February 2008; A seemingly normal month in my teenage life. I've been into drawing comic strips and that sort of thing for a few years now, and just scrapped what was going to be my character, (who at the time was a Sonic fancharacter) Ryu's past. It was planned because I stopped working on the comic strip that really got me interested in making comics, Chaotic World. Which was essentially gag strips done on entire sheets of lined paper, inked with sharpies and colored with both colored pencil and markers. At the time, it was great. But, it wasn't enough.
Even after I failed to do any sort of backstory for the character Ryu, because I had no exposure to how to create actual comic pages instead of strip sorts of things, I realized I wanted to do more with the character; as I had grown quite accostumed to him. Whilst being in a grocery story one day, I got this crazy idea for a new sort of comic, and wrote it down. It was nothing more than a simple statement, "Four kingdoms, all engaged in war, Overlords rule over them," or something to that extent. And so starts the epic journey of Ryu's Krew. The original premise was basically a huge war between different kingdoms (which was more or less inspired by Avatar the Last Airbender, I'm going to guess). However, that never even seen the light of day, due to the fact that I had forgotten I had even written it by the next time I had got to the drawing table.
Around this time, I had been incredibly addicted to the Xbox 360 game Crackdown, which should be most notable for having access to the Halo 3 beta. I didn't really care much for the beta (mostly because we had the game after the beta, and we had Halo 3 by then too), so I began playing and realized how cool everything was. Comic-esque graphics, incredibly fun gameplay, and just a really cool idea. I started doing a few different sketches of Ryu in different sorts of costumes like that, ideas of him as a superhero sort of thing. Until I figured out an even better concept; a team of Super Police. That, my friends, has essentially been the 'theme' underlaying the entire series, somewhat until this day, but not quite. But we'll get to that soon enough.
So I had the new concept, but realized I wanted more characters than just Ryu (still a Hedgewolf), and a lame ninja turtle esque character name Aero. So this is when I got to sketching, and created Draycho (who at the time was a Lynx, go figure), Archound (who was a dog), and an un-named bird character who I later scrapped. So with these characters, I basically set off to create a comic. I barely had anything planned out, and I just kind of went with it. I wanted it to be an all-color, cartoony sort of looking comic. So I drew the pages out on graph paper in blue pencil, and then inked the lines using the line tool in Paint.Net (way before I had a tablet) and colored it in Photoshop. The result was something...well, at the time, very cool. But very poorly written and poorly drawn overall. But a good learning experience. Aero never actually appeared in the first version, but rather was supposed to appear in a "Side Quest" which was never even finished. I ended up quitting V1 after having to re-color I think it was either Page 4 or 5 multiple times due to my computer crashing. Which ultimately made me frustrated.
After a month or so break, I gave it another go. This time giving it a different feel. I didn't show Draycho or Archound in the beginning this time, as I planned on having them come into play later on. V2 focused more on Ryu escaping from Hell and being saved by a demon of some sort by the name of Hayde (who is now a Minion of Loki; Antagonist). And I believe the point of it was to defeat an evil Santa Claus.. It really made no sense, but the colors at the time were really cool, and I really liked it. Again, I got bored and didn't like how it came out, so I yet again quit this one. Also, a neat note is that I drew these pages on printer paper (which would be my second attempt at it, after Project Ryu *the backstory I mentioned earlier*) and inked them with Pigma Sakura Micron pens.
Then...yet again, another month or so went by. Maybe not even that long. But I ended up giving it yet another go, but this time getting more serious about it. I typed up a script and printed it out, and went as far as creating a cover for it (I did for V2 as well, but I colored this one). This comic was my biggest step up so far, as I really tried to plan this one out. It was going back to the roots of the Super Police idea, and basically supposed to be how the Krew got together, how they met, etc, etc. Sgt. Deth was brought back from V1 (as he was the leader back then). And another new character was created, Rock Panda. Rock Panda was originally going to be a protagonist, along with the Krew, but still was a crazy rockstar (literally), also Metalhead was created, and was also a protagonist, but had a much much cartoonier look to him (as did Rock Panda). The whole plot (what I got done anyway) was that Sgt. Deth wanted to recruit a team of people to make into Super Police after he got out of a huge war after seeing how the world turned to shit. It really wasn't a bad concept, just incredibly poorly executed. He essentially went around to all these random people he found about via Zeus (Greek Mythology started showing up in this) and asking them to join, basically having them say yes. So in a matter of 30 pages, Sgt. Deth managed to gather up 5 or 6 people, which gave the reader little time to get used to them/to even care about them. I also ended up quitting this one, after the first chapter was complete, and I had one page of the next done. A neat fact about this one is that the second issue/chapter had two different covers, because at the time Ryu's Krew was going to be a comic book, not a graphic novel like it is now.
So with three different versions of Ryu's Krew not working, I decided to take a different route, the same core concept, but done a lot differently. I got rid of Sgt. Deth, and even Draycho. I drastically altered Ryu's appearance (no longer being a Hedgewolf, now being some sort of...cat/rat sort of thing) because I wanted to get into creating my own original style. So it was a lot more calm. Ryu worked at a video store, and Archound was a boxer. They both were best friends and lived with each other in an apartment. Basically they ended up stumbling upon these powered up orbs which was going to give them the whole sort of power and transform them into the Soldiers of the Gods (this is around when the whole concept started appearing for that). Only got maybe 7 or so pages of this done, but all black and white until I quit. So ends V4.
At this point, I was pretty disappointed and pretty sick of making failures. So I put a LOT more thought into this next one. I spent a few months purely designing everything out and fleshing out the story more, so that way I felt there would be no way for me to fail this time. It started out with the Grim Teddy (another new villain for Ryu's Krew, brought back from a Chaotic World concept) saying how he was going to take over Mount Olympus, as he was the main antagonist this time around. So this one featured more of the Greek Gods, and had the characters all from different areas, and basically being randomly teleported at a specific point. Draycho for some reason was an alien..and not any sort of animal. Anyway, so the Gods teleported them up to Mount Olympus to make them a deal, and basically I quit at that point. I was really looking for a colorist because I wanted it to be in color (I colored the first page with a tablet, only to have my tablet break as I was coloring Page 2). So my friend Mishi colored Page 2, and I searched and searched for a colorist, but to no avail. It was at that point I decided just to have Ryu's Krew be in black and white, because I realized that I was essentially on my own for this. Which inevitably helped me a lot, and made me work a lot harder.
So with 5 versions down, I sat down and started sketching out a really badass darker style, because I was sick of the whole cartoony thing. Also, inspired by Sam & Fuzzy (webcomic) I started inking with a brush pen. I made this version a lot darker, and the storyline was essentially Ryu/Draycho/Archound all being criminals who are put together in this compound by the Gods as a test to try and take out this Dictator of a totalarian area. The compound used to be a city, but then got turned into that sort of thing by a demon named Lotus, and Lotus ruled through fear. This one had a lot less to do with the super powers and Gods. Rather it relied more on the characters, which was actually pretty cool in a way. So essentially the 3 made a huge plot to take down Lotus, so they ended up sneaking their way through this underground city that Lotus destroyed, and was once a beautiful fully populated city of nice folk. In the underground city the 3 met up with Ryu's old friend, Achire, who ended up giving them the tools they needed to fight Lotus. Achire was interested in how they even got there, so then they started explaining their pasts which was probably the strongest part of this version. It was a really emotional sort of dark look on these character's pasts, and how they became who they were. A bit brutal, and I realized that in order to get to any of the main parts (because Loki was actually the main villain, Lotus was a small part) it would take a good 2 years just to draw it all out (I calculated it, actually). Thus, it was scrapped.
Now, go forward a few more months (approximately a few weeks to a few months in between every version), I worked hard to establish a darker style. I had been coloring the pages of V6 with copic markers that I got, and really liked that. But started inking with a Pilot Precise V5 instead of a brushpen, and actually ended up switching to cardstock paper instead of printer paper. Again, put more planning into it, but this time I had "epic" on my mind. This is when the series really started to get closer to what it is now. I drew a 6 or 7 page Prologue showing the characters being teleported to Mount Olympus, the Gods telling them of their war against Loki, and asking if they accept, etc. Then the first Mission (this is when the chapters started being called Missions, because this is the point where I started incorporating video game elements) dealt with the SotG facing the Und34d, which was lead by the Witch who basically was a pawn of Loki. They needed to get information on Loki's whereabouts from her, but inevitably before they even got to the Witch they were overwhelemed by the power of the Und34d. Draycho ended up dragging their corpses to Mount Olympus and telling the Gods of their failure. And basically the Gods didn't really mind because they tried their best, etc, etc. And I just started getting really bored here. This was actually a really good premise, and the pages looked (and still sort of do) look pretty damn good. But I just wasn't into it.
Then finally, another few months go by, and I start what is Ryu's Krew now. Except the tools ended up changing halfway through (to inking completely with sharpies and shading with pencil instead of copic markers, because I ended up running out of marker ink and didn't have money to get more) and decided I really like the rough gritty look of the pencils. And that, is the history of Ryu's Krew. There's a few things I may have missed out on explaining, but for the most part, that's everything.
Ryu's Krew was something I'd always been heavily dedicated to, as throughout highschool, and even after, I had manic depression, so it was a way that I coped with that. Despite that it was working against me in the way that it made me not want to work on it, it also in a way fueled the dark sort of theme that ended up being in the comic later on down the road. Ryu's Krew is something I've grown incredibly attached to, with all the many failures (there's mini-versions that I did that I don't want to bother explaining) and successes, it's became a part of me. It's helped me to mature, and to be a hard worker. It's weird how this one comic managed to do all that, but now I owe it to the comic to finish it, once and for all.
If you want to check out the pages of the older Ryu's Krew, feel free to visit my deviantArt; I have put most/all of the pages on there.