Apartment 4H

Kratos, eat your heart out Posted Sat, 10/17/2009 by Dave

I suppose this would be a good place to talk about the influences for War, at least how I write him. Two men inspire my characterization of War.

One is Jason, Joe’s former roommate. Jason is a big guy, and during the time I went to school with him, he went from “big” to “jacked.” Rowing crew will do some of that–but then he quit crew and started just doing push-ups and crunches whenever he was bored. Jason probably could have walked on to Virginia’s football team, wrestling team, or hunting large game with nothing but a knife team. Instead he played D&D with us and helped build sets for Shakespeare on the Lawn. Jason was the model for the part of War I can describe as “gentle until provoked.” He also was a literal model for War several times, such as the strip where War tears a couch in half.

Andy was the other model for War–more specifically, how War interacts with Conquest. Andy’s a guy I can’t describe as anything less than genuine, which works nicely because the model for much of Conquest’s personality was Andy’s former roommate, Rob, is someone I’ll call “suave,” in lieu of a better word. The interaction between the two of them was somewhat mystifying to me. They rubbed shoulders some of the time, but when they joined forces on a project the results were usually hilarious. That idea of contrasting personalities teaming up for mutual hilarity is something that resonated with me, and that I brought into the strip strongly. No other two characters team up as much as War and Conquest.