YOSEPH is a character I’ve been kicking around since the eighth grade, when I had the idea to do a fan webcomic set in the Dragonball Universe. Not necessarily on Earth, nor featuring any of the same characters created and used by Akira Toriyama. I wanted to do something similar to his stories, but with my own twist.
(Say what you will about Akira Toriyama and Dragonball, but that Japanese pothead and his uniquely-styled universes have been some of the biggest influences.)
I forget the story I had planned out, but Yoseph had been there since the beginning. He looked a little different, wearing an outfit similar to that of Mr. Popo in the Dragon Ball series and a Super Mario World-esque mushroom cap.
Later, in my freshman year in college, I resurrected the character, calling him Adolus, putting him on a quest for the Great Gray Toad in two seperate projects. One of those projects (the one where I introduced the Toad), my instructor said he’d like to see the story in the form of a 24-page comic.
Thus, I started storyboarding a comic surrounding Adolus’ adventure to reach the Great Gray Toad, and the quest he would be given.
I say “started” because I got maybe nine pages in before I was distracted by other things. Every so often, though, I’d pick up the idea again, fleshing out the adventure, adding more characters, and eventually finding a bizarre ending for it. At one point, I had the idea of incorporating it into a friend’s Universe (the Crooked Kingdom, an element that stuck…and I’m thankful she hasn’t gorged my spleen with something sharp and rusty for pissing all over her idea), but nothing ever really came from any of this.
Somewhere in the early planning stages of Peculiar Comics I decided to bring Adolus back. The problem was, I realized he looked like a big fat piece of copyright infringement, and wasn’t really the character I needed him to be. With a few (okay, major) cosmetic changes, Adolus became Yoseph XIII.
What will come next for Yoseph? What changes will he go through? Where will he go? Who will he shoot?
Stay tuned.
Peculiar Comics 