About
Comic
The name for China translates to “Middle Kingdom” in English. The term originated from the rather immodest ancient Chinese believe that China was the center of the civilized universe.
The current comic is adapted from a historical account in Shiji (a.k.a. “Records of the Grand Historian”), the authoritative record of ancient Chinese history which covers over 2000 years, from the “Yellow Emperor” (2600 BC) to Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty (122 BC). Parts of the comic are also drawn from the historical fiction “Chronicles of Eastern Zhou”.
I intend to closely follow historical accounts, but where things aren’t specified I’ll use my imagination to fill in the gaps.
Author
KOAD stands for “knight on a duck”, a little inside joke with the wife. Koad lives in snowy New England, where he has a day job in biomedical research. His wife wishes he would get a real job instead. He loves all things nerdy, and is quite talented at reaching things on high shelves. He is also growing more and more handsome - he has been recently promoted to “almost normal looking” by his wife. He does not usually refer to himself in the third person, and he’s not sure why he’s doing it now.
Art
I’ve always liked to draw and have been doodling pretty much non-stop since I learned how to use a pen. My “formal” art training consists of a sketching class in high school and a painting class in college (some of my “serious” art can be found here). As a kid I read a lot of Chinese and Japanese comics, mostly in secret because the parents did not approve of comics. This is my first comic, and the first time I’ve tried working with Chinese paintbrushes. Or perhaps it should be “paintbrush”, since so far everything’s done with one brush, mainly out of laziness. Those of you who follow Taiwanese or Japanese comics might notice that the drawing style in this comic is heavily influenced by Chen Uen, who is my favorite comic artist of all time.
