Long John

The Bishop is a character I wanted to get to because I had a pretty clear picture of who he was at the outset. With Juan John, Bishop is one of the relatively few charismatic characters in this story. In this comic, the Mono Basin is populated with characters who have developed very specific ways to survive in this hostile environment, people who have specific quirks that are clearly defenses. However, Juan and Bishop seem to be at home amid the hostility and can maneuver easily with in it, which speaks to not only their ability to survive, but their social success.

Designing him challenged me because I wanted it to come across as a kind of patchwork affair––pieces of clothing assembled from a variety of regions and cultures to insinuate that Bishop is a dude that has been around and has done a lot of stuff. The easiest way to show this variety is to really make the different colors pop out and stand out, but doing that would really put him at a contrast to literally everything else in the comic, so a lot of the coloring stage of this design was paring down the colors to still make him distinct but not so busy that he looks out of place.