The World of Exiern
Exiern does have just a few allusions to the Evil Dead Universe which were undoubtedly one of the sources of inspiration over the years and just in case you’re not familiar with the source material, we hope this particular reference is useful.
Even though this title page is dated the 9th of June 2005, it was actually originally initiated on the 25th of December 2015 and completed on the 30th of December 2018 in time for being revealed as the new cover for Exiern on the 1st of January 2019. The reasons … to be revealed below … Spider-Man.
Also, although I only had this thought relatively recently and long after this project was started, I did come to realise Exiern was like a book missing a cover given that up to 2019, it did start rather suddenly on a story page right in the middle of events.
Hence the decision to sent things up as they were for this end result on January 1st 2019, both here and the page dated actually dated then. New Year’s Day 2019 was also hoped to be a new beginning in how Exiern is made, both behind and in front of the scenes … so I guess there’s even more symbolism with all of this.
It was illustrated by Wayne Nichols who has worked on titles for Marvel, Dark Horse, and IDW Publishing among others. See more of Wayne’s work here:
Here’s the image that features quite prominently at a lot of those links to Wayne’s work. Wayne created the image used for this large scale mural featured in ‘Marvel: Creating The Cinematic Universe’ at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia in 2017.
Of course me being me, I got there at the last hour of the last day of the exhibition despite having months to visit so I was too late to see the exhibition but the staff very nicely still let me in to take this picture just before they closed.
Me still being me, I’m still putting this page together with literal minutes to go for its debut on New Year’s Day 2019 despite all the lead in time. I guess some things as of yet are still to change, though at least I get there in the end (just).
Thank you to Wayne Nichols for giving me the OK to display this image here.
As well as taking the time and trouble to create this marvellous piece of artwork for Exiern.
Even though the first story page of Exiern in the archives as of writing this is dated the 6th of September 2005, the original start of Exiern was a few months earlier on the 9th of June, when Exiern’s creator Drowemos both wrote and illustrated Exiern. The title of this page, “The World of Exiern” was the text in panels on many of the original pages.
Though as always with this webcomic, nothing ever seems to be allowed to be quite that simple. The first actual page of story content the first time through was on the 13th of June, the page on the 9th was … something else (putting it mildly!). Historically it is still when Exiern first officially appeared on the Internet as best as I know (already prepared to be contradicted on that any day now).
What happened to explain this seeming discrepancy in the dates I’m mentioning is that Drowemos had those original pages redone and what you now see in archive is those replacement pages as dated from the 6th of September 2005.
As for the extensive production time of this new title page, of course as you could imagine just from his list of credited work, Wayne being a very high in demand artist (he was illustrating the comic version of one of my favourite properties of recent times, a title set in the Orphan Black universe – well one of them at least), we had to wait our turn for a while. About a week over three years as it turned out.
You have to admit it was worth the wait, though don’t you?
I hope you enjoy this page if you’ve come this way from the January 1st 2019 page as an existing reader and welcome if you’re a new reader, I hope you enjoy things as much as I did from when I first discovered Exiern and it led to what I’m helping Scott Hicken with who did take over management of Exiern from Drowemos many years ago and is still in charge of proceedings as of 01/01/2019.
~ Shan
1st of January 2019
Since I took from the 25th of December 2015 to the 30th of December 2018 getting this made, there’s no way I’m not going to be first to leave a comment on this one! I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do!
It looks great, a different look to Typh and P-Cups, and why are those Armoured Coneheads waving? o_O
Oh good. The art conveyed exactly what we were wanting to get across which was that they were waving.
http://archive.exiern.com/comic/behold-the-power/
An intricate amount of research and in-jokes always go into these!
That chastity belt is a lovely reference to Men in Tights, in which Prince John attempted to remove the Everlast™ version from the princess with a pneumatic chipping hammer.
I’m going to be honest, I just gave the artist a copy of the old Patreon headline image before Sean Harrington remixed existing Exiern and Dark Reflections art into the current Patreon banner as of now (as the change in format by Patreon displayed the old image rather awkwardly as its dimensions weren’t made for it and I thought the outfit should still appear somewhere). Didn’t think of the film, I have to admit … possibly because I haven’t actually seen it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150503160856/https://www.patreon.com/user.php?v=exiern
This is great, I love it! Nicely done, Shan! FWIW, this art style is my favorite look for Peonie and the comic in general.
That’s not to say that the art style over the past few months isn’t good-quality, but it seems better-suited for a darker, edgier comic. It feels like tonal dissonance with Peonie’s sudden overnight shift into a hard-looking badass with no cleavage; it’s like she just aged 10 years for no apparent reason — feels forced.
I’m glad you like it so much. For a multitude of reasons I’m sure you can work out if you haven’t already, this art style from this artist is most likely going to be a very special event (and quite infrequent) at best.
I do remember a comment along these lines over a year ago about Peonie … (*checks page and comment in question*) … oh wait, that was you.
I do like the current artist but all feedback is welcome and the more people commenting the better. We’re going to go into this later in greater detail but as much as this is a hobby for us, there is a more serious dimension for the artist vis-à-vis daily life for starters.
As for being better suited for a darker, edgier comic, isn’t that this one these days?
*flees before Scott gets here and presumably starts to hunt me down regardless*
A chastity belt? Seriously?
Don’t blame me, it comes straight from the reference material as per the image that headlined the Patreon for years which of course you’d all have known for a very long time for obvious generous reasons.
So, I don’t know … who was here all this time before I even knew this webcomic existed let alone helped out? Scott. Scott was here. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
*flees again*
I like the touch of the keyhole being upside down. (BTW the one on the Patreon page is only obvious in retrospect – too little detail is visible.)
And Patreon is still too expensive for the non-American with only a couple of subscriptions – I’d get killed on currency conversion costs.
BTW2: Do you read The Order Of The Stick? Imagine a conversation between Tiff and Varsuvius. 🙂
There’s a lot of plans for the Patreon over the coming years including dealing with these issues as much as we can, so watch this space. Raising more revenue to help with the costs of making things is also a continuously ongoing issue too, though.
I’ve heard of OotS and even spent some time around the forums but I haven’t had a chance to read it, or anything else on my ever increasing to read pile … including this very webcomic for about a year now as I’ve already mentioned.
Wow, I haven’t seen that movie in years. And still recognized it immediately (and even if I hadn’t, today’s page+this one is a dead giveaway).
Well, that was the plan! (As well as all the backup plans just in case!)
It’s weird. I’ve seen that Spider-Man image before, but I never noticed that his web-shooter hand is flashing the ASL for “I love you.”