Apartment 4H

Everyone’s favorite cellmate Posted Fri, 12/04/2009 by Dave

Fact: even in the very earliest sketches of what would eventually become Apartment 4H, done deep in the basement of U.Va’s New Cabell hall during an English discussion on a great work of literature, Pestilence looked more or less like he does today: a big old cell. And he never changed much–even when Joe and I were discussing character designs, Pestilence was pretty well locked in.

Pestilence is the slapstick character, the scapegoat, the oblivious one, the one we can use to make jokes about childlike innocence or just as easily can use to turn that paradigm on its head. He’s the easiest character to “get” when writing, though often times is the hardest one to nail a good line for–Pestilence usually demands the punchline and it usually has to be him doing something staggeringly incompetent (or deeply disturbing).

Horseman that he is, I have yet to mentally render the image of Pestilence actually riding a horse.