Posted July 20, 2022 at 11:58 am

Writing

A style change! Book 1's theme coming home to roost! And the first time ever we get to see Alexander with another face and another name.

This chapter is the culmination of an aspect of Alexander's personality that I had presented throughout the course of Book 1: his hunger for conquest and breaking records. We saw his desire to hold on to his worldly achievements, to overcome death, to master the impossible monster horse, defeat a rival, see the world, and conquer more lands/defeat more rivals in his lifetime. This thirst for life, for being ambitious, and for never settling is what Arrian calls his 'pothos' (longing).

Alexander's longing is a motif of interest in many works about him, especially in the Alexander Romance -- where it's treated as both something to admire and a warning against the kind of greed or spiritual emptiness that comes from never being happy with enough. There's a moralistic, almost religious tone to the warning (which makes sense, as many variants are based on an Abrahamic core) -- go beyond the divine and you'll be humbled. Look down upon the earth, Alexander!

One of the legends in the Romance that touches on this theme is The Ascent of Alexander, a popular story in medieval Europe. The story's pretty much what's presented in the first half of the chapter: Alexander attempts to claim the heavens using griffins and a nonsensical chariot-throne. Then the angels scold him for his audacity, for daring to take posession on God's domain when he's barely known the entire world, so he gives up the project -- whether violently (by crashing) or peacefully.

Alexander the Great being carried by 6 griffins in flight, while a crowd gawks from below. Roman d'Alexandre en prose’ ('Talbot Shrewsbury book’), Rouen 1444-1445 British Library, Royal 15 E VI, fol. 20v

I'm not a religious person however, so my Alexander Romance is not interested in the religious reading, even though it does support the secular reading I'm interested in. Which is this: conquering personalities are toxic and they need to be stopped.

I'm being a bit facetious, but there is a reason behind this. Leaving aside the part where he was an actual warlord brought up in a conquering culture, I view Alexander's personality as analogous to the culture/personality type represented in start-up tech and game industries: workaholic, passionate, ambitious young men with a lifelong desire to "disrupt" established norms, to break records, to achieve unicorn levels of wealth and success. Demanding that their team members or employees match their extreme energy levels -- to take unpaid overtime, to disregard health, to ignore family, to sacrifice work-life balance -- for the sake of going beyond for the project, and behaving irrationally/angrily when they realise their team cannot make those same choices.

We see this most clearly in the Hyphasis mutiny in 326 BCE. This mutiny is interesting to me, and is included in this chapter, because it actually shows the toxicity of Alexander's passion, that it demoralised and harmed his people, that it can be weaponised to manipulate and guilt. Alexander had asked so much of his army to keep moving into Asia with no break, and almost none of them had gone home to Greece since their departure 10 years ago. 10 years!! Keep in mind that a huge part of the Greek army consisted of farmers, peasants, merchants, basically ordinary not-upper-class folk. To be away from home for so long in danger, in an unfamiliar place where you don't speak the languages, and at risk of life is incredibly difficult -- emotionally, physically, mentally.

Here is Arrian's recounting of the Hyphasis mutiny, starting with Alexander's speech from Chapter XXV to his defeat in XXVII.

For lack of space in the comics medium, I didn't manage to include Alexander's long speech attempting to convince his exhausted, burnt out, literally-in-rags army to keep pushing for more more more, but I hoped I got the gist of it across in the annoyed retort to Coenus.

Though there is something to admire about Alexander actually being on the ground with his men, marching and battling and risking his own life, there's a disingenous vibe about it when he weaponises his own participation to dismiss his army's burnout (to me anyway, being way too deep into internet and tech culture and having seen the many crashing and burnings of disruptive unicorn, great-man companies like WeWork, Facebook, Twitter, Blizzard, etc). The imbalance of power, privilege and access to safety between Alexander and his army must be recognised. Like many of the startup unicorns, both they and Alexander are advantaged by access to cultural, educational or economic power, and surrounded by a powerful network of who will protect them and feed them well (which many of the ordinary do not have). To put it simply, he never had to carry his own luggage. Recognising this does not discount the ideas or efforts of Alexander and his ilk, but it puts into perspective why they are able to maintain the energy to keep pushing themselves.


Anyway,

The army and the griffins broke because of Alexander's hunger.

The story that comes after is another famous one: of Alexander sacrificing his own cup of water so he can be in solidarity with his dehydrated, starving men as they go through hell in the desert.

Here's the other side of Alexander's willingness to share the spoils and scars of his men: that he is committed to be in solidarity and express the "good" parts of kingship: of responsibility and care. Of recognising suffering and to not benefit himself when he is given the choice to avoid said suffering.

Of course, we can all say what Alexander did is silly -- he could have just distributed the water instead of yeeting it away. In the 21st century, I don't think we're that impressed anymore by that performative expression of leadership. But it was something back then, and another reason why Alexander was held as a model king for centuries to come.

Both this desert story and the Hyphasis mutiny add to Alexander's complexity as a character, and there will be more of this type of pairing-of-stories to come.

----

The transcript for the medieval style portions is written in decasyllabic blank verse. It's not exactly iambic pentameter or consistent in meter all the way since I want to maintain some relationship to the default free verse (which has no meter except cadence, following the voice, and I have no aim for literary genius), but I kept it mostly all in ten syllables. I changed the writing style in the transcript to complement the change of visual style in the comic itself.

The dialogue in the comic tries to keep itself to decasyllabic blank verse wherever possible.

The Author's Voice is in alexandrine verse -- a 12 syllable verse with 6-syllable halves, indicated by a caesura, which gets its name from the French Alexander Romance.

----

Book 1 is an introduction to the narrative structure of the entirety of my Alexander Romance: a linear quest supported by non-linear flashbacks, anecdotes and legends that are thematically related.

It follows the East Asian 4 Act structure, known as kishotenketsu, which is my natural style of writing. A subject is introduced (Alexander and his greatness), explored and developed further (many anecdotes of his ability to dominate), followed then by an unexpected paradigm shift (the angels, philosophers) and finally, reconciliation of the shift with the original thesis (Alexander sacrificing his kingship). There are some other subjects being planted here that have not yet seen their shifts; I will let them blossom when the time comes. ;)

As mentioned, Book 1's theme is about Alexander's desire for conquest. Book 2 will follow up on a different aspect of his character, and will take us to Macedon more fully.


Thumbnailing and Sketching



Tools

Thumbnails: Moleskine notebook, mechanical pencil

Sketches: Procreate, iPad with Apple pencil


Time taken

Thumbnails: 10 minutes.

Sketches: Sketching took me an absurdly long time. In fact, making Chapter 7 was such a struggle that I lost track of how long most stages took. It didn't help that the entire time during its making I was followed by deadlines, travel, illness (not Covid) and then my first case of Covid. :/


Inking and Colouring

Tools

Inks: Procreate, iPad with Apple pencil

Colours and Letters: ipad, Procreate, Photoshop


Time taken

Inks and colours: As mentioned above, Chapter 7 was a struggle. Somehow, the medieval style rendering was so much time for so little progress despite its deceptive simplicity. I kept running out of patience.

No PDF for inks and colours since most pages are exactly what's shown on the archive.


Research

This is the first chapter where we see the many names and faces of Alexander. Each metamorph is based on or inspired by depictions of Alexander in medieval jewellery, illumination and carving (listed in the author's footnotes at first appearance). The layouts also borrow a lot from illumination, though I regret not having the brainspace AND the patience to actually push the visuals to its most experimental. Luckily there will be more opportunities to come... Hopefully not in a sustained way, because the physical act of rendering those pages was not pleasant.

Book One Thoughts, Coming into Book Two

(I will probably pursue a longer ramble on my blog)

I am overall very happy with Book One, but it's kinda being held back by its purpose as an introductory story out of narrative necessity. So I don't feel it's emotionally or artistically affecting me the same way The Carpet Merchant did, which is fine. Alexander Comic hasn't yet come into its full power. I haven't yet completely grown into what this project demands of me. The good thing now is that, with Book 1 done, I know what the baseline is. And I am ready to go very hard now on Book 2.

Posted April 11, 2022 at 8:15 pm

Writing

We've finally come to the part in our Hero's Journey where Alexander is given some Worldbuilding Exposition and a Mysterious Fancy Necklace from a strange lady of the lake.

Not just any necklace however. It's the wonder stone!

Aside from some explanation regarding the quest, the first half of this Chapter is about how kings and great men had always pursued but never achieved their goal for immortality. Attentive readers may also recognise some parallels (of the characters, themes, structure and setting especially) with a particular ancient epic given the set up of the previous Chapters up to now...

but hey, this is Alexander! He's a different kind of king - not like all the others - and whatever he puts his mind into, he gets it.

(We will see more in Chapter 7... the final Chapter of Book 1! OMG)

Thumbnailing and Sketching



Tools

Thumbnails: Moleskine notebook, mechanical pencil

Sketches: Procreate, iPad with Apple pencil


Time taken

Thumbnails: 10 minutes.

Sketches: 2-ish days without breaks, spread over multiple weeks of illness, stress and an overseas move.


Inking and Colouring




Tools

Inks: Procreate, iPad with Apple pencil

Colours and Letters: ipad, Procreate, Photoshop


Time taken

Inks: Everything's a bit of a blur unfortunately... due to the aforementioned life events.

Colours: It's definitely a shorter time than inks, for sure.


Research

The Lady's house and the Lady herself are anachronistic blends of two similar Alexander Romance motifs. One in which Alexander encounters a wall/fortress/castle/mansion and meets gatekeepers who refuse to let him through, but gives him a souvenir as compensation. ("I went to X and all I got was this.") The other in which he manages to enter a palace and discovers all sorts of wonders, from automata to booby-traps to fantastical treasures.  The closest variant that my retelling is based on is the variant where Alexander accesses by boat a city on an island in a river and is then given a stone with strange properties.

A wonder stone (or jewel) is a common enough object in the Romance, connected in some way to the Land of Darkness or Alexander's quest for immortality. The stone here is based on Nizami's version, where it's a key that shines light in a realm of pitch blackness (Canto LXIX, pages 798-800) and is a trinket that's heavier than a mountain, lighter than dust (Canto LXX, pages 811). With a little easter egg of the stone coming out a fish's belly (here's an illumination from a copy of the 14th century Trebizond Alexander Romance, Codex 5 in Istituto Ellenico di Venezia).

The stone as a prop I designed went through a few iterations. At first it was simply a loose blue worry stone that Alexander kept in a pocket and held in his hand, as depicted in the original Prologue.

Early 'standing in a white background' drawings of Alexander, Bucephalus, the Servant, the Lady (?), young Alex and Nicolaos, and two griffins. Some props like a wreath crown and the stone are featured.


Then it became a necklace, part of Alexander's outfit - so that its place in the story and his journey isn't easily forgotten. (Plus I can't explain where a pocket would exist on his chiton).

Posted February 15, 2022 at 11:26 am

Writing

I dreaded writing AND drawing this chapter ever since I decided to include it in my Alexander Romance retelling. (see Chapter Four's Author Notes for the reasons why).

Man, sometimes I really envy writers who only need to convey a story through prose - they can just handwave all the logistics of the action i.e there's a difference between writing the sentence "Alexander dropkicks Nicolaos" versus drawing how exactly Alexander is dropkicking. I touched on the difference when I was researching how to draw someone drinking from a kylix.

You can read how the race was written in the original. It's actually not a very long sequence, though packed full of names and brief descriptions of who tripped over first etc. However it's not exactly workable as is. So I had to make up some of what's happening and solve the logistics of adapting this race to visuals.

The biggest change is Hephaestion's involvement as Alexander's assistant. In the Romance, there was no mention of the assistant, or if Alexander had one, it was some Olympian charioteer called Laomedon. Hephaestion himself is only mentioned by name once in the Olympic Race section of the original Alexander Romance (we're told Alexander brought him along on a best-buds trip to Pisa, pretty much the same way as retold in Chapter Four), and never again. So his presence here is a "plot correction", as expressed by Alexander. Why did Hephaestion suddenly vanish? Where did he go? Well, this time, he's not going anywhere.

Inserting Hephaestion back into the narrative actually helped with the logistics. The other change in the retelling, not too obvious, is the sequence of events that led up to Nicolaos' defeat. I added the bit about Hephaestion cracking the whip at a competitor's chariot wheel, which then inspires Alexander to do the same towards Nicolaos. In the original it was either simply "Alexander killed Nicolaos" or "Alexander caught Nicolaos' wheel and turned him over", which... is not helpful.

In the Syriac Alexander Romance, the colours of the charioteers were specified. Normally I would follow these details if given them, but the image of Alexander/Hephaestion in blue persisted since the early days of Hephaestion's character design in 2019. The decision to keep them and Nicolaos in blue and purple was mainly to help them stand out more in the overwhelming orange and yellow palette, especially in the chaos of the action.

Other than that, the race is depicted almost faithfully to the original. A lot of chaos. This chapter contains the most violent action sequence I had ever drawn in my career... so far.

All of this adding, correcting and editing from my end is itself the metanarrative theme of Chapter Five. I made it as if it was my Alexander who requested the changes, for narrative reasons that will become clearer later on; but emotionally let's just say in 323 BCE the grief is still fresh.

-

The conversation between Alexander and the Servant is for sure very flattering. Alexander better soak it up, 'cause I am not going to be nice to him anymore. :)


Thumbnailing and Sketching



Tools

Thumbnails: Moleskine notebook, mechanical pencil

Sketches: Procreate, iPad with Apple pencil


Time taken

Thumbnails: 1 to 2 hours.

Sketches: Longer than usual because of how incredibly tough planning the layouts and logistics were. The portion before and after the actual race took a few days, and the portion with the race took a little more than a week.


Inking and Colouring



Tools

Inks: Procreate, iPad with Apple pencil, Photoshop

Colours and Letters: Photoshop


Time taken

Inks and Colours: about a month? This is counting the breaks when I had two brief bouts of illness from a flu and post-vaccination, AND some real life busyness.


Research

The bulk of the research is entirely visual: the chariots, horses, Olympic garb, etc. There's not much I can say here that isn't already in the footnotes lol

At some point I might have to make an artbook to show my sketches, studies and whatnot. We will see.

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