BLACKOUT

This is a two page spread I did over a period of about 3 months in between pages for Kato: Origins at Dynamite.  Who knows what I'll do with this or if I'll have enough time to do anything with it for a while.  The character is featured in the banner for this Blog as well (and you can see a little more detail of his mask there).  He's a little too similar in design to another character I've been working on called The Black Skull...so I may just leave this be...but it's still pretty neat looking.

There were two different Blackouts characters during the golden age:

http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Blackout_(1)

http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Blackout_(2)

Mine is obviously different from either of these two though.  Except for the ability to emit black gas from his pores that blinds his attackers (hence the name).  I decided to keep that, but make it more like a mechanism like the picture below (an add from the 1940's I believe) that sprays black gas at his attackers (instead of tear gas as shown in the add below).  I also added an orange sort of tint to the lenses in his mask.  They don't glow, they're just reflective (kind of like a cat's eyes at night).

I thought this was a pretty neat little idea for a character to have.  I also gave him a gun that would fit the time period for when this character would exist, which would be between 1935 and 1945.  I decided on a gun that not only fits the time period, but just flat out looks damn cool:  a HiStandard Model HDM with silencer.  This gun was the most widely used by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) so it seemed to fit.  This is the weapon he's holding in the banner for this blog above as well (along with a flash light), but just in case anyone wants a better picture of it, I've placed a picture of it below as well.  It's a neat looking gun.