#16 – 21 Z-Girl And The 4 TIGERS

Taking a Que from Daisy Chan/dazdays most recent post ( which if you haven’t seen it, go see it because it is killer awesome! As are all of her posts! ) I am putting multiple characters in a single piece to get back on track.

This holiday themed winter battle scene showcases the main characters in the independent comic book Z-Girl and the 4 Tigers which is created by Jeff Marsick and myself. The following is a brief description of each character. The creature they are fighting is not from the book but a character I created for this image:

Starting from the top left corner and going clock wise the characters in this piece are:

CODE NAME: BLACK TIGER:
The Black Tiger spirit is the oldest of the Four Celestial Guardians and is master over winter and water. Michael Wallace is the current host of the BlackTiger spirit and the team’s operations commander, a position he has held for several centuries. Like Zombie Girl, Wallace’s origin is unknown and the explanations of his longevity and innate healing ability are shrouded in mystery.

CODE NAME: Z-Girl:
Legend holds that the father of Taoism, Lao Tzu, followed the stars to a barren field in Mongolia where, in an unmarked grave, he unearthed a mystic woman who had been buried alive. Nameless and without memory of her past, Lao Tzu trained this highly-functioning zombie to be the leader of a group of Chinese warrior spirits, or Tigers, for the purpose of combating monsters and demons that threaten to wipe out humanity. Along the way, the highly-functioning zombie seeks answers to the mystery of her origin and is in perpetual struggle to keep her innate flesh-eating urges under control.

CODE NAME: RED TIGER:
The Red Tiger spirit is master over summer and fire. On the team, Red Tiger functions as weapons specialist and sniper. Secretly, the Red Tiger is also responsible for dispatching Z-Girl should she ever revert to baser instincts and become a threat to her team or humanity. How this secondary responsibility came about is unknown. Valerie Tardiff is the current host of the Red Tiger spirit and the team’s relative rookie, having recently assumed the spirit after the death of the prior host while quelling a zombie uprising in Mumbai.

CODE NAME: WHITE TIGER
The White Tiger spirit is master over autumn and metals. The original White Tiger was the disfigured son of Yin Xi, the Prefect of the Western Pass who had asked Lao Tzu to record his teachings of Tao. Killian O’Bannon is the current human host of the White Tiger spirit and as an innovator of battlefield technology, he is the team’s engineer and mechanopath.

CODE NAME: BLUE TIGER
The Blue Tiger spirit is master over spring and earth. Over the centuries and through dozens of reincarnations, the Blue Tiger has fought his eternal enemy, the Hindu bird-man, Garuda. Eric Taylor is the current human host of the Blue Tiger spirit and serves as the team’s medic and combat mage.

CREATURE DESIGNATION: SNOWZOMBIE
SNOWZOMBIE are ancient creatures that are conjured by a mystical race of transient demons known as the GORE. GORE can only exist in our plane of reality in frozen and extreme cold conditions. They lack any physical bodies, and because of that they create SNOWZOMBIES to do their bidding. GORE were very rare and encounters with their SNOWZOMBIE creations even more rare. However, with global temperatures dropping due to climate change, their appearance in our plane of reality has been on a dramatic increase.

The Z-Girl web site has a lot more if your interested:

ZGIRL.ORG

Category: 2011, Fantasy, Horror, Scifi, Superhero