"You are part of the night, just like me. We're not afraid of the dark — we come alive in it — we're thrilled by it..."

I have severe night terrors and, as a result, I have very few dreams (and nightmares) that I will actually remember when I awake the next day. My dreams always have this strange film-like quality. And I had the weirdest dream last night and woke up on the wrong side of the bed, with a terrible back pain and stomach craps, and yet, like most of my intense dreams, it will nag and eat away at me until I draw them out! The product was Rorschach in Gotham. It's a working title, but it really says it all.

Taking place during the passing of Keene Act to illegalise costumed crime-fighting, Nite Owl II has been missing for three days. The Crimebusters (...uh, Watchmen) have broken up and carried on a lacklustre search for their comrade, so Rorschach takes his own line of investigation to find his only true friend and the clues lead him to Gotham City, perhaps with a little help from a costumed cat burglar. (This is a conceptual plot and it's subject to change.)

For those who don't know, I'm a huge Batman fan and Watchmen fan. I may do a short comic on this, a short story, or a full-on fiction; or it could be a collection of vignettes of him fighting Gotham Rogues' Gallery — or Batman himself. I really haven't decided yet. Nonetheless, I certainly love how this drawing came, so I'm going to fix the proportions (majorly!), draw some word balloons (maybe!), sketch in a background (gasp!), clean it up, and colour it — and we'll see how it goes from there. (I'm trying to do this by incorporating the 90s Batman: The Animated Series "dark noir" style, but I don't think I'm succeeding at all. It still looks too much like my own overtly cartoony style.)

Medium - HB and 2B mechanical pencil.

Rorschach in Gotham © Diane N. Tran.
Rorschach and Catwoman © DC Comics.