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This time around I'm going to be playing with a few characters from the popular web comic, Johnny Saturn. I stumbled across this comic a few weeks back and started working my way through the back issues. By the time I got to Johnny punching out an angel to get back to Earth, I was pretty much hooked.
Johnny Saturn, as a character, is very much in the Batman mold, tough, resilient and unrelenting. He's also a man at the end of his career, whose body is failing him. As the story opens, Johnny has just died in battle against a mad bomber Dr. Horatio Synn. This first Johnny Saturn, a.k.a. John Underhall, is a man who appears to be in his mid to late 40s, if not a bit older. He's scarred and has bad knees and he consumes quantities of pain medication that would give Dr. Gregory House pause.
He fights his last battle against Dr. Synn, diverting a tanker truck filled with liquid hydrogen away from Synn's intended target. Johnny goes to Heaven, Synn goes to Hell and neither one follows the usual pattern of the recently dead. Johnny punches out the angel sent to greet him, who, with his condescending greeting to the celestial realm, drives Johnny to return to Earth and change his fate, slightly. Synn, in similar fashion, devours the demon that first confronts him and frees himself from the Inferno.
Synn becomes more and more demonic upon his return to Earth. Before long, he's a Godzilla-sized demon hybrid wreaking havoc on the city. Johnny was injured too severely in his battle with pre-demon Synn to take part in the fight with the demon-synn, but the heroes of the Squadron Premiere are nearly wiped out in the battle.
As time goes on, Johnny becomes the protector of the inhabitants of Elysium City, the underground sanctuary for the dispossessed. Up on the surface, Greg Buchanan is finding the limitations of being a policeman too...confining. Buchanan decides to take up the mantle of Johnny Saturn, having a new armored costume made. The new Johnny Saturn's look is sleeker in design than the original costume, but still bears some resemblance in color scheme and over-all design elements.
One of the things I like about this series, and I mentioned this to the creator, Scott Story, are his color choices. While he's doing a fairly straightforward superhero series, he does not select from the same color palette that most comic colorists use. This gives the comic a distinctive look that sets it apart from other comics.
I usually do a few drawings of the original designs, but since the comic is readily available online, I think it's easier and better to let Scott's work speak for itself.
For my design, I used as much of Scott's design as I could, but streamlined it a bit further. The vambraces and greaves protecting his arms and shins, I tried to give a cohesive design. I tried to make his belt a little more "movie-Batman" style.
There were a couple of other characters in the series I thought I'd take a whack at, while I'm at it. The Superman analog in the Squadron Premiere is Brian Farraday, who calls himself the Utopian. He's powered by the "utopian ideal" whatever that may be. For my design, I sort of looked at a way to streamline Utopian's costume along the lines of an Alex Ross design.
I like the subtle colors Scott chose for the Utopian. Usually this class of character is done in bold colors, I know I usually choose deep blues and reds for my "Supermen".
Staff of Life is the other Squadron member I decided to work on. I like the power staff idea and hers has a little floating ball suspended between two caps at the head of the staff giving it a unique look. I didn't like Scott's design much, except for the color scheme. It looks just a little too much like it was thrown together from an 80s gym bag, to me. The bikini-over-tights look is carbon dated. Sorry, Scott.
In keeping with the idea of simplifying the designs, I reworked the gloves and boots and streamlined the body-suit. I tried to keep to Scott's color scheme and evoke that same basic style.
I also did a Google Sketchup model of the Squadrom Premiere's headquarters that Scott posted on his site. I liked how the design evoked the Justice League's Hall of Justice, but with an architectural influence different from the HoJ.
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Copyright © 2009 Joe Singleton
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