I decided to do the “Origins of…” assignment (3 pts) not for my online persona but for my character. Even though my character is not a superhero, there is one thing that almost all superheros have in common: they have a tragic back story (usually having to do with their parents death). Sasha Kellogg also has a tragic back story, so this is what I illustrated in my origins comic strip. While Sasha didn’t develop super powers or anything, her parents’ death was a deciding factor in how she lived her life. It was traumatic, and her resolute and determined character comes out because of this, which is why the last pane in the strip is simply a picture of her determined face. I tried to keep with the noir theme in my comic strip, and one way I did so was to leave it colorless. Here is Sasha Kellogg’s origins story:

I tried to keep the comic strip simple, so there are not many words. The story opens with “one fateful evening…” and ends with “to be continued!” but besides that there are few words. Instead, the pictures tell the story of an intruder breaking in, going into the master bedroom and killing Sasha’s parents. She sees the intruder go into the bedroom, and makes her escape through the cracked window that the intruder came in by. She hides under the porch, hoping not to be found. The police come, but nothing will undo what happened that night. I drew the comic, so I kept things simple like the geometry of the house and stairs. The intruder is seen as a shadow in the night, which continues the noir theme and also saves me the trouble of drawing another person in each frame (because I am not too talented when it comes to drawing people). Either way, Sasha probably saw them as a shadow too, without noticing distinct features, but understanding the danger.

The hard part of this assignment was dividing up the important scenes into frames of the comic strip (I just printed off an empty strip I found online). One of the panes I divided into two to show that Sasha woke up when she heard the window glass breaking, and the larger frame in the middle was useful to show how the house was laid out. There is a dark foot on the top stair, showing her narrow escape. There was no room to show the police driving up to the house, so I drew the policeman after he already showed up and arrested the criminal. As I said before, I wanted the last picture to show Sasha’s determination to continue with her life despite this tragedy. She is not the revenge type, but if she was a superhero this would be the time to exact justice in some incredible way. Sasha lets the police handle the justice, but she is strong and unwavering through her life.