Mike the Butcher

We recently introduced a new character over in MONSTER KING (which you can check out over at www.torcpress.com/monsterking.html) named Mike the Butcher. Here's a little ramble on how he came about.

Despite my love of the manga "One Piece", I have, surprisingly, stole/imitated very little from Eichira Oda's pirate comic. But I've always liked the interplay between Luffy and Zolo. Roranoa Zolo in any other manga would be the main character. He's a bad ass Pirate/Samurai/Tough Guy/Swordsman. He's got a cool look, a cool attitude, a cool everything. But in the crazy world of One Piece he's stuck playing second fiddle (or First Mate, as it were) to Luffy D. Monkey, a silly, straw hat wearing, rubber bodied (literally) goofball pirate captain. I think that was kinda where Mike got started.

I also was toying with the idea of giving Cactus Joe a bodyguard. I think that concept started when I was still working on "SDF: Pulp", and I had considered the idea of having Pengy accidentally awaken a halfbreed Vampire that would basically become Pengy's servant/bodyguard. The idea never took, mostly because I just didn't like the idea of Pengy having a deadly living weapon at his disposal. But the bodyguard idea kinda stuck. Now the two of you reading this that read my comix might be asking yourself, "Self, why would a guy who's walking Death like the Clown need a body guard?" Well, the idea I had was that it would be an accidental thing, that CJ would just end up with this strange, powerful, tough guy as his bodyguard for no real good reason.

All I needed was a character that worked. I went through a few ideas before the final version clicked into place. Originally Mike was an alien and carried a Giant Sword. Unfortunately, it's really hard to draw a Giant Sword over and over and over again, so that idea got dropped. Then he turned into a weird mutant rabbit/crab hybrid thing. He could turn his hands into Crab Claws and cut through stuff. That was a neat idea, but it still didn't click. I went back to the halfbreed Vampire idea for awhile, but that didn't take. Eventually, I just simplified things and made him a really, really, really old samurai who was so old that he was basically just a walking corpse who had forgotten most of his life. As something of a shout out to Roronoa Zolo, I colored him green (which also represents that he's kinda moldy/fungusy...ew).

As for the name, it's a combination of "Sammy the Butcher" from William S. Burrough's "Nova Trilogy" and the character of Mike, the One Armed, Shoe Selling, Sorcerer from David Lynch's "Twin Peaks".

So, yeah, Mike the Butcher.