"And his fate was sealed — with a kiss..."

The Director's Cut of Watchmen is out in selected theatres this weekend and I plan to watch it with a group of friends this afternoon! I can't wait! I'm so excited! I was hoping to get a coloured picture up in time, but it's been exceedingly difficult to do anything in Photoshop with one working hand. That's okay. I don't need to rush anymore. Therefore, I'm going to upload this piece for the time being. This particular was technically going to be one I was going to post this weekend, but it was suppose to go through a tighter rough to fix the flaws, do a clean up, and then get it coloured, but I ended up breaking my arm instead as you know, arggghhhh! I'll be do a better version of this once my arm heals, so don't worry. (So many flaws!)

Rorschach in Gotham, at its heart, is a "character study" of him, peeling the many layers of his psyche and revealing more and more of his character as Rorschach faces each character in the Batman-verse. Since its conception, I've always wanted to draw this particular scene:  A number of gory murders of wealthy industrialists crop up across Gotham City, where plant-like symbionts placed in the stomachs of the victims grow and grow until the victim's body literally bursts open and rips apart from the inside out! However, tempers boil between Rorschach and Catwoman and Rorschach goes off to find Poison Ivy on his own and gets over his head. He gets captured and Poison Ivy gives Rorschach a toxic kiss, tongue and all, and makes Rorschach her slave, controlling him through her potent pheromones. Out of all the villains, Poison Ivy would mess up Rorschach the most, in the worst possible way — not physically, but psychologically. To lose control of himself, to have no will of his own, to be ensnared, controlled, and rendered completely helpless by a woman — to become a whore's bitch — just like he was as a child with his mother...

Making characters kiss and not make it look stupid is sooooo hard to do, ugh! (Strangely, anthros are easier...who knew?!) I apologise for the weird quality of the scan. This was done in different colours of Col-erase pencils, to help me differentiate between the characters and the giant jumble of vines, so for both of them to show up in the scan equally wasn't easy. Also, happy (belated) 49th birthday to the incomparable Jackie Earle Haley! You brought Rorschach and Walter Kovacs to life for us — and we thank you, truly!

Medium - Col-erase blue and orange.

Rorschach in Gotham © Diane N. Tran.
Rorschach and Poison Ivy © DC Comics.