Avril Issac...

Possibly a bit of an odd one to throw in there, as she was more of a side character. But I always had fun drawing her, so I figured why not.

Also, I gave her biker boots. Yes, I know motorbikes don't (currently) exist in Kaspall as far as we are aware, but I've got my Get Out Of Inconsistency Jail Free card here and it's called 'An Off-worlder brought the design over and people thought it was cool'.

And, honestly, you should be glad that I didn't use that card more often in the comic, because I could technically have got away with pretty much anything by saying 'An Off-worlder did it'.

My fanart of the Captain, from Lucy Lyall’s webcomic, Kaspall.

Kaspall is a detective story set in a fantasy world with anthro animals, monsters, and humans. You should definitely read it, here’s why:

it has a cool dragon bartender

the cast are a bunch of jerks who grow on you with time

(there are nice characters too)

Well-written female characters. Some are good, some are evil, some I’m still not sure how I feel about

Unique world-building and magic concepts

Legitimately creepy monsters

Fantastic B&W art, combining pen work and ink wash

It’s complete! You can read the whole thing without waiting to find out what happens

This weekend, I was sick in bed with a nasty cold. I will spare you the particulars, but to fill my time when I was unable to sleep, I read the entire archives of a webcomic called "Kaspall," by Lucy Lyall.

The artwork is, in short, beautiful. It is done entirely in black-and-white by hand; pencilled, then inked, on paper and then scanned. Its richness would be lost if it were ever colourised.

"Kaspall" is, simply put, a murder mystery. But there is nothing simple in the setting, details, or characters. Very rarely do I read something that takes me by surprise and makes me pause and think "hm. That was interesting," or "wuh! That was creepy!"  There is a natural flow of details that is entirely realistic in its mundane occurrence of day-to-day life. We create a habit of existence that is shattered when a grisly murder happens upon our doorstep (or down the street, over a-ways), not so much because of the violence of the crime itself, but because of those selfsame little details that were there, all along, completely unnoticed by us until the police come 'round, asking their questions.

For a long time, it has not been the Poirots or the Sherlocks that have given me frissons beyond that of a fictional escape. They absolve me of intellectual responsibility, and I am as a balloon, wafting on the currents. Their stories have become aloof and otherworldly. Even when I have tried to solve crimes alongside Mr Holmes (as it were), rarely do I solve the mystery. And it is certainly not because of the clues that are glaringly clear to him. These have become obscure to me due to the writing itself (where the details are not fully revealed until the end of the story), or because of the cultural differences of the passage of eras.