I don’t think Nadifa knows who Brody is, exactly, but sometimes it just takes one to know one. The look of these two characters, like all my characters, was inspired by actual people. I find the best way to escape the artistic trap of everyone looking the same but with different hair is to draw from life. Every face is a caricature. In the case of Brody I was interested in a Mayan look which shows in her face and her clothing. For Nadifa I wanted a very serious, sleek, ebony skinned model. These aren’t exact portraits, but certainly recognizable inspirations.
Ensign Shapiro and Cadet Aslan (as I know them in my head) were born out of a search for “Israeli soldier” and “Turkish Soldier”. In Aslan’s case the person was just a background blur, but his clearly visible flat bangs, round cheeks, and pencil line beard were just what I wanted: A boyish metrosexual in fatigues.
As a comics reader since roughly 1969, I’d like to thank you for making the effort to deliberately distinguish the differences between these characters. I grew up on Curt Swan and Dick Dillin. Everyone might as well have been the same actor in different hair/costume.
I read a lot of Archie comics when I was a kid, so imagine a psyche scarred by Dan DeCarlo.
The book “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way” is a pretty depressing read. All these guys griping about how villains are more interesting to draw because heroes all have to look alike. And, in the case of Jack Kirby, everyone looks like Jack Kirby.
Nailed it. I had a used copy of that book until I realized that not only was it less than useful, but what I really needed was something by Burne Hogarth.