Notice: All Adventurer's Mark comics are the property of me, Kevin Au.
These comics may be distributed but not modified from their original state.
April 2002 | February 2002 | January 2002 | December/November 2001 | October 2001 | September 2001
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This is the first season of the Adventurer's Mark. It began as a good story should begin: with a collection of interesting characters. My original idea had no real plot; There was only this vision of a crazy night with a longsword and suspenders, a fat guy sitting on one of those rubber donuts, and an activist fellow in hawaiian clothing. I have no concrete reasoning behind any of these choices. They merely popped into my head as I was trying to develop all my random comic-making into a unified project. In fact, I don't even remember how Gregory was invented. The point is, though, that I decided to hang onto the errant knight character and his butler. They seemed to have a lot of storytelling potential and I let the ideas percolate and the story unfold on its own accord. So here I present to you the first season. Enjoy!
This was my inaugural edition of Adventurer's Mark. Looking back now I can tell I've come a long way. The drawings are just horrible. But it is a humble beginning to what I consider my pride and joy.
With the arrival of those beautifully rendered and inked comics by Christina... I realized that I needed to up my standard of drawing. Hence I relied more on rulers and careful pen work this issue and ended up with a pretty decent comic. I initially had only the idea of Lord Markham (I only decided on his name this issue) being under seige behind some self-made barricade. Slowly I developed the idea frame by frame without knowing exactly how it would finish. I was pretty satisfied with how the story unfolded, and this episode was far more accessible than the previous one. This strip is one among my personal favourites. It's also where I set the 8 frame standard for regular episodes.
This is the larger, 12 cell strip done for the combined November/December issue. I figured it would be a good time to do a Christmas special and hence the overall theme is reflected in the strip. I tried to emphasize the interplay with Markham's family rather than the previous two comics which had been focusing on his strange character. I added a lot of subtle jokes that the careful reader will pick up on. Special note: This is not the same brother who is under seige in the 2nd season. This brother is a younger brother, Shropshire is the older brother. A lot of people tell me this is their favourite episode from season 1, thanks for letting me know.
I wasn't going to do a comic for January because the deadline was early and I was tired as hell from the holidays. But I got a lot of positive feedback from some friends and decided that I may as well keep the flame burning rather than skip a month. I had a few ideas about what I wanted to do, and they all involved winter mischief. In particular, I could picture the last frame of this comic (the catapult) but I needed to find a suitable story to set it up with. I finished this between 2:30am and 4:00am the first day back to school.
A while back I had a good idea to somehow place Lord Markham into one of those modern day medieval fairs. Now, I had no clear idea what he would do; I only knew for sure that he would stir up some shit! And so I decided that the only way to give this theme the proper treatment was to break it up into two parts.
There are several idea contributions here, and credit goes to Paul for naming the rival knight: Cyril.
There are a few fun easter eggs contained in this issue... keep your eye out and pat yourself on the back if you spot them.
I really apologize for the poor drawing and the obvious attempts to minimize my effort through a continuous bust perspective. HOWEVER, it does make sense given the framework of this episode. If you're running from the cops you want to show as little about your location as possible. Regardless, I had a rough month so I made this comic at the absolute last minute. My apologies and hope to see you all next year in the TOIKE! There's one good easter egg in this issue... happy hunting.