Hostellerie de la Biche

A drawing I had on my hard drive for several months now.

It's a concept drawing designed to set the mood as well as nail some details (such as weather, character clothing, etc) about the scene that shows the start of Jeanne's military career, in the summer of 1902.

Of course, that scene happens in chapter two and I haven't even started drawing chapter one of the rebooted series, but there you go. At least you now know I like to plan ahead.

The background is based on a photograph of a real hotel by the same name ("Hostellerie de la Biche" means "Inn of the Fawn" in French) that was destroyed during the Second World war and which stood in the town of Bagnoles de l'Orne, in Basse Normandie. www.flickr.com/photos/photosno…

I found the picture accidentally while surfing the web for unrelated matters, and by a stroke of good fortune the actual
Bagnoles de l'Orne is set in exactly the right area of France this scene is supposed to be happening anyway, so instead of placing it in a fictional unnamed location as was the original plan, I'm simply going to set it there.

By another coincidence, an earlier scene from the same chapter happens at a place named "Auberge du Cerf" ("Hotel of the Deer") which provides a nice symmetry to the whole episode. Similarly, a scene from chapter one takes place merely 30km to the south-east.

The other character in the picture is not one I've ever introduced to the internet before, although he's been living in my sketchbooks for quite some time (and passed through quite a few hairstyles).
His name is Lothaire Marval, a former Circus performer and now a tank driver for the French Empire. He's not too enthralled by the whole situation.

Jeanne is armed with a 8X50mmR Lebel Modèle 1886 repeating rifle and a 8x27mm St. Etienne Modèle 1892 revolver and is wearing a model 1888 corporal's uniform a few sizes too large, while Lothaire has a brand new model 1902 uniform.
You can learn more about the uniforms of the French Empire as used in the comic here: fav.me/d4nd8hj .

The tank is an alternate reality of the first production model of the real life Renault FT with the cast turret and cast frontal armour.
It is fictional in the sense that the cast turret models were never armed with the 37mm Puteaux SA cannon like later models with the "omnibus" (also called Girod or Berliet after the main manufacturers) or octagonal turrets, but instead mounted only the 8mm Hotchkiss machinegun.  EDIT, 17.05.14: I decided to change the turret to a regular "omnibus turret", thus making the tank a regular Renault FT.
The markings are however lifted from the first production FT currently displayed at the Bovington Tank Museum, even though that particular example does have the machinegun main armament and is a mild steel schooling machine rather than a combat vehicle as testified by a brass plate mounted on the front reading "non protege" ("not armoured").

Again through a stroke of good fortune, those particular makings include the numeral "13" which is of some significance to the comic and the serial "6616" (actually "66016" on the Bovington tank, but Shadowless early tanks only have four digit numbers, as can be learned here: wingsofwrath.deviantart.com/ar… ) which contain both "666" and "616", the "Number of the Beast" according to the two main versions (in Latin and Greek) of Chapter 13 (again 13! am I lucky, or what?) from the Book of Revelation...

Or they could simply mean "Neron Caesar" depending on who you ask, but then again I couldn't pass this golden opportunity to include such an infamous number in the comic, even though it doesn't really mean anything in the context of the comic.