This month marks the arrival of the 5th annual 30 Characters Challenge, the excellent event run by ComixTribe publisher Tyler James, where participants have to create a new comic character for every day of the whole month of November. I participated in the first year, successfully completing the challenge with 30 badly-drawn characters of my own, but haven’t done it again since. I won’t be participating this year either, but thought it might be fun to spend each day writing up a little showcase to celebrate a new comic character who showed up in comic pages for the first time this year. Comics are one of the most highly inventive mediums around, and this has been a particularly strong year for pumping out exciting new stories packed with compelling new characters. Let’s take a look at some of my favourites.
19. ELLISEYE
Created by Colin Bell and Neil Slorance
Yep, it’s Dungeon Fun again! This will be a brief entry, as what else can I say to gush about this excellent new comic from Colin Bell and Neil Slorance? This is a book filled to the brim with charming characters, including yesterday’s spotlighted character, heroine Fun Mudlifter. But perhaps the biggest scene-stealer of all in a comic full of them is Elliseye, the aged wise-man and de facto community leader of Fun’s pit home.
The thing is, he may he aged, but he might not be quite so wise as everyone believes him to be, in a hilarious undercutting of this particular fantasy archetype. The whole sequence with him revealing his “prophecy” to Fun provides one of the biggest laughs of the issue. I just imagined him talking in the voice of Billy Crystal’s Miracle Mike from The Princess Bride. But just when you’re ready to write Elliseye off as a total buffoon, he surprises us with an act of touching heroism. He might be another example of a “single service character,” we’ll see, but his appearance here was one of the highlights of this stellar first issue.
Dungeon Fun has now launched, with a launch party set for Plan B Books on Wednesday night. If you trust my opinion in comics now, please check this book out, as it’s just a joy to read.
John Lees Comics 