Happy New Year!
All of us here at the New Futurists wish you nothing but the best in 2024!
We’re excited to welcome you to our first Trading Card Tuesday of the new year where we’ve got a real gut-wrenching tale of familial trauma for you today. Too soon after the holidays? Well, consider that a content warning.
I won’t hit you with too much business because I’m excited to get into our main feature. For all of our 2023 Visionary Subscribers: your final rewards package of the year (featuring two limited-edition prints and exclusive merchandise!) will be in the mail this Friday. For those of you considering a paid or Visionary subscription in 2024, stay tuned for a SUPER exciting update on this year’s rewards!
And dang y’all, I may say it a lot, but I can NEVER say it enough: thank you to everyone who reads and subscribes to The New Futurists.
The end of 2023 kind of got away from me, but we still have our first-ever Omniverse fan correspondence feature in the hopper. If you’d like to drop us a message about the Omniverse, just hit reply to this message, email us directly at thenewfuturists@gmail.com, or DM us on IG. Please remember to include “okay to print” in your message! Y’all have sent us some really good questions and I can’t wait to share them with everyone.
Today’s feature story is a period piece— all the way from the late 1980’s and early 1990’s! Join us for a gritty tale of the Vengeful Viper of New Cawkaigne: The Serpent!
1989 – THE SERPENT & THE ADDER
William & Jacob Sharpe aka The Serpent & The Adder – father and son dynamic duo with a mission to bring order to New Cawkaigne. A mission that ends in terrible tragedy.
Since the Serpent is more of a mantle that’s passed through the Sharpe family, the different eras really allow me to explore and incorporate the superhero styles of the decades into each new look. Since this is the Serpent of the late 80’s, I looked at Tim Burton’s Batman primarily, leaning into that darker and bulkier take. No longer a gritty noir detective but now a hardened and armored crime fighter. And by the time William takes on the mantle, he’s carrying a long family legacy on his shoulders so he’s taking this very seriously. This time around, I wanted to incorporate some sort of snakeskin / scale pattern into his design, something I ultimately decided not to include in the original Serpent look. I used that pattern to not only create a big ‘S’ symbol on his chest but to also add a pop of that venomous yellow.
With Adder being the Robin of this duo, I made sure to make him look and feel like a kid. I liked the idea of not giving him a full cowl and letting his hair be free, just to give him a bit of youth. His arms and legs, incorporating the scale motif, mimic the pattern found on the adder snake. I envision the scales being a full undergarment suit of scaled armor created specifically for Adder by Serpent himself for extra protection.
- Luis Valero-Suarez
When we decided to set one of our Serpent cards in the “dark age” of comics (generally described as a micro-era in the mid-80’s to early-90’s), I knew I wanted to riff on the death of Jason Todd. For those not steeped in comics history, I highly recommend treating yourself to a little time with the Batman: A Death in the Family Wikipedia entry because it is a pivotal and truly bonkers moment in comics lore.
Because the characters in the Omniverse experience the world in real time, I latched onto the idea of the Serpent being passed down like an albatross among the members of an extremely wealthy family.
Like a lot of nerd folks my age, Tim Burton’s Batman looms very large in my imagination. I love how Luis evolves the Serpent into a dark, gritty 80’s setting with a bulkier design that is still somehow sleek.
And it really breaks my heart that this version of the Adder was born to die! The complementary, yet aesthetically distinct, design for Adder makes me wonder what kind of hero Jacob might have become. Robin is, hands DOWN, one of the trickiest aspects of the Batman mythos, so I appreciate the challenge of integrating a parallel concept into the Omniverse.
— Ben Bolling
Creating a multi-generational heroic legacy was very confusing. So much math! It should come as no surprise to our ride-or-die readers that I LOVE a family tree. So please enjoy this genealogy of the Serpent!
❤️🐍 I love the Serpent! The lore you've built for this character goes deep!