If I could find a workable art technique, though, I might consider trying to run this by, say, Webtoon, as I'd like to test the waters with a modestly scaled project that doesn't involve 200+ pages at a time. (As opposed to Empowered vol.12, which I am currently stalled out on for reasons I'll likely discuss here at some point.)

OTOH, it occurs to me that Karla Diaz (Empowered and the Soldier of Love) could draw a mighty cute half-orc waifu, in fact probably cuter than I could pull off. So maybe I'll run it by her, if I don't end up drawing it myself. Who knows, folks? In any event, this pitch will likely go somewhere, I'm hoping.

Lemme know if you'd like to see more of the still-unnamed half orc and her dwarven kinda-sorta boyfriend, won't you? In the meantime, I'm off to finish a Party of Two page rough before the end of my morning shift.

Next Monday on this here Patreon: Mo' life drawings, as usual!