#The maker project nexus

[gloosth-b]

I’m getting used to drawing him without a mask. Funny enough, it’s even a bit easier than drawing him with it lol

[barsik099]

[eggcrum]

How I see them

[mersei47]

hank x player + victor and player moment

[monotone-inkwell]

Madness Combat Tarot Thingies...

[devicecontact]

text from here

No filter version under cut

[verquilla]

babysitting

[rooksruckus]

I want to turn him to dust ❤️🎀

[fluffydeoxys]

sometimes i think about what doc and the maker talked about prior to getting the player. the horrors

this was drawn over a hellboy comic panel that i thought was pretty fitting considering how nevada is yknow. like that

[kentamin3]

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW FUN IT IS TO MAKE THESE

[ghost-in-a-mirror]

Shout out to my Tinkerer who fired a dissonance SMG, bluescreened pc and ended up stabbing my old graphics card to death

[gloosth-b]

"Freedom"

The Truman Show but it’s the Player from Arena Mode

[enigma-the-glitch]

Long-awaited meeting

[eggcrum]

How I see the madcom lore

I have like a page of with almost all of the characters but it's hard to read so er

[docsbestkissedoperative]

The (My) Centerpiece of Violence

Sequel to the Ocean of Blood

See under the cut for transcript and rambling

[START OF TRANSCRIPT]

DOC/2BDAMNED: I've been thinking of that dream you told me about.

And as I did, I started to ask myself...why I never considered what would become of you.

(and you) (and you) (and you) (and you)

Living a lifetime of violence. Forced to fight and forced to rise without your say so.

Do you do it willingly, HANK WIMBLETON? Does it even matter (to me) if you do, HANK?

There are things at play much larger than either of us. And I know at least one thing. They need you for whatever it is they have planned.

But the problem is, I need you too.

You are perfect in the ways I need you to be.

You knew madness before you knew your own name.

You are a killing machine. Violence is an inseparable part of your being.

It is exactly what I need. MY DUTY cannot be fulfilled without it.

Many sacrifices have been made to keep us (me) alive. And you are the latest one.

...

...

I'm sorry, Hank. I will not stop now. That status quo must remain.

Maybe you resent me for it already, and maybe one day you will understand (forgive me),

but I will not wait.

[END OF TRANSCRIPT]

Rambling starts here! I'm very tired so I hope this makes sense. I also won't talk about every bit of the comic, so it might be that I jump here and there!

WOW! This one took a long time to make. This comic has been cooking up in my mind not long after I posted the Ocean of Blood one. From Doc's perspective, it is the point where he has to fully acknowledge the ramifications of what he does. Specifically, if he can justify taking another person's agency for the sake of his goals.

I mentioned in another post how Hank lacks a lot of agency, and how his status as the "eye of the storm" plays a lot into this. I added that this is partly because even if he has his own goals, he's only usually able to move if they happen to align with another person's goals as well. Right now, that person is Doc, and in the comic now, he's contemplating on whether to bring Hank back or not.

I believe Doc's work is very important to him. In one of the flashbacks in Project Nexus, Christoff describes what Doc does as "ghoulish", and THIS is the only time we actually see him mad! In the rest of the game, he's always the one who's keeping his cool, even when a meeting with the VendeVice goes wrong. To see him drop that and snap back because his work was questioned is SO interesting.

With how much he values what he does, I think another point of interest is his willingness to let someone lose their agency to fulfill his goals. The two best examples I can think of here is Hank and the Player from arena mode.

Quick context on this, the Player is essentially trapped in a timeloop because if not, Nevada will fall. While Doc can't control these loops, he shows no desire to help the Player even when he is made aware of the loops by them. At most, he thinks it's impressive and fascinating, and he tends to be cagey about revealing the information he knows.

For Hank, that's what I wanted to look at in the comic! I wanted a moment where Doc can't shrug it off as easily. In this case, not only does Hank directly tell him about it, but he has to contend with the fact that Hank is experiencing this because Doc has and will continue to make decisions that takes Hank's agency away from him.

For the Player, it's easy to say it's all as it was intended to be, all he did was start the process, especially when the Maker himself agrees on this. But now, Doc has to do more than just waking someone else up. He has to deliberately choose to bring a body back, put it together, revive it, command others to bring the body and revive it, tell Hank to do things for the sake of SQ, etc. He is now the main decision maker.

On the comic itself, I wanted to mention my color palette. While I use three colors, the most important ones here are red and white. In this comic and the Ocean of Blood, I tried to follow this logic: Red is a representation of violence and madness, while white is a separation from it. More often than not, the backgrounds are red because Nevada itself appears to be inherently violent.

(I try to keep this logic when I choose what color the text is, but I have to admit that it sometimes becomes a matter of compromise so you can actually see it)

When I drew the Player, white was used to also represent the Nowhere, which I see as separate enough from Nevada that that permanent state of violence doesn't quite reach it. The only thing you can do there is surrender yourself to it.

Moving on to Doc, his hair isn't kept as short as it usually is, and the things that tend to give him a more intimidating appearance are also gone (goggles, jacket, etc). Doc is just as prone to danger now as every other Nevadean. This is my way of showing Doc being "vulnerable" to some degree, since this is a moment where he has to think a LOT about what he's doing and its costs. So when he tidies his hair and puts it all back on in the end, it's his way of "locking in" so to speak.

Also fun fact! the parentheses were, for me, a way of Doc being just a liiiiiittle more honest about how he feels, but very quietly so.

I can't say he's made complete peace with his decisions, but because he deems his work as highly valuable, there's nothing that will stop him from continuing it.

A lot of panels also make use of things that have appeared in the Madcom series! The vollyball (it's spelled this way in the series!) and wanted poster are from MC4, the guitar lessons are from MC 9.5 part 1, and "MY:DUTY" and the poster in the same panel is from DISSENTER. I did my best to copy each one (with some liberties and added symbolism). If you look at which line Hank's name is written on the vollyball and guitar lessons posters, it should line up with where it's written in the real ones!

The vollyball and guitar lessons posters are also very important in Hank's case! For someone who lacks agency, the moments where he does show agency are really noteworthy! Hank chose to sign up for these things!

The Vitruvian Man is said to symbolize the perfect/ideal man, and the fibonacci sequence is said to appear often in nature. I wanted to say this because these are the 2 panels I had in mind since I first made this comic. the Vitruvian Man was something I considered for Ocean of Blood, but decided to move it here. I wish I could spend paragraphs here complaining about how long it took to make these 2 panels, but I'm happy with how they turned out so I'll let it slide

The last thing I want to mention is the hand gesture Doc does in the MY DUTY panel is the symbol for chemical equilibrium! Tbh, i struggled to find something that could symbolize the status quo, but i'd argue that doc would want that equilibrium as part of it

EDIT: I FORGOT TO MENTION UNTIL SOMEONE MENTIONED IT IN THE TAGS! It might be obscure-ish, but the panel that says Hank knew madness before he knew his name is from part of the 2nd makeship plush description of him: "A little known fact about Hank is that he was unaware of his name until he read it on wanted posters."

[mist-lightning-snap]

"You will never know the Hellfire. Your sacrifice is your reward."