‘The Devil Among Other Friends’ is an original world by me, the focus of my upcoming graphic novel debut.
One day Henry, a cocky, misanthropic angel finds himself booted out of heaven and plummeting thousands of miles down onto the New York City subway tracks. To his luck, Grace, a burnt-out idealist spending listless days as a waitress, decides to scoop him off the tracks and into the safety of their home.
An innocent gesture - that was all it was meant to be - until angel-hitman after angel-hitman comes knocking on Grace's door leaving them to wonder how dangerous the fugitive in their house truly is. With anxiety gnawing at their brain with each of Henry's casual alibis, Grace needs to decide where to stand in a dilemma far bigger than their own petty existential crises.
In a world where distrust is next to godliness, The Devil, Among Other Friends is an action-fantasy meets comedy-thriller in a way that touches on the politics of love and control and the art of making a baconeggncheese all in one.
I first began working on TDAOF when I was 16 years old and reckoning with my religious identity. It’s gone through a lot of revisions over the years (the original name was Only Devils go down to Georgia. Guess what song that was inspired by.)
While the story was set to take place in Atlanta, I chose to bring it to New York (my home) to add layers of authenticity to the setting. I wanted the cover to interpret the moment they met. Originally, Henry was going to fall through Grace’s roof - I decided to change that into the NYC subway to invoke some classic New York imagery. Once I had that, I went to take reference pictures.
The illustration idea I chose was one of Grace stepping forward, walking with faith as they approach Henry - however, the shadow of their foot gets twisted into the shape of a snake - what led Adam and Eve astray. To involve the text, I decided to make Henry’s silhouette the “I” in Devil.
From this point, I made a few changes. I didn’t feel like the rest of the title was exciting enough, so I moved it higher & involved it with the shape of the caution strips on the platform. Henry’s silhouette became more complex - I toyed with the idea of making him the “V” instead of the “I” due to the shape - but I believe the legibility of the word would’ve suffered. The biggest change I made that I was the most satisfied with was changing the shape of the snake shadow to reflect the flow of the composition - especially since the placement of the text changed.
I was quite happy with this piece and I can’t wait until it becomes the cover to my finished graphic novel.
