The Warrior's Journey

Hey everyone!

I have embarked on a journey to bring my oldest original character to life, and to share his story with the world. It's a long road ahead, and I'm going to need your help!

Since I've never done anything this grand before, the best way for me to learn and improve is through feedback. As I create The Warrior's story and build his world, I will periodically post updates of my progress on this page. These will include things like sketches, concept art, and panel breakdowns, as well as my own thoughts, ideas, and questions as I go along.

By the time the first comic book is complete, I think we'll have made something pretty special.

Thank you for joining me on this journey and I look forward to hearing from you!

- Matt Nickola

Creator Posts

7. Issue No. 0 - The Prologue (Part 2)

This is the bleed-panel from Page 6. A bleed-panel is a panel that takes up the whole page and sits behind the other panels. I really like this one, and will probably make a print just of this! Well, here we go - we're almost three months since the last post and we're now deep into Issue No. 0! As you've probably seen, I've updated the video at the top of The Warrior's Journey page showing my progress so far. As of right now, I've completed 10 of the 17 total pages and ha

Sep 12

6. Issue No. 0 - The Prologue (Part 1)

A mock-up of the Front Cover. This is really just a place-holder until I create the real one. The corner box looks pretty cool, though. It seems like these blog posts are becoming a regular 6-month thing, but that's only because it's taken so long to get to this point. As you can see from the video at the top of The Warrior's Journey page, I have made some significant progress since the last post from December. Back then, I only had about four pages sketched and was strug

Jul 19

5. The Story Begins

Wow... has it really been over six months since my last post?? I'll be honest, I haven't gotten as much done as I had planned, but the time hasn't been totally squandered. A good chunk of that time was spent prepping for, and attending, two live events - a local Comic Con and a local craft fair. Amazingly, during both of those events, I displayed several prints of The Warrior and a new adversary (Haz-Mat), and people seemed very interested in the characters and the story a

Dec 31, 2025

4. The Path Ahead

World-building takes time - more time than I first anticipated. That said, I've created the foundation for developing the main story. I have also begun drafting a script for Book 1: The Path Ahead.

Jun 11, 2025

3. Character Concepts and Sequential Sketches

Hey everyone! Welcome back to The Warrior's Journey ! Over the last few months (when not working on Commission projects or other business-related stuff), I have been furiously scribbling tons of concept art for this comic. The look for the main character, Mike Sloane a.k.a. The Warrior, has been firmly established - although both his costume design and his powers will evolve throughout the story. So, I have been focusing primarily on developing other characters. I'm not

Feb 15, 2025

2. Establishing the Main Character

In order to reboot the idea of The Warrior, and bring him out of my brain and onto the page, I needed to update his look. In the new story, Mike Sloane (aka The Warrior) is a reflection of real people - he tries to always do the right thing, but makes mistakes and has to deal with the consequences as best he can. He's not all good and he's not all bad, he's somewhere in between. Beyond that, I wanted the character's overall aesthetic to reflect the world he lives in - or w

Nov 24, 2024

1. The Journey Begins

The Warrior is a very special character to me. I originally created him way back in 2004 when I first started learning how to draw...

Sep 7, 2024

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