In Fall of 2019, I was nearing the end of my student career in the Graduate Illustration Program at Cal State Fullerton. The previous Fall, 2018, I had even begun teaching Life Drawing For Animation classes—in precisely the same room I had taken the same class as an undergrad, nearly a decade before—so a sense of having come full circle was taking place. As part of my spread of courses that semester, I had finally gotten enrolled in the much coveted Sequential Art (comics) class, which I had vied for in Spring, 2019, when it was still taught by the incomparable Kit Seaton. Sadly, Kit had succumb to the interdepartmental, Machiavellian politics and had reconnoitered back east to be closer with family, and work on the continuing volumes of her, and her sister Kat’s lovely Norroway series of young adult graphic novels.

As part of my in class work for Sequential Art that semester, I was tasked with making a “square” comic. Essentially, it’s both exactly and perhaps not at all what it sounds like: A single page sequential art story that adopts a perfectly square page format, as opposed to the more traditional 6.75”x10.25”, vertically rectangular comic book format. I was excited to play with the format, and to test my skills of visual direction through what I hoped would be some decidedly unconventional panel flow.

What emerged was a single page sort of quest story, with a werewolf finish, centered in the ever evolving world of my own Hush Ronin mythos. And I had a blast making it. I presented the finished, printed art for critique, received a lot of kind praise—I was, by then, already working professionally in comics with several published works to my name—and some very useful, and actionable suggestions for improvement, which I adapted into the work, post haste.

Upon completion of this piece though, I realized that I hadn’t quite resolved things. Sure, our Ronin character has escaped the blistering snows, and made his way to the castle on the distant hill, defeating its guardian werewolf for entrance, but it was as though he had beaten the first level boss of a video game. If the owner of that castle had set a werewolf as guard dog, what other horrors or dangers might be lurking inside? And, what would the Ronin find once he gained the top of the mysterious mountain top castle? If my readers weren’t interested, I sure as hell was. And so the following tryptic emerged:

For those few who have followed the evolution of Hush Ronin from its inception, sometime in early 2017, most would attest to a story with constantly—and wildly—changing tropes and visuals. While it began rather simply with a moment of artistic indecision as to how to draw the mouth for a cutesie little chibi samurai I had drawn for a lark, that unresolved facial feature birthed a story of gods and men that began to snowball in the back country of my imagination, culminating in a chaotic avalanche of ideas, both good and bad.

Most recently, Hush Ronin has been submitted in what I have somewhat grudgingly determined will be its final form. It is currently available for order from Band of Bards in both standard and gold foil editions (books will arrive on or after January 23, 2023). The new book, though it runs very far afield of the original idea that inspired both title and story, is 50 pages for the first issue, and introduces us to Shoji; an orphaned samurai, pitted against his own power hungry, Shogun uncle (Shoguncle? Yes? No?) and the enigmatic Red Lady, a sort of scorpion queen, who wishes to overthrow both emperor and shogun and establish a new sort of class of rule altogether. The above tryptic does a fair enough job of capturing some of the essence of this story, but the whole thing will expand to explore areas of ancient Sumerian mythology, Elizabethan England in the Age of Discovery, until finally circling back to the quarrels between gods and humans that inspired the original versions of the tale. As nervous as I am about its reception, I am also very excited to get this story out into the world at last.

J. Schiek is a comic book artist and art professor at North Idaho College. He has worked as artist on independent titles such as Hallowed North by Jeremiah Espinoza, and Sherlock Holmes & The Wonderland Conundrum by Chuck Suffel. His work has also appeared in numerous anthologies including BIG HYPE Vol. 1 by Doug Wood, Morsels by. Joe Donahue, and the Ringo Award nominated anthology, Yule, from Grant Stoye. When not working on comics, he can be found preparing lecture slides, cussing, and sweating over the rigors of off grid living in his mountain holdfast near the American/Canadian border.