Early King Roach


I debated whether to post some of the next few sketches. They’re really sketchy sketches. I try to post art here that doesn’t take a lot of head scratching to figure out what’s in the image. They’re from my end of ’99, beginning of ’00 sketchbook and many of them deal with the development of the character of King Roach.

King Who?

Yes, another unpublished, in development comic series. You may have noticed how fond I am of monsters. King Roach is an attempt to develop a series that features lots of monsters, particularly giant monsters – monsters that cause lots of property damage just by moseying down the street.

I wanted a kid to be the hero. But I didn’t want him to be standing on the sidelines cheering on his pet monster/robot/superhero, while said pet actually fought the other monsters. I wanted him to be active and involved. So, obviously, he should be one of the monsters. Obvious to me but apparently obvious to no one else. I can’t think of a giant monster story that has the featured kid turning into one of the monsters. The closest we seem to get are stories of kids piloting giant robots who fight monsters.

So, this page features early sketches of our hero both as a human and in monster form at the bottom of the page. He’s the humanoid monster, not the dinosauroid. Not sure who the little girl at the top of the page is supposed to be. She looks like one of the pharmacist’s kids.