"Saguarables" Comic Preview Art

Art for my epic comic book. This is my American Southwest “Mummy”. (Bad guys all based on classic monsters.)

What makes a mummy? Well, it’s mummified. Their stories involve curses. And deserts. Those are what I focused on for my mummy.

I came up with the idea of using jams or marmalades as a stand-in for the dusty old wrappings. Colorful. Even beautiful, since they are see-through like gemstones. This monster would be in glass jars somehow.

I think its’ always cooler when the character’s origin is spread out. She’s not a specific person from a specific city or time. I looked up synonyms for “jams” and “marmalades” and found “confiture”. The “chir” sound rung a bell, and sure enough, a “chirr” is a vibrating sound, like crickets! “Confi-Chirr”!!!

She’s made up of the final cries and dirges of the animals, plants, rocks, and horizons, of devastated deserts. The curses and angry howls preserved in preserves. Eventually, when enough was gathered, was anyone surprised that it didn’t stay quiet?

My family is in Arizona, and I LOVED visiting there when I was a kid. I also got to live there a few years when I was older and I take my kids out there whenever possible. So that’s the flavor of desert for my terrible monster.

Loud bugs to attack with curses. You’ll see cricket legs and bulging cidada eyes. (I discovered, during this drawing, that cidadas have FIVE eyes!) Rattle. Prickly Pear eyes. Palo Verde hair. Gila monster scales. That thing on her near arm that looks like a weird alien beetle parasite? That’s a “devil’s claw” seed pod! I collected some on a visit one year and then plastered them on my wall like they were crawing alien parasites.

A percentage of her power, a “cac-tithing”, gives her her “saguarables” (some spell it “sagearables” or even “sagwearables”). Magic armor or sometimes magical enhancements, like her cactus cowgirl hat.