The first inklings of my final major project :D

These sketches represent the first steps in an ongoing quest to find a full cast's worth of good character designs before the end of the month. These are the protagonists for 2/4 of the short stories I'll be doing; I still have to do Dionysus and whoever's going to be the focus of the final story, probably the Pleiades.

ORION: a heavy for a bootlegging outfit, who moonlights as a jazz pianist. His dream is to play full-time, but he has never had either the courage or the resources, so instead he goes on cracking skulls. He's a friend of Artemis', who is one of the only people who knows both his secret musical dreams and that he is gay.

ARTEMIS: uses the small stipend she gets from her parents to supplement the income she makes as a PI. She's honest, intelligent and quick-witted, and never lets a target get away from her, and for that reason she's one of the best investigators in the city, but obviously being a Chinese-American woman she's overlooked pretty much all the time. Nevertheless, she gets enough work from private clients and off the books to keep her afloat, and she's passionate about what she does, especially about protecting women.

APOLLO: Artemis' twin brother, who, through determination, charm, and determined assimilation, has managed to overcome the racism of the FBI enough to claw his way up to unit chief. Being very aware of the precariousness of his position, he is utterly straight-edge and hardassed, and determinedly normal. But race aside, everything will crumble in a second if it comes out that he's queer. He will defend that secret to the death, not necessarily his own. Unlike his sister, he has no qualms about cheating, lying or passing the buck when he has to.

PERSEPHONE: a charming young woman whose good-time-gal attitude and cute flapper look disguises her true self, the criminal mastermind who made her mother Demeter's small-time prostitution and drug ring into one of the major contenders in the city's criminal underworld. She is shrewd and hard to fool but can't resist a challenge and has a serious weakness for cards.

HADES: an inscrutable crime lord who owns most of the city's shadier operations, one way or the other. Demeter's gang is one of his only serious rivals, and Persephone is their secret weapon. He wants her on his side, but what he doesn't want is all out gang war. He runs the Underworld Speakeasy, around which all three stories in  the comic centre.