The Black General

A long time ago I had an idea for a manga, but at the time I was busy with what would become #AngeldevilManga and I pushed it onto my back burner. I did attempt to make a written version, which was… horrendous. But I like the characters and I felt that, with some refinements, there was a story worth tell here.

Seven years later I've finished Angeldevil, and so now it's their turn.

Some of my oldest watchers may recognize the characters (their names have remained mostly unchanged), but the world has been entirely rebuilt. Even the subject of the story has changed. Now it will be two series: Year of the God-Fox and The King in the Tree, both set on the mythical island of Keikan, a world with a heavy Japanese/Asian slant, and chronicling the adventures and misadventures that occur when the world of the forest and the animal gods collide with the sophisticated world of the humans.

The Black General is Garomé, the sister of the Forest King and the Commander in Chief of his army. Here she is pictured as she appears at the beginning of Year of the God-Fox, when she stops a young Kitsuné from destroying a human village.

Garomé is a Daikyö (alternatively Taikyö), a magical creature that can take the form of a giant, horned ferret-like animal with a long prehensile tail. Unlike many of her kind, Garomé prefers to remain in her smaller, anthropomorphic form, and fights with a human weapon; a katana. She does this because she is so strong she considers it "unfair" to unleash her full power.

The scar over her left eye came from a fight when she was young. The eye had to be removed, but was later replaced by a magical stone which allows her to see spirits and magic. But that's another story.

You can see a picture of her brother here:


And (for nostalgia's sake) here is how they first appeared:


Character and art © myself. Daikyö are my original creation, inspired by Eastern mythologic creatures.

8.25"x12" Prismacolor pencil on illustration paper. The December illustration for my Black Book Project, this appears on page 136 of my Black Book.