And this is the final strip in CDowds FIRST Shattered Myth:Spotlight. Part two of his contribution will be up much later this year. In the meantime, you can read it now in Book three. Pre-orders are now available in the store! But enough shilling, let’s get back to thanking CDowd for these amazing pages. I wanted something that felt completely different and I got it.

Thanks so much to CDowd and if you guys think these are great, wait until you see what he did for part two!

The big reveal! LOVED drawing this page. Could you imagine seeing that in the mirror? I’d run away and make my wife squash it. I really wanted the spider to just be as menacing as possible, the kind of things nightmares are made of.

More from CDowd himself:

Frank Miller was never an inspiration to me, and I thought up using red on greyscale all by myself. True story.

This was a fun page. Stuff starts getting real in these panels. There’s a slow dissent into madness going on here.

I love long shadows. It’s one of my “things” I think.

I really tried to get across the feeling of a restless, disturbing night’s sleep in this page, and also to show the difference between the two main characters’ demeanor, both by body language and by facial expression.

For the next two weeks, the Shattered Myth: Spotlight will be handled by CDowd. This story is the bonus comic exclusive to Book One. The guy really ran with my script and put out some amazing pages! Be sure to check out the his comic Lilith Dark! It’s an incredibly fun comic suitable for all ages. Go check it out. And if you like it, the story continues in Book 3 (pre-order now available-just sayin’)!
And here’s a comment from the creator himself:

Sort of a grim start to this tale. I think it was needed though, to set the tone for what was to come. In hindsight, maybe it was a little more graphic than it needed to be, but it wasn’t my intention to be gratuitous. I wanted to show just how evil this guys really is. And honestly, when I drew it, it never even occurred to me that it might be going to far. So maybe I’m insane, who knows?

And with that, Grant has “gone home”, Loki has returned, he owes Hecate a favor, and we bid farewell to Stef! I want to thank him for these amazing pages and working so hard to get my shoddy plot/script into shape. When I asked for his participation, I knew I wanted it to be presented similar to his own comic Sarah Zero – Pure energy and a completely different feel to the storytelling. I couldn’t be happier. And here’s Stef to say goodbye!

And so, here we are with the final page of the Crossroads story. I tried to capture a strong Loki reveal here, and I understand that this storyline may continue sometime in the future. I love cliffhangers, and I hope you do, too. So stay tuned, cuz you never know what’ll happen next in THE MYTHOSCAPE!

This was a really fun project to do, and I’d love to do more in the future. Thank you so much to Joe and all the hardcore Shattered Myth fans out there for proving that: “they don’t make Gods like they used to”!

Come back on Monday to read the very cool, very dark story from CDowd, creator of Lilith Dark. We’re going to start off with his pages from the Book ONE exclusive bonus story, “Here there be Nightmares”.

Almost there….

So, with only two pages to go, space was getting tight, given what still needs to happen in the final page. So, I used a couple small inset panels here.

I know the first panel is small, but I hope it’s (crystal) clear that Hecate is dropping a small, blue crystal into the bottle containing Imahara’s shadow. Normally, I’d do this panel as it’s own full-page spread, ha ha! But writing to a pre-determined page count is something I don’t often do!

We’re starting the final week of pages from Stef!

I like the ambiguity here: did Imahara finally get home? I like how it isn’t clear whether he’s been deceived by Hecate’s magic or whether he’s genuinely empowered by his own ability to choose.

At first, I thought it might be important to show which door Imahara chooses, but it really isn’t. Statistically, he had only a 25% chance of “choosing wisely” anyway, so the fact that he simply made the choice without deliberating over it or worrying about it suggests an invogorated self-confidence within himself.

Imahara’s power to get home was within himself, all along.

In this page, the theme of “Crossroads” finally comes full circle. And to help sell the idea, I used the same Imahara pose from page one.

I really love doing full-page spreads, which can make for some great emotional story beats or dramatic reveals!

And I gotta mention, the “Choose wisely” line is a nod to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade!