Rigor Mortis

Well, reader, you found the first page. Congratulations. I especially applaud you for your search if you’ve been going through the archives looking for it, because if you’re anything like me, you like to start this shit from the beginning, so I’m pretty sure I already like you.

I usually hate it when Webcomic artists leave the first page of a new website blank, so I will entertain you with a short explanation of who I am, and what you’re looking at here.

My name is Hannah Burns, and I do comics. What you’ve stumbled upon here is my Big Damn Graphic Novel, Rigor Mortis.

When I was around 11 years old, I found myself doodling some characters in my sketchbook in the middle of my sister’s viola recital, characters who stuck around and eventually became Lunis Culpeper, Kaede Usher, and Aramas Malloy, the protagonists of Rigor Mortis. They started out as a rip-off of “Lenore” by Roman Dirge and other such things but as time went on, they kept on coming back to me and sticking around in my brain, so I decided that they deserved better than taking up space in my sketchbook, and in 2009 when I was around 15, I refined their style, added Francois Hollbrook and Queen Incendia, and made the first Rigor Mortis comic book.

And it was awful.

Good god, it was awful. Words cannot even begin to describe. This is what happens when you write a graphic novel by the seat of your pants and don’t bother to write a story ahead of time. Won’t do that again.

So then a few years ago I decided to go insane and basically throw half of what I’ve already done with the thing away, figure out a decent story and ending point, figure out who the characters really are, redraw everything and give Gotham not the graphic novel that it needs, but the one it deserves.

I will try and update on a regular schedule, although I can’t always guarantee that I’ll be able to update on time. That’s just what happens when you’re trying to do the College thing and write a graphic novel at the same time. I hope that you enjoy all of the characters I make and the world they live in, and their adventures. It’s time they got to meet all of you.

Thanks for taking the time to look for me.

– Miss Burns