This is a little ‘painting’ that’s been on my DevArt for a little while, but I’m quite proud of. I’m still working on getting the painting style down in photoshop, but I think there’s far worse efforts than this:

A quick concept of Claire

I’ve got other pages to do with the character as well, though I don’t really want to scan those as they have most of my notes on them, and I don’t want to give away too much of the story in my head until it’s drawn and posted. All I can say is that I’m worried, with some of the story aspects I’ve got planned, I’m worried that it could be considered to be very like one or two other webcomics, though I’m hoping I can get past that and write a truly original story.

Firstly, there are many pieces of literature set in the 1940s. I probably don’t need to say this, considering it is what amounts to being common knowledge, though for those of you hiding under a rock for the past 70-odd years, as well as those of you who slipped through the educational system (60% of American young adults cannot find Iraq on a map, let alone comprehend ancient history), I’ll make this brief. From 1939, until 1945, there was a war. A fairly large war. In which Allied forces – mainly comprising Commonwealth countries, plus Russia and America after they got attacked themselves – fought against an Axis of Evil (before Bush Jr. invented his one), comprised mainly of Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan once they decided that they wanted to play too. As you can see, Germany was known as Nazi Germany, due to the fact that they were ruled by Hitler’s Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (or Nazis for short).

Hitler decided that he wanted to be a bully, so he started doing some very naughty things, such as invading and annexing surrounding countries, as well as some downright evil things (I’m talking about the Holocaust here). Italy, led by Mussolini, decided that they didn’t want to be left out either, so they jumped in as well.

Of course, to most people, having another country running around invading and start the systemic genocide of a race of people looks kind of evil. So really, to the Allied forces, the Nazis were kind of the bad guys. Add this to the fact that history happens to be written by the victor in most conflicts – due to their actually winning – the Nazis continued to be seen as the antagonists, even now, years after the Russians stormed the Reichstag.

Of course, most literature based in this time frame happens to revolve around the Germans being the antagonists, bar a smaller percentage posing the Japanese as the antagonist nation. This could be because the Nazis came very close to succeeding in their goal of ruling all of Europe, or it could simply be because they’re the more recognisable of the ‘losers’ of the war, but it’s there. Writing any kind of literature from the other point of view could be seen as morally wrong by some, as in hind sight the Axis did some pretty nasty things.

So, had the Axis actually win the war, do I think we’d be bombarded with tales of Nazi heroism against the English? Sure. That is because the victors write the history, as well as the legends.

Also, it appears that the Nazis are one of the few groups in history that a writer is able to portray as an antagonist without offending somebody. True, the latest rollicking tale of Johhny Allied-Forces and his battle against the evil Nazis may offend your typical neo-nazi or anti-semite, but it’s not as if they really count is it. But we can’t even talk about the 2500 year old story of the Battle of Thermopylae without offending the Iranians. With the politically correct world we live in, is it no wonder that we’re a little stretched for bad guys?