Two colour thingies

I said I would be trying a few things with colour, and this picture of Rigantona is one of those experiments. I combined my usual inks (Staedtler pen) with colour pencilling. It's not bad, I think - I especially like the skin tones and the hair. The dress, however, looks rather paler than I had hoped, though I picked the brightest green in my box :/.

I am planning a more ambitious drawing of Comm and the black stallion with which he is gifted by Caesar - but seeing as the design involves a horse it may take some time ;-). In any case, that drawing would be on better (and whiter) paper, and I'm curious what the pencil colours will look like in those circumstances.

Rigantona's brother, Vercingetorix, in pastel pencils. (Click on the picture for a larger version...)

I think that strictly speaking I make these much too smooth; I use my felt tool thingy all the time, blurring just about every pencil stroke. I guess this is my way of attempting more or less realistic colouring :-). On the other hand, my insistence on graphite pencil lines and sharp contours seems a little contradictory. But I rather like this effect.

Oh - I mixed the purple of the cloak. Go me! More colour experiments are imminent, now that I have got myself a book on colour theory and mixing, yay! ;-)

A few sketches

Here are a few more attempts at getting a grip on my characters and familiarising myself with their features. I often fill in the characters' backgrounds and stories while doodling. In the case of War in Gaul, I still have a long way to go.

I haven't been able to do something decent with Comm's scar yet. Part of the problem seems to be (though it is perhaps not that obvious in these sketches) that most of the time the thing I draw just doesn't look like a scar. It looks like, well, two lines drawn onto his forehead, not the remnants of a grisly wound. I'm working on it :-).

I like this sketch of Comm very, very much. Well, he's looking rather more handsome than he is supposed to be, but that's what usually happens along the way *g*. I like the contrast between him and Ambiorix; I do hope I'll get it to work in the story too.







This thingy developed into a picture that is rather too complex for my limited skills to be ventured upon without thinking and/or looking for reference. (Yep, I know what that says about my artistic genius.) Anyway: it just happened, and if there are plenty of things wrong with it (proportions come to mind), that is a result of its improvised nature. But hey, I don't care, because it's only a sketch. It's (vercingeto)Rix and Riga(ntona), who have been clamouring for my attention lately.

It looks like I am returning to my simple, clean style - though it is possible that it might change again when I get round to drawing actual story pages. Unfortunately those still seem a long way off.

First glimpse of Caesar

Yesterday, out of the blue, I thought I would draw Caesar. Aside from a few very tentative sketches of Veridicus (my OC, from the Gens Tullia), that makes Caesar the first Roman who gets a face in my story. That, um, leaves only Labienus, Volusenus, Marcus Antonius, Sabinus, Cotta, Cicero and a few others...

The situation with Caesar is of course much different from that of my Gaulish characters: we know what he looked like, because we have portrait busts that can definitely be identified as representing him. I don't know about you, but even before I started working on this comic I was able to recognise Caesar's face when I came across it in museums; I'm sure I'm not alone in that. As a consequence, I feel that I can't just go inventing wildly when Caesar is concerned, and I copied his face from several portrait busts. The merits of my copying capacities are very relative, but I am nevertheless rather happy with the result - I don't think anyone could look at the pictures on the left here and say, "hey, isn't that Caligula?" or something. I am glad that the man has a few expressive lines in his face; they help me individualise him and make his expressions more lively too. I guess I am making his nose larger and more hooked than in the busts, but I like a little exaggeration; my style isn't that realistic.

I have found another portrait bust that shows a more fleshy Caesar. We mostly see him as lean and even somewhat ascetic-looking; I opted for that image because - well, after all, Vercingetorix's best moves against Caesar were those that cut off the food supply.

I do need to try more expressions as I sketch on; right now all the old bloke ever seems to do is smirk. But he has an excellent type of face for smirking, too... I already know I'm going to enjoy drawing Caesar. He is greedy and ambitious and totally immoral, if you ask me, but he's also brilliant as well as quirky. You just have to love a bloodthirsty general whose nickname was "the Queen of Bithynia", haven't you? Every time I have to draw his hair I am reminded of the fact that he was balding and hated it, and grew very long hair at the back of his head so that he could comb it to the front to make it look as if he did not have a bald patch on his scalp :D. Oh, and he depilated, which is great because I don't particularly like drawing hairy arms :-).

Here's to show that I shouldn't be allowed to play with Photoshop colours because I obviously don't know how to use them properly. I should do a decent version of the picture, perhaps in watercolour or something; this is just some quick sketchy thingy.

I have been thinking at which points my main characters interact with Caesar personally. There aren't that many. Comm must have met him most often, joining him on the British campaign. I suppose Vercingetorix must at least have been introduced to him. Ambiorix, I'm not sure. I think I do need to know, or determine for myself, whether or not Caesar knows what Ambiorix looks like. I wonder just how much of the business with local dignitaries Caesar conducted himself... If he delegated a lot, that would make him something of a ghostly figure in the Celts' imagination - the man who is behind everything, but who is at the same time unapproachable, a kind of nemesis more than a human being. That could be interesting for the story.

Styles...

I find it a little bit annoying that I haven't been able to settle on a style yet for this project. I haven't found one for Mademoiselle de Maupin either. It's not as if I haven't got anything more basic to do and learn than develop a style for these stories - I mean, writing a scenario would be a nice start ;-). But for some reason I like to know about the visual element too; it goes hand in hand with the story and atmosphere for me, and I am used to developing both at once. For my previous project things actually started with the style and developed from there. So I'm feeling a bit blah about my inability to settle on a particular visual approach. I did a few try-outs, but none of them feels right so far.

The first thing I tried was inking with Faber-Castell PITT pens (see image above). Compared to my earlier inking style, it is rather loose (I used a brush pen as well as a more ordinary one), with an attempt at slightly more realistic shadowing. I don't really know what to think of the result. I guess that for me it is not neat enough, but on the other hand I am not sure whether my usual preference for a more polished style is all that suitable to a story about a brutal war...

Despite my love of black and white illustration, I rarely use quill pen and ink, and have never ever attempted to ink with a brush. I can't control them very well, and only started to ink my drawings when I discovered Staedtler pens - teensy felt tip pens that don't run, don't stain, dry very quickly and produce really neat lines. With them I have about as much control over the linework as I am ever likely to get. The drawback is that they don't allow much variation in the lines in the way that quill pens or brushes do when you apply pressure or swirl them. Drawings done with Staedtler pens arguably lack in spontaneity, too - they are perhaps more static than pictures done with a quill or brush, or at least they are when I am drawing.

In this drawing of Catuvolcos and Ambiorix I thought I would give classic inking a try. It is done with quill, brush and waterproof Chinese ink. I suppose the result could have been worse, but I am not entirely happy with it. Once more it is not quite neat enough to my liking, though that may be because I am just not adept enough at using these tools. Also, I am wondering whether my lack of insight into realistic shadowing does not make this type of drawing look merely clumsy.

Another thing I tried was to combine graphite pencil linework with colour pencil. I am not yet comfortable using colour in a comic; up until now I have always worked in black and white. But the Celts were a colourful people, so much so that the Greeks and Romans felt obliged to report on the many and bright colours of their clothing. Not to use colour means not to counteract the drab costuming in so many films...

One problem I already have to face is that the scanner, for one, does not like my pencil colouring very much. Quite apart from my merits in using pencils, the subtleties just don't register in the scan :/. I am garantueed to have trouble if I should try to get art like this printed from scans. It just won't look the way it should, and it's not a mere matter of enhancing contrast in Photoshop - I tried that.

Apart from that, I don't suppose it is very practical to use only pencils and no inks. I need to try a combination of colour and inks and see where it takes me. I have no idea whether inks and colour pencils combine well... So far I have only ever tried inks with watercolour, but that requires special paper, which is not very practical either.

If I manage to sort my colouring problems out, I should very much like to adopt clear colour schemes for each main character. It would make them more recognisable, and say something about the character at the same time. For Ambiorix I want blue and gold, and royal purple for Vercingetorix. Rigantona, as a priestess, I would dress in vivid greens. Green is the colour of the supernatural and of nature; I should like to give my druids green clothes too, in order to avoid the cliché image of the white-clad bearded man who is in remarkably little evidence outside of Roman sources.

I'm not sure about Comm's colours yet. My very first plans involved lots of black for him, but I wonder whether that wouldn't be a little too unusual. I'm still considering it. Maybe a black cloak and a red tunic? Volca will probably end up in browns and reds - warm colours, but not too striking. She isn't supposed to be someone who likes to draw attention to herself, unlike Ambiorix, who is a bit of a showoff.

Anything watercolour-related takes a bit more preparation than anything you see in this post - I can't just try it out in my sketchbook, because for sketching I like a very smooth sort of paper, and watercolour simply doesn't catch on that. I will be posting painted colours for comparison, hopefully soon, and comments and advice are very welcome :-).

Costume - a few sketches

In a previous post I mentioned the problem of having to convey lots of information without taking too much recourse to text. One specific element I will be dealing with in War in Gaul is that the Gauls were divided into many different peoples; in fact we are not even sure that they called themselves Gauls or even Celts.

According to Caesar, the Belgae differed from the other continental Celts by their descent from Germanic peoples. There is quite some debate among historians as to whether the Belgae spoke a Celtic or a Germanic language. Unfortunately these discussions are often frought with politics. Those people who argue vigorously that the Belgae spoke a Germanic dialect are sometimes prone to using their theory in order to emphasise, say, the difference between the Flemish and the Walloons in Belgium; consequently I find it difficult to know whether I am reading propaganda or honest historical research. Moreover, in wishing to distinguish between 'Celtic' and 'Germanic', historians are pulling a Caesar: they force some kind of order and distinction on a culture that does not actually seem to have cared much about this kind of deliniations. The Celts did, however, make distinctions among themselves: they seem to have been forever picking fights with their equally Celtic neighbours. That appears to have been one problem the Romans solved...

I would like to keep 'my' Celts' ethnic identity fluid. It might be nice to go with the Germanic thing to some extent. For one thing, it would make my Eburones and other Belgae extra annoying in Caesar's eyes because they are impossible to categorise. As a bonus, it would give me the opportunity to throw in a few Germanic names, which are easier to come by than Celtic ones :P.

In terms of costumes, I was thinking that I might show the sliding differences between northern and southern peoples by the men's trousers. Apparently it is a typically Germanic thing to strap leather laces around the leg up to the knee; the Celts usually strapped their trousers at the ankles. So I'm going to play with straps, and with the width of the trouser legs - narrow in the south, wide in the north. Now Catuvolcos and Ambiorix look as if they are wearing a kind of ancient plus-fours :D...

Here is old Catuvolcos, leaning on his spear. I didn't give him a shirt; I wonder whether I should change that. As I said in a previous entry, I imagine him as an old-fashioned warrior king, so he has to look sort of hardy, even if he is getting on in age. Shirts are for sissies like Ambiorix ;-).

For some reason I like to picture Catuvolcos in a cloak with a fur collar - does that give him a heroic, royal air, or is it just me?

The armlets are ... Well, armlets are archeologically attested, but not exactly in high numbers. They are more of a pictorial tradition than anything else, but I like them, so my kings wear armlets. Let's say we haven't found many because Caesar confiscated them and melted them all into sestertii, all right? ;-)

Here is Ambiorix, in full regalia, or almost. I need to sort a few things out, like for example the way the cloak is worn; I am having a bit of trouble drawing cloaks properly, and I need to copy a few fibulae for inspiration too.

The basic clothing consists of trousers, a shirt, a tunic with belt, and a cloak. I am wondering whether I can make my Celts wear shirts that are open at the front - kind of like the modern versions but without the buttons. I have read a description from which I understand that they may have had such shirts, but I am not sure whether I interpreted the passage the right way :/.

Ambiorix wears his sword on his right, not because he is left-handed, but because the Celts just happened to wear their swords that way. Seeing how they loved to show off, I bet they did it because when you draw a long Celtic sword from your right with your right hand, you have to make a long, sweeping movement - quite impressive-looking, that *g*.

Here is Commios. He lives a bit more to the south, on the border between what Caesar calls Gallia Belgica and Gallia Celtica, so I gave him different trousers, shorter straps, and a tunic but no long-sleeved shirt. I guess the main reason why I am inclined to give him short sleeves is because I picture him as rather muscular and so I want to show his arms. Only, well, at the moment I am still learning about muscles, and so far his arms merely look beefy :P. To Be Fixed.

I am still playing around with costume ideas; as you can see this drawing is on the whole less well-defined than the previous two. My Eburones are taking shape more quickly than the rest, and I still draw a complete blank on the Romans. It's not really a problem; I will get there in time. As a character, Comm is shaping up nicely. He has a daughter now, and a lovely little plot that will take him to Ambiorix. I was rather relieved when that idea popped into my head, even though it means I have a new cast member... Her name is Dannumara, by the way - Mara for short.

I am still trying out for Volca - her face isn't quite stable yet, but at least I had a lot of fun with my graphite pencils :-). One important job is to invent nice hairdos for my Celtic ladies; the one with all the braids was a first try, and I think it could have looked worse. I need some more training though, and I am looking for reference material too, but so far I have not found a lot of useful photos.

I need to think the ladies' wardrobes through, too. It is not immediately obvious to me how I am going to bring variation to it in the way that I did with the men and their trousers. Sleeves? Girdles? Stoles? Necklines? I have to try a few things out. I also need to look into making peplos-like dresses more elegant. Maybe I should watch a few peplos films for inspiration?

Helmets

I am copying ancient artifacts in order to get a feel for the design side of the world of War in Gaul. If I am going to make a comic of this story rather than to tell it in novel form, as was my original plan, I have to exploit the visual side of things, and preferably remedy that which annoys me so terribly in most visual renditions of the Celts in comics and films: the almost total neglect of their concern for appearance. I have to try and do justice to their fine workmanship - the beautifully decorated weapons, the fine fabrics, the colours, the refined jewellery, the elaborate hairstyles. It's going to take a lot of exercise!

*****

The bronze helmet on the left was found in northern Italy; it dates back to the third century BC. The thingy on the top used to have a crest attached to it. All other helmets are from the first century BC, which is the epoch in which my story takes place. By that time, helmet-makers had apparently dispensed with crests and the smooth bowler hat-style was all the rage. The helmets of Roman legionaries were inspired on this type.

The large helmet with the bird decoration on the cheek pieces was found in former Yugoslavia. I'm very fond of it, and it's the only one for which I have found a definite owner in the story: on account of the bird, I'm giving it to Catuvolcos. Catu-volcos apparently translates as battle-falcon, and though the bird on the helmet is most obviously not a falcon, I think it sort of fitting :-).

A note on the medium:
I used graphite and colour pencil, and made the drawings in my brandnew Moleskine reporter notebook. The paper is very smooth and light, and I believe it is to this that I owe my pleasing results with the colour. I tend to be not very accomplished working with colour pencils, but on this paper they glide and blend so nicely; it makes the notebook a good buy :D.

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Most of the time when you see Celts on the screen, they are dirty, with wild masses of hair and dressed in dark and/or drab colours (Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves), single bits of animal skin (the first Astérix film), or in the case of Keira Knightly in King Arthur, a few leather strings *g*. The costume designer on Vercingétorix (released elsewhere as Druids) could be heard to claim that Celtic clothing was ragged because these peoples were lazy and not strong on finishings. What a funny thing to say, when most of the few bits of Celtic fabric we have left are seams and pieces of embroidery. If real Celts had seen what the dear lady made of Vercingetorix, they'd have assumed him to be a beggar rather than a prince.

Many people seem to assume that because we are talking about the ancients, their notion of what was beautiful must be entirely different from ours - but surely they, too, distinguished between scruffy and neat, dirty and clean. They, too, preferred combed and shiny hair to a tangled mess; we have recovered quite a few combs and hair ornaments, bog women with complex plaited hairdos, and in Celtic literature it is a sign of hospitality and affection to comb and cut another person's hair. They, too, valued cleanliness; Caesar reports that the Celts washed every morning (he seems to find that worth remarking on), and they are the people who invented soap (something the Romans didn't use). Celtic women used make-up, and some sources claim that men depilated their body hair. There are classical authors who assert that Celtic men would get fined if they were overweight - but of course that may be one of the stories they told to show what freaky foreigners these Celts were :-).

While watching the BBC series Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome recently, I paid special attention to the fabrics of the costumes, and to my surprise, the Romans did not receive a much better treatment than the Celts tend to get, though they were allowed a little more colour. I saw Nero, and just about every other rich Roman aristocrat, dressed in rough, stiff fabrics that I wouldn't have expected to see worn by such lovers of luxury. Either the costume designer had a small budget and was forced to make do with cheap stuff, or I was meant to believe that the ancients were incapable of weaving finer fabrics than that. Now - I know that the Celts' small sheep, at any rate, were half-wild and their wool not very soft. But lo: in the salt mines of Salzburg were found several samples of Celtic woollen fabric, and they are beautifully woven and smooth! With my untrained eyes I can't distinguish them in any way from samples of modern fabrics. Now, if a Celtic miner could have clothes made of smooth stuff, I bet Nero could too :D. We have such a weird way of looking at the past... I am bound to conclude that all in all we seem to think very, very highly of our modern selves *g*.

So there, I feel that I should try and show an approximation of the visual opulence of the Celtic aristocracy. That means lots of bright colours, ornament, jewellery, and decorated props. I am not usually inclined to draw such detail, but the Celts do deserve it :-). The nice thing is that I found, when I started drawing these helmets, that I enjoyed myself; that surprised me, because normally I am not interested in drawing objects - I prefer people. As I copied them, the beauty of these helmets dawned on me as never before; the Celtic craftsmen had such an eye for detail and balance that it is a true joy to try and render them in pictures. I am not sure how feasible it will prove to be in the long run, because I am very slow and my usual style is not very elaborate, but I am certainly determined to do my best with the clothes, the attributes, the houses and so on.

I don't know about colour yet. On the one hand it seems necessary. On the other, I'm not good at colouring :/. I guess much will depend on how much I manage to learn about colour and techniques while preparing the project.

More character sketches...

One of the more problematic elements of War in Gaul for me is - you'll laugh - the fact that a host of characters will have to have facial hair. Commios is the most important of them. I am not used to drawing beards or moustaches, and I had to study reference photos; otherwise it looked as if the beard had been glued on :-).

You may have noticed that in the image I posted to go with his character description, Commios has a scar over his left eye, the result of an assassination attempt. I rather like how it looks, but I have to find another place for it nevertheless. It has been pointed out to me that Miller's Leonidas in 300 has a scar like that, and I also noticed that it makes Comm bear a striking likeness to King Arthur in Chauvel and Lereculey’s Arthur. I think I will make it come out of his hair, or something. It is less decorative, but I don't want him to look as if I copied him from someone else.

This is a page of particularly bad Rigantonas. The picture that went with her character description is much, much better, but it was done after these and I already had a better grip of the character. The difficulty with her is that she is supposed to be very attractive, which means I need to train on how to draw beautiful women. I don't feel as if I have been doing a particularly good job so far.

Finally, Volca. Since she is the newest addition to the cast, she is probably the one to change most often. Her character is developing nicely; I have a few recent sketches that I will post as soon as I get them scanned. Volca is the most ordinary of my characters, visually and story-wise, but I have grown rather fond of her.

War in Gaul: the cast (4)

It is an annoying fact, but despite my ardent feminism my creative work invariably tends to centre on male characters. In this particular case, Caesar isn’t helpful at all: De Bello Gallico doesn’t mention a single woman by name. That means that if I want female characters, I am forced to invent them all. This is a tricky business since elsewhere, too, Celtic women’s lives are much less documented than men’s, and in fiction this more than once gives rise to detestable Mary-Sueism and Marion Zimmer Bradleyism, both of which I am rather desperate to avoid. Celtic women seem to have had higher status than their Roman sisters, in that they could, among other things, inherit and be political leaders. But their rights remain a misty issue, and much though I would like to write them as men’s equals, I think that the more realistic thing is to guard against too much ancient girlpower. The famous Boudicca only gained power over her people because her husband Prasutagus died; and though Irish legends mention women like Scathach who train warriors for battle, there is no trace to be found of warrior women in the texts of ancient historians or archaeology – women were buried with mirrors and needles and such, not with weapons. I suppose it is possible to question whether the graves are identified as female on the basis of the gifts alone, but still: no hard evidence. Caesar certainly doesn’t seem to have negotiated with women, and war in Gaul was a man’s affair.

I’m doing my best, though :-). Just – I can’t say too much about the women’s plots, because you can’t find them anywhere and so, unlike the men’s storylines, they have the potential of holding surprises. I mean, not that the men’s stories won’t have any, but – you know what I mean, right? ^_^


4. Rigantona



Rigantona used to be called Brigantia (Briga for short), but I recently decided that as Vercingetorix’s sister, she should have a name with ‘queen’ in it. Rigantona is the same as the Welsh Rhiannon and means “great queen”. Briga/Rigantona long vied with Vercingetorix, then Commios, for the position of overall main character of the story. When I was still in the novel phase, my drafts alternated between her and Vercingetorix as the first person narrator. Then, when Commios entered the scene, she fell in love with him, much against her brother’s wishes. At this moment, she still functions as a link between Vercingetorix and the Belgic characters, but has receded a little in importance due to Ambiorix’s arrival. At this moment I do think I will let her end the story; I have cooked up a nice storyline for her involving … -no, I rather think I should keep that a surprise :P.

Rigantona is a female druid-in-training – yes, despite my reservations. I want her to be as closely involved in the war as can be, namely, as her brother’s advisor. That is a bit of a classic role for a woman, so I hope that brings some sort of balance to the fact that female druids are barely attested… I would like to use her unusual position to point at the differences between the Celtic peoples, and to show the influence of the proximity of Rome to the south of Gaul. Women are rather prominent in Irish literature and British politics, whereas they seem to have lost some privileges in the east. As Rigantona is the daughter of a conservative usurper who tried to reintroduce kingship to a republic, I thought her family might well have looked around to see how they could give her extra high status, and that they wouldn’t have been put off by the fact that a custom or notion they deemed useful was considered outdated. Britain was decidedly old-fashioned in the first century BC; British warriors still fought from chariots, for one thing, a practice that had become obsolete in Gaul; and as I mentioned when talking about Commios, coins were not yet in use there either. If the equal status of women has become history in Gaul, it might well survive in Britain for a while longer. So that is where Riga will be going. When she returns to her people, called back by her brother, you can bet that her exertion of authority will cause some of the gentlemen to grumble…


5. Volca



Volca is the most recent of all my characters, which means she still has the most room for development – she’s not entirely stable yet. In fact she has taken the place of several other female characters I had been considering for a larger part in the story; on Volca’s arrival, most of them have faded entirely. My original idea was to have a woman warrior; instead I have ended up with a young princess, which may not sound like an improvement (?), but I’m happy that she’s there. She’s nice. She is perhaps more conventional than Rigantona, but she represents another side of the story of the Gaulish war that deserves some attention too – that of the people who don’t take an active part in the battles and schemes, but get to bear the consequences of the actions of their kings. Volca’s plot will have little to do with politics (though there will be some) but rather play out on a personal level.

Volca is the daughter of Catuvolcos. I guess I invented her when I started thinking about the other characters’ households. Actually I don’t find it easy to estimate how large families were and how many people lived in one house. Should all my interior scenes be crowded with family and servants? How much privacy should people have? Nowadays in the West we tend to have rather a lot, because we live in very small units, but I suppose it was rare for people in ancient times to live alone. I still haven’t found answers to these questions. What I have done is given Catuvolcos a son and a daughter, Catutigirnios and Volca (as you can see, he isn’t very imaginative and has given his children bits of his own name – which isn’t nearly as bad as Comm’s family, which contains no less than three Comms *g*), and to Ambiorix four sisters, Avitoriga, Allicia, Abesa and Aia (with Ambiorix as the middle child). I’m afraid that so far, many mothers are dying in childbirth and fathers get killed defending their cattle and crops from raiders, because seriously, how on earth am I going to keep the cast in hand :/?

Because Volca is so new to my repertory, she is still undergoing changes. Basically she is supposed to look young – mid teens at the start of the story – and grow up to be … well, fine-looking but not stunning. I need to learn to draw a nice, complicated hairdo on her, though :-).

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Romans. I haven’t even started on those yet. Caesar, Labienus, Volusenus, Mark Antony, Sabinus, Cotta and my very own Quintus Tullius Veridicus – here I come … one day … :D

War in Gaul: the cast (3)

3. Commios, king of the Atrebates, the Morines and the Menapians



Alas, poor Commios. He has been so utterly forgotten that I haven’t been able to find a single portrait of him, real or imaginary! No nation adopted him in the throes of Romanticism, even though he was a very clever strategist, and the king who held out longest of all against the Roman occupation.

Actually, in the case of Commios, it is not even clear what his name really is. He is one more victim of the near-incomprehensibility of Gallic today – for Commios, I’ve found “crow”, “equal”, and “he who strikes”… Quite apart from the meaning, what is Commios – his first name or his patronymic? The ending –ios could well indicate a genitive, which would make the nominative form “Comm”. There are coins of the British Atrebates inscribed “Comm Commios” – is that Comm, son of Comm, or is it lack of space that called for Commios, son of Commios to be a little bit compressed? Yay for dead languages, especially when they remain largely unwritten!

Comm or Commios (I think I’m settling for Comm Commios, just to keep things easy ;P) – one thing I know for certain is that he is the kind of character I like, because he changes his mind so often. Like Ambiorix and Vercingetorix, he hung around Caesar for a while; in his case, it lasted longer than for the other two. After the battle of the Sabis in 57 BC, where his people suffered severe losses, Comm seems to have stepped up to Caesar or in some other way made himself noticed, and Caesar appointed him king of the Atrebates; the Atrebates were henceforth also exempt from taxes. Comm saved the Roman general’s skin in Britain, and in return he got to rule the Morines, a neighbouring people of the Atrebates, as well. In 53 BC, Caesar pillaged the lands of the Menapians to put them under pressure not to shelter Ambiorix, and here too he put Comm in charge, whom he praises for his courage and cleverness.

However…

Also at this time, a fugitive Ambiorix is riding around Belgica, skirting Roman man-huntsmen and preaching rebellion to the Belgic leaders. And though Caesar remains tactfully silent on the subject, Aulus Hirtius reveals in his Book VIII of DBG that shortly after, Labienus has to send his right hand man Gaius Volusenus (“who hated Commius”) to undertake the Atrebate king’s assassination: Labienus has heard it rumoured that Commios has lapsed and is now conspiring against Rome. The attempt fails (though only just), and next time we hear of Commios, he is heading the army that must rescue Vercingetorix from Alesia.

Commios was one of the last leaders to take up arms against Rome, but he proved to be very tenacious once he had set his mind on rebellion. He never managed to mobilise a great army after Alesia, but what forces he had he used efficiently; Caesar notes that his troops are better organised than is usual in Gaul and that their attacks are well thought-out. But eventually the Atrebate king tires, too. He gets even with Volusenus, then offers peace to Mark Antony (yes, that Mark Antony) on the condition that he never has to face a Roman again.

One other thing I like about Commios is his resilience. When Caesar is done with Gaul, the land is little more than a graveyard. Commios has spent a lot of energy fighting, and he has lost. So what does he do? Instead of sulking in a corner, he crosses the Channel to Britain and starts a new dynasty there, eventually reigning over Berkshire, Hampshire, West Sussex, West Surrey and a part of Wiltshire. Archaeologists say that he introduced the practice of coinage there.

There is an attractive, but probably fictitious, anecdote about Commios’s sailing for Britain. Frontinus records that Caesar did not honour the agreement made by Mark Antony and decided to pursue Commios. When he arrived by the coast, the Atrebate king had already set sail, but the tide was low and his ship stranded on the flats. Commios had his wits about him and ordered the sails to be spread, and because the wind was fair, Caesar gave up the pursuit, thinking that the ship was afloat and had too much of a head start. Thus the traitor escaped…


A coin minted by Commios in Britain – it has his trademark “E” with the funny slant.

In the case of Commios, Caesar is even less specific than he was about Vercingetorix; we have not even the vaguest indication about his age. For some reason I have always imagined him as fortyish, maybe because I assume that his down-to-earth approach to leadership (his siding with Caesar was of great benefit to the Atrebates; he seems to have been more concerned with his people’s welfare than with glory) is an indication of sedate maturity as opposed to Ambiorix’s and Vercingetorix’s fiery radicalism. My idea of Commios (and Vercingetorix, actually) changed very little between 2003 and today, and I actually find that it plays out really well with my new version of Ambiorix. Those two will be close during the most crucial phase of the story, so it is important to have some interesting interaction between them. They are sufficiently different to provide contrast, whereas, if Frontinus’s story is any indication, their minds certainly meet when it comes to shrewdness.

Character sketches

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These are some of the first few sketches in which I am trying to establish the looks of Ambiorix and Vercingetorix. They will probably go through a few changes yet before they reach their definitive shape :-).

I haven't decided on a style yet, which is unusual for me. The visual approach tends to come first, but then this project is relatively young, and in the past year I have learnt a few things about drawing and comics that have made me a little less impetuous than I used to be. So I will continue developing, getting my hand in, and decide what kind of style is suitable when I have a better idea of what the story needs...