So this was pretty much a sketchless drawing for me. I just drew, and erased, and kept on drawing in OpenCanvas. And then I did some quick fixery-uppery in Paint Shop Pro, adding unnecessary effects.

So goes the topic at the Freakangels board:

"THE CRIMSON CLOWN

Some good old pulpy weirdness this week, awaiting a 21st Century Spandex Makeover. Courtesy of the writer-who-wrote-too-much Johnston "Zorro" McCulley, allow me to introduce the Crimson Clown. Quoth the 'pedia:

"The Crimson Clown is Delton Prouse, a wealthy young bachelor, able veteran of The Great War, explorer, and all around adventurer who functions as a modern Robin Hood, stealing from the unjustly rich and returning money to helpless victims or worthy organizations. He dresses in a mostly white clown suit and uses a tear gas pistol (later this became a "gas gun")."

Quite why anyone should choose to extort those pesky "Unjustly Rich" by dressing as a kid's-party fuckwit is beyond me - maybe that's part of the challenge - but it makes for a good creepy aesthetic.

I notice from some alternative pulp covers (c.f Ramble House) that our boy has been imagined a couple of different ways already (the red hood/white mask thing is, if anything, even more cack-your-eyes-out horrible than the above sightrape), and also that he methodically keeps half of his ill-gotten gains for himself - so he's a pragmatic sort of People's Champion. Also that his "syringe full of a drug that will knock a person out for half an hour" perhaps dangles the balls of the Mad Scientist Trope before our collective eyes. And that he's not above using it on himself. Junkie.

Anyway. Crime Noir + Armed Robbery + Chemical Weaponry + The Clothing Of A Professional Idiot + a 21st century Post-Jester World. Let's give some panty-wasting Coulrophobics a week they'll never forget, shall we?"

I may put this in scraps later.