Oh gosh, sure! I’m so glad you think they’re interesting-sounding since I worry that my stupid ideas bore people a lot.

• The Historians is a webcomic about the employees of a historical society in my home state of New Jersey. Their lives consist of basically screwing things up in every imaginable way possible to get people interested in history. A lot of the time this involves the use of awesome cars and/or old weapons because historians like awesome old things. Eventually they team up with the engineers next door and things become even more destructive.
• Londinium is a novel set in 1860s London (and the overriding name for the project, which has five planned books in it) that I’ve been trying to write since December of 2004 when I was fifteen (four months from turning 16). It’s gone through tons and tons of plot revisions, but the gist of it now is that an aristocrat and a working class piano player/chimney sweep team up to investigate some wrongdoings at a bank and at the same time become best friends and become the biggest comedy writing team of the 1860s. It’s my pet project and I’m hoping beyond hope that one day I finish it and people actually like it.

Londinium and The Historians also take place in the same universe - one character in Londinium’s fourth book, Colter Robbins, is the great-great-great grandfather of Ells Robbins, the main character of The Historians. (Actually, everything I write takes place in the same universe because I’m lame and love doing that sort of thing.)

Thanks for asking, seriously - it makes me so happy that people are interested! <3 What’s your comic going to be about, by the way? I’m curious about your adorable characters, too.

Tragically, there’s not an interesting backstory to Armo - he’s newer and only arrived in my life about a year ago. I was going through Historians ideas as I laid in bed trying to fall asleep one night and decided that the racing team needed a Finn.

It got a Finn.

Armo’s only been around for approximately a year, and he hasn’t really changed since his onset, but he did reveal that he’s a very, very loyal friend over the course of that one year and he’s always there to stick up for people. Even Julien, who he playfully torments.

On the other hand, Basil has a very, very long history - he arrived soon after Dustin did in 2004.

LOOK, I LABELED HIM ‘MAIN CHARACTER.’ HAHAHAHA.

There are only two things that are currently true about Basil in that image: he was born in Manchester, and he still makes sure he doesn’t miss his tea in the afternoon. His birthday has since been moved up from 1834 to 1837 (although it’s still July 2nd if you want to bake him a cake), he’s the eldest son of an earl masquerading as a banker to figure out what happened to the money his father invested at a rival bank, and he’s an incredibly imaginative writer - he secretly writes satire anonymously. His evolution as a character from boring banker to an aristocrat with an almost infallible deadpan is charted in this post somewhat. 

In 2007, as this post here explains, I discovered Basil had way too much in common with Peter Cook for me to ignore it, and so his post-early 2007 characterization has been inspired by Mr. Cook. (Likewise, Dustin had too much in common with Dudley Moore for me to let it pass, and so began my realization that I’d loved double acts for a very long time and it was finally showing up in my work.)

Basil today has pretty much done a complete 180° from the Basil of late 2004, and I’m quite relieved for that because the Basil of late 2004 really isn’t someone I’d have wanted to spend the past eight years writing for. (Londinium turns 9 in December. That makes me feel weird.)

I like this Basil better.

Ells dates back to 2004, but slightly earlier than Dustin does. She was part of the SOFT project that I mentioned in my post about Yumi and Rumi, but whilst those two were designed to keep Mary Sues out of the Lord of the Rings canon Ells and her comrades (Corey, Karen, Chris, Jessie and Stacy - and yes, eventually Rugen a few months later) were created with the Sharpe canon in mind. (Read these if you never have - and watch the miniseries, too. They’re the reason I majored in history.)

Ells is going to kill me for posting this, but in 2004 (November-ish) I made a progression of her character design from the first sketch I ever did of her up to where I was presently.

Ells won’t be thrilled that you’re all seeing what her hair initially looked like. Her initial description in the SOFT fic described her as having “hair that looked like she stuck her finger in an electrical socket.” Fortunately, she evolved enough in that first year that she was eventually just described as looking like an old television.

Personality-wise, Ells has always been a wiseass who loves cars more than she loves most people. She’s also always had a thing for Cockney accents, was addicted to caffeine the moment she arrived as a character, and ate, slept and breathed baseball from day one. Her role at SOFT evolved from being a simple ‘foot soldier’ to eventually working to recapture things the Mary Sues stole as their own. This task often involved “recapturing” cars she couldn’t afford, but it also got her the 1968 Mini Cooper S that she still drives now. As a nod to the character she was assigned to protect specifically from Mary Sues, the Mini is now named Francis after him.

Ells has always been the idiot she is now, although as she’s gotten older she’s actually had her characteristic confidence falter when it comes to her looks - she fears that her hair makes her unattractive, but there’s nothing she can do about it because every time it gets cut it just grows back in. (It’s also a hereditary family trait.) Of course, Clyde thinks she’s just plain adorable, but she has trouble believing it. (They do start dating after a while in the comic, but it’s going to take me a long time to get to that part.)

Oh, and go ahead and make fun of her because she has a crush on Richard Hammond. Clyde makes fun of her for it already.