Life Giver

One of these days, the artwork I actually imagine will be what I end up making. That's an exaggeration, but I feel like I keep ending up with a less impactful composition than what I intend. And I especially feel that with this one since I've had this character in my head for so long. Anyways: this is Life Giver. You'll notice her picture is similar to the After Avengers', but it doesn't share their logo. That's because she's not an After Avenger. She's their villain. When I originally conceived the After Avengers, I didn't know Marvel wasn't going to be doing any more massive 3-phase story lines in order to opt for smaller stories. And that makes good sense, but for the After Avengers I wanted to imagine a 3 phase story with an overarching villain and everything. Life Giver is that villain.

I wanted this new villain to be wildly different from Thanos. After all, if your new villain is going to be exactly like the old one, why even come up with a new villain in the first place? So I knew I wanted the villain to be a woman from Earth not space; preferably a kind of evil mom archetype to match Thanos' evil dad themes. And I wanted her evil motivation to be built off of the idea of the Avengers.

Her name is Zoey Jonadab. From a certain interpretation it means "Life Giver," hence where she found her supervillain name (she was fascinated with her name even from an early age). She never had to live in a world without Avengers. Instead, she grew up in a world of absolute automated comfort and peace. But instead of helping humanity to be better, all we became was lazier, more depressed, and more self destructive. Life Giver believes that our modern societies have become so adept at creating comfort and happiness that life has become meaningless. So in her mind, the solution is to reintroduce pain and unhappiness so heroes like the Avengers can exist again. This character believes that, since the Avengers defined an entire generation, a new villain must arise in order to define the next generation. That's where she comes in. 

Unlike Thanos, she's not a very physical or confrontational villain (as you can probably guess from the dress). Instead she allows her genetically created monsters to do the fighting for her. This would hopefully allow for a lot of interesting and diverse monster designs and power sets. I think it would be really cool to watch the After Avengers fighting with a t-rex/lion's mane jellyfish hybrid while she sat calmly in the center of it all. 
I wanted a vaguely Kirby-esque design to give her an interesting silhouette, so I played around with different crown and head designs until I got this. I like how nonthreatening her long ears make her look. I was kind of inspired by a doe, but I wanted them to be furled like a Blue Dragon from Dungeons and Dragons. And yes, those are her actual ears. They allow her to hear much farther distances and in ranges that allow her creatures to communicate with her.

Originally I imagined the top image was going to be from the side. I thought it would look very distinct from all the After Avengers' pictures. I drew the draft in the middle. Then I drew the real thing, and it just didn't look as good. Oh well. I shouldn't really complain. I think she looks great. The bottom picture is what she looks like without the head piece and with one of her ears both furled and unfurled.

I'm at school now, and it's going okay so far. Thanks God for letting me finally do this, for giving me all these great ideas, for getting me through every day here, and for yourself most of all. Love you. Amen.