Friday 4 October 2013

Immortal Combat on Hiatus

Hello people!

Unfortunately I have to announce that Immortal Combat will go in Hiatus for a while.
How long exactly?
3 whole Months.
That means that the comic will continue on January 4th, 2014

As those following Schattenspiele already know: I am really busy right now.
Immortal Combat is a lot of fun for me, but it´s also a lot of work.
And that work takes time and that´s time that I don´t have right now.

I hope that you´re not disappointed and that I´ll see you again in January.

Until then, sincerely yours,
Nekromantenhase


Friday 20 September 2013

Horus

Poor guy had such a messed up life, you wouldn´t believe.
I mean, I won´t get into too much detail, since I will be adapting it anways... but Egyptian Mythology, apart from being reeeaaally weird (to me it is), has the potential to be one epic soap opera.
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 13 September 2013

Hel

Fun fact: The welcome drink at Helheim is a cup full of piss.
:D what a lovely place to spend eternity.
I can just imagine the brochure...
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 6 September 2013

Aphrodite





Sooo... I have been thinking
(Lefou: A dangerous pastime)
I know.
I´ve realized something: For people who are not excessively into Mythology, this webcomic is pretty hard to get into. While I already plan on adapting some of the original myths as extras for the collected, colored Volume that I will be selling in about half a year from now, that does not help the people who want to get into the story HERE. As such every contestant will get an introductory comic strip right before their first fight.
So the next four week will go like this: I will post the four origin stories of the past two fights and change the dates in th the fifth week, so new readers can read them in the intended order.
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 30 August 2013

Conclusion

This fight was a bit tough to plan, since the opponents were so different in strenght. I came to the conclusion that it would be illogical for Hermes to seek physical combat when he thinks that he has no chance of winning. Now that he has tried what he thought had the best chance of success, there is nothing left to do other than limitation of damage. So... I hope that fans of Hermes were not too disappointed.
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 23 August 2013

YOOOUUU!

Never utter the phrase "any last words", Horus.
Never ever.
There is ALWAYS a comeback.
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 16 August 2013

wait


Yep. This is what it all has been leading up to. Hermes is one smooth talker. Right after birth he stole Apollons cattle, got caught, thrown before Zeus, narrated an alibi so ridiculous that Zeus laughed his ass off and instantly forgave him AND made Apollo his bestie afterwards.
He is that good.
Unfortunately, today seems to be his off-day...
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 9 August 2013

You kids nowadays

Yaaay, this is strip number 26, meaning that this webcomic has been going for half a year now! :D
Apart from that: If you should wonder what those three lying figures are: Those are Heka, Hu and Sia taking a nap. Especially Sia (the revelation). And the joke is an obvious hommage to the Grandpa from "Yu-Gi-Oh: The abridged series". Which is something you start watching like, right now, if you haven´t already.
It is egyptilarious......nah, that´s not a good word.
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 26 July 2013

Gymnastics

Hermes hasn´t got the title of god of Gymnastics for nothing!
Unfortunately he hasn´t got the the title of the strongest god for anything either.
*thinks*
Err, you know what I mean. 
I hope.
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 19 July 2013

No sell

Horus is an interesting god in the way that he is actually two gods... or fifteen, or more, depending on who you ask. There used to be at least two different gods called Horus that melted into one being over time, which itself is being represented in many different facets. For example there is the Horus that is associated with the cult of the pharao, usually represented by the double-crown symbol over his head or child-Horus, represented as a human child with the lock of the adolescents.
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 12 July 2013

Horus vs Hermes


A couple of small comments that I´d like to add, but first things first:
You guys have been voting the past week and Baldr made first place! As such I´d like to provide you with this nifty wallpaper I made (click to enlarge):
You can find a description of what´s going on and 
lots of extra content, wallpapers etc. at

Also, as some of you might have noticed: Hermes looks different from what he looked like before in this comic and Horus looks and acts differently from when he was introduced in the first draft, back when "Immortal Combat!" was still called "Pantheon" and hosted on deviantart.

The first change is due to my style developing and me learning more and more about anatomy and facial features. As such, since I want to improve my style and raise my production value over time, change in character design is inevitable for something as drawn out as "Immortal Combat!".
For example I have also decided that the symbols of the Egyptian gods float over their heads. That applies to at least some of them. Since Egyptian Gods are shapeshifters by default (meaning that they don´t really have a shape set in stone), I decided to include this feature mostly with characters where it is actually important. And Horus happens to be one of them.

The second change is rooted in something that might be avoideable if I had the time to think this webcomic completely through before I even draw the first line: My level of knowledge is different from when I first started "Pantheon". I always had a knack for memorizing little facts about Mythology, but most of my information came from secondady material: Tv shows, fantasy books, movies etc. 

Now that I have actually read some Egyptian, Greek, Norse Myths, I started to think differently about these characters, I have found new facets and things that conflict with the original design I had in mind.
For example: I had first intended for Baldr to be lawful good, but stupid. After having read parts of the Edda, it´s quite obvious to me that he really is not dumb by any means, he is very tragic, though. 
None of the already established characters are going to change so much as to no-one could recognize them anymore. To make it short: Don´t worry, Moe-Horus isn´t gone or something.

I am rhubarbering today, I swear. First the tumblr-post, now this.
Oh well, I hope it was interesting to some, at least.
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 5 July 2013

End of Intermission


Baldr is - with a healthy margin - one of the nicest gods in the Norse Pantheon. He cares a lot about his blind brother and usually speaks out for the weak or neglected. There is an element of tragedy to him, though, since he has prothetic dreams of his own death and the downfall of the Gods that is heralded by it ...
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 28 June 2013

I´m SORRY!

Yeah, that´s a funny fact I stumled upon while researching:
Norse Gods can die
Egyptian Gods can die
Greek Gods kinda sorta... can´t. At least none of the main twelve. Titans die. Monsters die. Heroes die.
As such Athene is at least convinved of their immortality. Up until now she had no reason to think otherwise...

Friday 31 May 2013

The pride of Hel


The comment about Hel´s weight might not be an insult but rather an important plot point!
Or... not.
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 24 May 2013

Friday 17 May 2013

News, again


News, baybay!
So, yeah, I´ve tested out tumblr for a while and wheter or not it is sufficient for the publishing-needs of my webcomic “Immortal Combat”. And I´ve come to the conclusion… yes and no.
No, because tumblr is a freakin´ OCEAN of posts and one post a week would simply drown like a… thing that can´t swim at all.
The logical conclusion would be that I produce MORE posts then (which is not exactly a problem), but that again means that between the strips there would be loads and loads of distracting stuff up to the point where the understanding wouldbe  made difficult or impossible.
So decided to make two blogs:
http://immortalcombatcomic.blogspot.de is going to be the main story, sources, character sheets and so on.
http://immortalcarnival.tumblr.com, as it will be called from now on, will be for re-blogs, less important announcements, fun stuff and extra information, community and extra content. 
Also, there will be a shiny new function called “ask the Gods”, which means exactly what it seems: You may feel free to ask any of the occuring characters from Immortal Combat any questions. I will answer (where possible with illustration) as soon as possible. 
Of course you can also ask me stuff with that function, even though I´m not a god.
Yet.
I´m curious on what you guys think about it and I am looking forward to your questions!
As you can see I have already installed a fancy link somewhere in THAT direction----->>>
- Nekromantenhase

Pearl of Aphrodites Belt Dress-Up!

Oh, the references, they just keep piling up... and yes, that is a stylized seashell in the background of Panel 2.
Gosh, this sequence was so much fun...
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 10 May 2013

Olympian Spirit

The first one to guess where the reference of panel 2 came from, gets a virtual cookie :D
The "embarassed Venus" is a whole trope in art. And yes, I know: I pretend that Venus = Aphrodite, even though there ARE differences. I just can´t help but think that they (Greek Panthon) just changed names and adapted to the Roman Empire.
- Nekromantenhase

Sunday 5 May 2013

News

Immortal Combat will be temporarily and parallely (do you say that, parallely?) available on tumblr.

Looky there: http://immortal-combat.tumblr.com/ 

Right now I´m trying to find out which of both providers, blogspot or tumblr is better and more comfortable to use/ reach so yeah... now you know ^^

Up till now I sadly don´t know how to change the background... I miss Freya and her cats :(
Also I have to dabble a bit more in the use of the spacing...

Anyway: I´m going to test it for a month or so and then decide.
If you guy should prefer the one over the other I will notice soon enough ^^


Friday 3 May 2013


Credit for the idea of the "Hug of Doom" goes to Ireseor :D
For anyone who wonders why the heck there are rabbits there: Those are Aphrodites/Venus associated animals for... obvious... reasons... (do English people have the idiom "to proliferate like bunnies?)
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 19 April 2013

Sick Buuuuuurrrrn!


The "diseased incineration" originally involved a joke about Aphrodite being a Transvestite because she was born from Kronos "magic stick". I really prefer this version. First, because, well, it wasn´t very fitting, second, it was kinda stupid and insulting to transvestites and trans-gender people and third, this one is actually relevant and MEAN. 
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 12 April 2013

Da Rules



The reason why Maat put "death" into quotation marks is that death does not affect the gods during the tournament, since all the gods and goddesses of death made an oath not to let it count. (That´s what Athene meant when she said that Tanathos promised not to do his duty during the tournamen a few strips back, in case that flew over your head.) They can sort of die though - it just doesn´t count. Let´s leave it at that since it´ll get more clear once it actually happens... or rather if it happens ;)
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 29 March 2013

Fusion!!!


By the way: Two gods being fused together and sharing each others aspects is called Syncretism.
Yes, this is a thing.
Also: While Atum-Re existis, so do Atum and Re. At the same time. Wrap your head around that.

Friday 22 March 2013

Naggingbird


It´s kind of sad how one can just see the amount of text and rambling grow exponantially with every update in and outside the comic.

Oh well, why stop here? 
Thot´s rhetorcial-question-rant in full length:
Why is the picture so small that it can´t be seen by the last row? Why is the system so unnecessarily complicated and prone to corruption? Why is it so unfair? Why do you get to decide who gets a second chance? Why didn´t you just choose a even number of gods which can be divided by four so you wouldn´t need this special-rule? Why are you suddenly our leader and not Re or Amun or Amun-Re? Why did you use the Latin Alphabet and not the Greek Alphabet or Hieroglyphics or Runes? And for that matter: Why do we speak English? And why do we speak it with the spelling and grammar mistakes of a German? Why do I suddenly get so meta? Why is the handwriting so messy and the bubbles so ugly and wobbly? Why does this webcomic only update once a week? Why is it only in outlines? Why do my hands look so half-assed? Why is my beak cut off? Why...

THOT! 
SHUT!
UUUP!

Friday 15 March 2013

Gods, assemble!


Fun fact: This is the third time I have renamed the little Muse. Even though character, motivation and appearance have always been clear to me, my lack of research caused a change of names. First it was Kalliope, the muse of epic poetry, but my muse had to be associated with music. So I switched it to Polyhymnia (muse of hymns, mimes and agriculture) for a time but a closer look showed that in canon she is a very serious person which doesn´t fit and I don´t want to go against canon more than necessary. So now it´s Terpsichore, muse of dance and the dramatic choir, whose attribute is a lyra and who´s associated with Pan. It´s just perfect, for reasons I am going to elaborate some other time when we see her again.

Friday 8 March 2013

Waiting for Ragnarök


Yes, this is supposed to be Valhöll. It´s located in Odins home "Gladsheim" by the way, in case you did not know (I didn´t). I imagine it to be quite unnerving to have literally thousands of people partying next to your bedroom, but then again, what do I know. It has probably extremely good isolation made in Svartálfaheimr.

Thursday 28 February 2013

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away...


Fun Fact: Isis has for the most part the exact same symbols als Hathor, often the two can only be told apart by the additional text on the plates depicting them. Also the two goddesses tend to be melted together, especially when the question of who Horus mother is come up. And that´s not even the tip of the iceberg on how confusing the egyptian gods can get!
- Nekromantenhase

Friday 22 February 2013

That´s our Zeus!


Zeus did get quite around in his time, now didn´t he? His "courtship"-transformations include, but are not limited to: An eagle. A swan. A bull. Golden rain (ew). Fire (ouch).
And.
Frickin.
Artemis.
Just wow.
I bet that was awkward when she found out.
-Nekromantenhase

Friday 15 February 2013

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Hello world!

I shall use this first post to introduce myself and this blog.

Well then, who am I?
Actually that is not that interesting. I am a person who loves mythology and whenever I won´t be studying or drawing scary comics or drawing something else, I´ll be working on this webcomic here.

Well, then, what is this webcomic about?
You will see soon enough ;) 
Let´s just say that the title and the fact that I love mythology is a pretty good tip. 
The whole thing will start next Friday and from then on it will be updated every Friday after that. 

Altogether I just would like to say: If I should make any mistakes, language-wise or otherwise, please let me know! English is not my mother-tongue and even though I try my best, I am not perfect. No-on is.
Also: If you like this comic, great! Feel free to tell your friends and to link my blog or individual pictures. All content posted here is under Creative Commons-License, meaning: You mustn´t use it for commercial purposes but you may take it and change it, as long as you share alike. I would really appreaciate it if you´d always tell people where it came from, though.

Since you are here, I´d like to give you a (kinda crappy) welcome-present.
See, I already made this webcomic once, but in a very lazy style without sketches or anything and this is the reboot. Still I´d like to post the portraits of some of the characters that are going to take part in the comic, just for your amusement and for you to guess who´s who ^^


See you next Friday :)
- Nekromantenhase