NUN with 2 GUNS

Here’s a Pin-up I just finished last night for John Hoffman‘s NUN WITH TWO GUNS comic book, which is the culmination of several years of doodling on his part. A while back, John co-created this character with his buddy Warwick J Caldwell, and now, after a few years of random drawings by both of them, she finally has her own story, completely written and drawn by John this time around. It will debut at the APE indie comics show here in San Francisco, two weeks from now on October 1st-2nd. I will be exhibiting there myself, and it just so happens that my table, #108, will be next to John’s, at #107. Fun!

Asked to draw my version of a no-nonsense gun-nun, naturally I got into the mood by remembering my own beat-downs at the hands of the bad-assed old Ursuline nuns at my Catholic primary school (none had any guns thankfully, or I might not be here today). I began by thumb-nailing poses of a gun-toting nun; either blazing away, or crouched atop a cathedral gargoyle. THE DARK KNIGHT in a habit.

Then, realising that such action stuff would surely be covered in either the story itself or the OTHER pin-ups, I started thinking less GUN and more NUN. What would the inner-life of a vampire-hunter nun be like? Maybe she prays with the guns, which have been consecrated and each named for a warrior angel from the bible. Being Catholic, no matter how much she hates those VAMPIRES, there’ll be GUILT about killing them. She wraps THORNS around the hand grips (seen in bottom panel) and when she shoots the demons, she is punished for her sins too.

I thumb-nailed more ideas, and had a hard time deciding which to finalise. Then, researching online, I saw photos of stained glass windows, which were medieval Catholic COMICS if you think about it; telling stories in a visual (and multi-panelled) way, and I decided to use as many of the thumbnails as I could, in one pin-up. I wanted to draw the guns covered in Catholic charms, like those MILAGRO CRUCIFIXES you see in Mexico, and should have added some blood dripping from her hands, but I ran out of time. With all my fiddling, I just got the pin-up to John in the nick of time. Given to him last night, the book is at the printers today!

6 thoughts on “NUN with 2 GUNS”

    • John, I was very happy to have been asked to be in your book, which I know has been cooking in your brain-pan for quite some time. This was truly a fun gig for an old Catholic schoolboy to work on!

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