Friday, August 14, 2015

Comic Book Series Fan Posts Part 77

A very special thank you to all my wonderful friends and fans, I'm truly honored to receive your feedback, posts, responses and shares on the comic book series and I am grateful for everyone's support! Thanks again! You all rock!



















Saturday, August 8, 2015

Comic Book Character: Cameron - Personality Profile


Cameron, in his late 30’s, is the typical self-sacrificing hero. He is smart, dutiful, serious, reliable, conscientious, brave and resilient. He’s a bold risk-taker, logical and prepared for any situation, always trying to find ways to fight the bad guys, and given that he does work incognito as a “human” detective, the job suits him fine. Technically, he’s the only good angel left. Though incredibly powerful, he tries to do too much and tries too hard to save the world. He often refuses assistance because he does not want anyone else to get hurt. He’s often too concerned with keeping everyone safe, especially his stepson Joseph, and he will do anything and everything to do so to the point of severe injury to himself. However, it takes an equally determined person like Costa  for Cameron to finally allow someone to team up with him and help out, because he knows he can’t always to it alone, and it is becoming even more crucial now that the Vampire Guardian Angels are fighting for power among themselves and planning on building their own armies. 

Cameron is the exact opposite of Gabriel in that he cares for humans and still doesn’t mind responding to their prayers for help. But he’s become a grizzled, hardened hero, constantly exhausted from fighting Vampire Guardian Angels, since he feels responsible for mankind and he is so determined to be their savior, that it becomes a burden on his shoulders, to the point where he is constantly injured. But what really drives him even more is some sort of feeling of penance, and a desperate need for redemption in the eye of his son. He is guilt-ridden for Joseph’s mother’s death, and feels that he needs to spend the rest of his life making up for it not only to Joseph, but to all humans, since Christina was human. He has to make all the tough decisions between good and evil, but his guilt sometimes clouds his judgement, and he ends up becoming a prisoner at first of Jeromos, and then of his own stepson Joseph.

Comic Book Character: Prince Jeromos - Personality Profile


Jeromos, in his late 30’s, is very loyal to the Vampire Guardian Angels and is determined to find ways to cure and heal them. It was this loyalty that led Janos to trust him as his right-hand man, with the power to make and execute any decisions for Janos. Even if he is a royal, he does not let it get to his head, and is less arrogant than Janos, and is more empathic, but only with his own kind and not to humans. This leads the Vampire Guardian Angels to be more likely to revolt against Janos and follow Jeromos, who does feel he deserves the throne more than Janos does. Jeromos is a calculating, careful, intelligent and charismatic leader, who exudes confidence. However, he too holds a grudge against Cameron for killing or injuring his army and his “brothers”, making Jeromos responsible for healing the injuries Cameron caused. Jeromos’s own anger leads him to be careless and to be disfigured by Cameron. However, he knows Ms Price’s blood is a cure, and he heals himself when he bites her and turns her into a vampire.

Unlike Janos, Jeromos is merciful towards some of his army’s mistakes  but can also be ruthless if betrayed. Jeromos does secretly look down on Janos because Janos always relies on Jeromos to defend him. Secretly, Jeromos only respects those who can stand up for themselves. He even admires his own enemies if they display courage and skill and even fairness in battle, which explains why he did not kill Cameron when he was disarmed and he had the chance to. He still abides by some ancient codes of loyalty and honor to his own kind, but those can be broken for his own purposes, and he will not hesitate to either imprison or kill Janos in order to take the throne. But mainly he seeks to unseat Janos only for the purpose of continuing to unite and lead the Vampire Guardian Angels because he knows Janos is a poor ruler. His one obsession and weakness though, is Ms Price. He lusts after her and desires for her to become his queen, and is initially angry at Cameron for his disfigurement and her shock at his appearance, but he manages to heal himself and restore his features back to normal. And he holds Ms Price hostage and becomes completely obsessed with the desire to rule and hold on to her and to as much power as he can.

Comic Book Character: Joseph - Personality Profile


Joseph, in his late 20’s, is still grieving, unable to move on from the death of his mother Christina, and harbors a deep resentment for his stepfather Cameron, who was inadvertently responsible for her unintentional death, although Cameron tries desperately to get Joseph to forgive him and who protects him as much as he can. Joseph can’t let go of his rage, and as a result is hot-tempered, moody, with depressive swings. In psychological terms, he would have what’s known as complicated grief disorder, (traumatic or prolonged grief),   symptoms of severe mourning where he is still pining for the deceased, has difficulty moving on, and harbors anger about his loss. However, he also does harbor fond feelings for his stepfather, but is too traumatized to acknowledge them and he cannot fully trust Cameron, or others. He came very close to developing feelings for someone, an Earth Vampire named Catharina who saved him from Gabriel, but she was killed by Jeromos. Joseph concludes that everyone he cares about has been killed, so why bother to care about anyone.

He is unable to open up emotionally to anyone else, and remains a loner. He does have the potential to become a compassionate hero like Cameron, or become a megalomaniac like Janos. He is torn between one or the other. He is extremely confused by the role he now has to play, whether to be a good angel or a bad angel, and he still is very angry about Cameron turning him into a vampire and his loss of a “normal human life” with his mother. He decides, however, that the only way for him to get revenge on Cameron is to become powerful and take the Kingship from Janos, and that would allow him to avenge his mother by leading the Vampire Guardian Angels against Cameron, since Joseph feels he is not strong enough to destroy Cameron himself, and he also feels that he has something to prove by becoming more powerful than his stepfather, and that this will be the only thing that he thinks will give his life meaning.

Comic Book Character: Gabriel - Personality Profile


Gabriel is in his late 30’s. All Gabriel ever wanted was to be saved himself. He harbors a deep resentment of both humans and the Catholic religion for sending him out as a child to fight an army and, as he called out to his Guardian Angel to save him, he was killed instead. Disillusioned, angry, and having lost any faith completely, he became a Guardian Angel himself. But instead of saving humans, he became a serial killer, mercilessly killing them. He suffers from post-traumatic stress, and any prayers that he hears drive him into an uncontrollable rage. His goal in life is to shut humans up so that he does not have to listen to any of their prayers anymore. In human terms he would be considered completely psychotic, as he hears voices (human prayers), suffers from delusions (his reasoning: “People won’t shut up and they are using him to solve their problems because he’s still a Guardian Angel so he has to shut them up so they can’t “use” him anymore and he won’t be a slave to answering their prayers.”) 

Gabriel has sociopathic tendencies. He appears to humans as a charming,  charismatic, loving and helpful angel who promises he will end their suffering, but he is secretly unable to relate to emotion or compassion. He delights in their vulnerability and desperation, often toying with them before killing them with no remorse or guilt. He is a relentless serial killer, tracking humans down through their prayers of despair, desperate to find them no matter what it takes and killing them. He wants them to suffer as he had suffered as a child. Although highly intelligent, his blind rage makes him careless. He hates both Cameron and Joseph  above all things and is determined to get rid of them, and their confrontations lead him to sustain grave injuries, and ironically, he is saved by Jeromos, who harnesses Gabriel’s deep hatred and lust for vengeance and uses Gabriel, now bound to him to saving his life, as a weapon and as the most powerful part of his army. Gabriel apparently has no problem with this, as long as he gets to kill and as long as Jeromos promises him revenge against Joseph and Cameron.

Comic Book Character: Janos (King Janos) - Personality Profile


Janos, in his late 20’s, used to be a brooding  but gentle introvert who kept to himself and who was focused on intellectual pursuits and philosophical study, but everything changed once he had “awakened” by his hidden Vampirism and after realizing that he was of royal blood and a Vampire Guardian Angel. After accepting his role at the constant prompting of his father Gregory, Janos alternated between deep depressive spells and unexpected, sudden rage with an inner struggle of who he was and what he had become. As time passed he became less human and more monster. He was thrown into power without any guidance, and began transforming into a narcissistic megalomaniac with sociopathic tendencies. He was also initially traumatized by his own killings of humans to feed off them and haunted by the rape of his former girlfriend at the hands of his father and the death of her and her child, while at the same time he was given an army, unlimited power, and made King of the Vampire Guardian Angels. Unable to emotionally cope, he preferred to “erase” his “human” feelings. He became arrogant, egotistic, selfish, and developed a lack of empathy , believing that in his own self-importance, no Vampire Guardian Angel could survive without him. 

But Janos is also a weak, indecisive ruler, showing over-confidence but failing to execute his tasks because of his secret low self-esteem, his withdrawal from danger in cowardly fashion, and fear of his own decisions, leaving his right-hand man Jeromos to often lead and make those decisions in his place. He prefers to work behind the scenes and be out of the line of fire. He prefers others to do the dirty work and he won’t even pick up  sword to fight. If his plans did not go well, he did not hesitate to blame others for any perceived failures. A ruthless ruler who demanded constant admiration and praise for his “bravery” and his being the “savior” of the Vampire Guardian Angels (he thinks that without him, they would all be lost), he executed anyone instantly and without mercy who stood in his way or dared defy or criticize him, showing no compassion for anything, as to show any such emotion is a sign of weakness to him. This led to even his followers, and Jeromos, secretly detesting him.

Comic Book Character: Detective Sebastian Costa - Personality Profile


Costa, in his late 30’s, is a restless, get-things-done type of guy, also a Type A individual. He is very competitive and self-critical, always out to “score” another capture of the bad guys with a heightened sense of urgency, as if he’s running out of time. He makes it his mission to be a hero but he feels no accomplishment or satisfaction. To him it’s just another day on the job. He is constantly “wound up” and focused 24/7 on work. But if he makes it his goal to protect you, he WILL protect you. But his personality does make him so persistent in helping Cameron track down the Vampire Guardian Angels, and it becomes even more of an asset when Ms Price is kidnapped by Jeromos. He’s intelligent and methodical, however, he does have an easily aroused temper when he gets frustrated  which can make him over-aggressive, and can be very impatient, which leads him to become indecisive under stress and reckless, especially if he’s frustrated with himself at not knowing what to do in certain highly stressful situations (such as not knowing how to use a sword against Vampire Guardian Angels) and almost making bad decisions, although he did become more gentler and a little more patient when he met Ms Price.

(PS: a little easter egg--in each issue you will find Costa always with a cigarette in his mouth. In the original novel, Costa is a non-smoker, but artist Andrew seems to have depicted him with a cigarette in every scene, including fight scenes and even where bullets are flying at Costa, as a special homage to the black and white crime noir genre.)