For Page 1 I wanted to get the horror poster idea across though I realized since that the inspiration I was looking for was more of the EERIE comic horror covers or part of some cultural meme that I couldn’t find any original examples of.
The shadow is foreshadowing though (The Man Who Already WAS A MONSTER bum bum buuuuuum!) and I tried to go for the most generic era-appropriate hero name I could – thus Dirk Patrick. Facially I had the Dirk Patrick look pegged as “he has some heavy European facial features that don’t fully match his face which is fairly narrow, think Harrison Ford features on a Ryan Gosling facial frame” though that changed to more a more Brando-esqe look with some less defined features (it helped that I looked up actors and actresses of the time period) – that make sense when we get to page 2 and see Ted’s true face.
Baron Untier was me trying to come up with some Nazi evil scientist name even though in 1930 there weren’t really the Nazi-Nazis in existence – maybe it was more anti-German backlash post WW1 and the use of a group that could be seen as amoral and evil enough to make monsters. This opening though came from inspiration from seeing The Artist and the early horror films and I think it is a solid page.
Also down there is Gabby Gates who is a Clair Davis/Marion Bowes -type character in the first script – blonde starlet in the final script. I think James just used red to stand out more and it worked well.
Also here is the page in black and white.
Fun note – for the coloring, I found a Jack Kirby color swatch that was used by James for everything.
Next page will probably be up in a few days.