Tangle up comic characters

For his first fantasy comic cover, Anand Radhakrishnan discusses his inspirations.

Fantasy authors such as Joe Abercrombie, George RR Martin and Scott Lynch have long been on my reading list. In spite of the complexity of their worlds, they manage to weave a sense of plausibility into their stories.

By the end of 2015, this was one of the factors that led me to start exploring the world of comics, sci-fi and fantasy illustration. Since then I’ve collaborated with writer Ram Iyer on several occasions to create comics and standalone illustrations, and one ended up being the cover for his new fantasy graphic novel, Brigands.

The purpose of a cover, in addition to making the book stand out on the shelf, is to give the reader a gist of what’s to follow within the pages without giving away any spoilers. This provides some interesting possibilities for the artist to play with during the concept stage. In some cases the book cover may not even have much to do with the content of the book, so long as the general feeling of the story is conveyed.

For this cover I wanted the main characters of Brigands (Stilian and Veina, unlikely companions on a misadventure) to appear as if they were combined, trapped and tangled in one unrecognisable mess hanging on for dear life, literally!