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FUN STUFF
If you're hankering for more drawings, check out either the page on my website or the band's tumblr page for more! (the tumblr's great for sending fanmail too, wink wink)
take the quiz to figure out which member of saints for girls you are! direct link to uquiz i did make this like 3 years ago, so if anything seems inaccurate to today, that's why lol
listen to the playlists! official s4g playlist (vibes/inspo/contemporaries) | ry carpenter | vincent drake | frankie robinson | jas newport | cassidy sinclair
BEHIND THE SCENES – RCHABD
The general plotline for Ry Carpenter has a Bad Day (or RChaBD, as I’ll be abbreviating it) has been slowly brewing since the end of 2022. There’s some “lore” aspects (Cass and Vincent doing set crew together in HS; Jas and Cass being in a defunct band; Ry and Vincent being roommates) that have stuck around for even longer. Originally the “inciting incident” (aka the Prophetic Band Dream) was going to be from Ry getting her wisdom teeth out and having an adverse side effect to the meds they gave her (basically a fever dream). I ended up switching this out for a similar fever dream with a different cause (staying up all night working on her portfolio). I do think (unfortunately) the Art Student realness is important to the origin story. Though, neither Vincent nor Ry are nepo babies with trust funds or whatever, they’re debt-riddled like me (yaaay…). This doesn’t really come up in the comic, but Vincent was a Printmaking major at the same school that Ry is finishing up at the start of the RChaBD (they're a year older). It just makes sense in my mind.
According to the patreon archives, this is about when I started really thinking about making this story finalized. The text from the above drawing read: "the ry is from the origin story i have planned, basically ry has a very vivid dream which leads to a Very Bad Morning, where she has to rush to try and get to a portfolio review and...well...you'll have to wait and see if she makes it lol. "
I had a sudden image at one point of Vincent and Frankie playing DND together, and it just made sense to me. Vincent and Jas being minimum wage employees who get together to talk shit is also something that’s been part of their dynamic since 2022.
For RChaBD, I’d say my biggest inspirations were Opening Band by Levi Prewitt (aka Levitzo), as well as my usual comic inspos (Leo Fox, E.M. Carroll, John Hendrix, etc.). I really loved Opening Band in particular—IDK if Levi’s selling copies of it still, but would recommend if you can get your hands on a copy.
I simultaneously wanted to try something Different while having to bend to the time constraints I had going on (full time employment, booo, tomato tomato). So, I mainly addressed this through the length. It being shorter allowed me to build my comic muscles in other ways. Mainly: color; more than like 2 characters; lots of dialogue; and humor. Whether or not I was fully successful in all of these...idk! To be so real (as can be seen in the archive of my newsletters), I started kinda late because I was waffling between ideas, which I think hindered my output (or at the very least, impacted the way I feel about the comic. But I'm hoping that time will heal that a bit)
The basic format that I followed was: writing out all the plot beats (specific and generic); thumbnailing and refining the text based on these beats (and the overall length I had in mind); rough sketching the whole thing; placing text (I used a font I had made of my own handwriting...but ended up writing over that anyways, just because I think the font looks too artificial); finishing one test page; and then finishing the rest (using the process of: text → final sketch → inks → shading → color overlay (purple and green) → accent color overlay (red) → texture overlay/finishing touches). I’ll include some screenshots below. I did the color in this way (fully rendering the page in B+W, and using blending modes to apply the color on top) to try to standarize the coloring process (as someone who's really only made B+W comics), but honestly I think it just made it more complicated lol. I'd like to continue exploring color in my comic work, but lowkey I think I might have a preference for B+W comics (which is kinda funny, because everywhere outside of comics, I LOVE color. To be explored further I guess!)
The location is *loosely* based on my own place of residence, Portland, Maine. I’m not totally committed to them being from Portland, that might get retconned...though, I am committed to them being from the Northeast, that just feels right to me. But, the map you see and some of the locations (Ry and Vincent’s apartment, the boba tea shop Vincent works at, vaguely the art school + record store + punk venue) are inspired by ones I know well. I won't tell you where Ry and Vincent's apartment is (would be doxxing friends I know IRL), but the boba shop is inspired by the real Uncharted in Portland, and the punk venue is based on Geno's Rock Club.
I was strugglinggg with the cover for a while. I wanted to do it traditionally at first and then scrapped it for a digital thing and the digital thing took forever...basically, suffering <3 I’m planning on making a youtube video with all the timelapses of the pages and the cover, so be on the lookout for that.
THE PROGRESSION OF S4G
THE BEFORE
Saints for Girls themselves wouldn’t come about until 2022, but the first iteration of the band was created in 2020. As you all are hopefully aware, concerts were not happening at this time. I was stuck at home and pretty miserable, to be honest. I wanted something that’d feel fun and comforting to work on, so I created a fake band. They're basically the band that I wish existed IRL, and them being not-cis men and not-straight is important to that.
The 0.1 version of S4G actually had a different name, whytokay (aka, Y2K). In this version, the prophetic dream that Ry has is directly related to Y2K, and how creating this band would stop this digital apocalypse from happening. To be so real, I feel like this concept was doing too much, lol. I’ve had a hard time throughout my “artistic journey” with feeling like what I’m doing is “enough,” in some sort of nebulous way. In my head, I couldn’t just create a band, they needed to have a big (vaguely sci-fi/urban fantasy?) story arc. They had to have a Point. Which, I can appreciate the absurdity (and try to inject that into the 2025 version of the band), but it just didn’t have the sauce. Sometimes you make a band because you wanna create some girl* OCs that are fun to draw, and that’s okay! (*they're not all girls but you get what I mean)
Sonically I was listening to more non-emo music during this time, so I think that also contributed to this identity crisis. I was listening to a loooot of Charli XCX, 100 Gecs, Rina Sawayama, etc...and while some aspects of those artists are still in S4G’s identity today (particularly the Gecs,), it ultimately created an aesthetic that felt a bit mismatched among all the characters. Like of course, it’s important to me that they all have distinct personalities and vibes...but also, I feel like I look back on the OG versions of their designs and I’m like, why the fuck would these people be in the same band together? Lol.
Cassidy’s design has stayed the most consistent I would say. I wanted her to be kind of waify and anxious off-stage, but then completely let loose with a guitar in her hand. Representation for skin pickers everywhere <3 Because of her flinging and chaos on stage, that’s why I always draw her with band-aids...imagine she gets a lot of bruises and scrapes, lol. She’s always been very smiley...the smiling grinner :D. She was just “Cass” at first (found a document where I called her Casey? And “Cassadee”? That’s scary…), and then I extended her name after.
Ry also has stayed pretty consistent...even though she Dyes her hair, the pink is part of her DNA at this point. I used to only draw her with high pigtails (I like drawing them with M*ck*y M**s* rules in mind, like the style guide for drawing his ears in profile...anyway), but after a while I found this limiting. Also just sounds like it’d hurt, tbh. Doing Ariana Grande/Jojo Siwa levels of hairline damage via high pony. Being a bit obnoxious is also important to her personality, but not in a poser-y way...I think she just goes for what she wants and says fuck it to anything else. I used to dress her in kind of...I dunno, space-age futurism, cyber goth-y stuff? Which also began to feel gimicky after a while. I was definitely inspired by the best frontperson of all time, Hayley Williams, specifically some self titled era looks I think...but yeah, it felt too much like a costume.
I wanted Frankie to be kind of aloof and mysterious, hence keeping their eyes covered. Though, at the time, I thought it would just look cool. (Now, I view it as a privacy measure...like literally keeping a part of themselves away from the public eye. And also they’re just so good at the drums that they don’t really need to look). I think visually Frankie used to look a bit more “emo band”-y, but after a while it just didn’t suit their personality anymore. Where Ry used to be the wild card visually, I feel like Frankie’s kind of serving a similar role in current day S4G. They’ve had a lot of varied experiences in their life and they’re completely unapologetic about what they care about. They dgaf about social standards. Sigma mode. Etc. And of course, they're inspired by one of my favorite drummers, Josh Dun (as you can maybe tell). I'm undecided on how I feel re: the hair dye...I think it's fun, but also I don't necessarily think that 2025 Frankie would want to dye their hair, yknow?
Now, this is where things get really divergent from current day S4G—Vincent used to not exist! And Jas was...femme? (gasps from the crowd). I was definitely thinking about Pete Wentz’ hair from like 2015. Yknow looking at this original sketchbook page, I think Jas had maybe some of the reserved/socially anxious traits that ended up fitting Cass more. Jas was the one I had the least idea about, I just didn’t really know them or who I wanted them to be...which is why this Jas ended up getting revamped. (Also, their name used to be Jasmine/Jaz(z)? Again, doing too much…)
In terms of the “lore”, there’s some aspects that ended up sticking, and other parts that did not. Ry having some sort of dream/premonition/vision of forming the best band ever to save the world Has always been part of their story. I was inspired by Cobra Starship (lol)—supposedly Gabe Saporta saw a vision in the desert of a snake who told him he needed to make music that hipsters could dance to again (or something like that, idk—don’t cite me for your academic research papers on CS). I had a concept of Ry hearing a Voice through her earrings that would “show her the way” to making this band. Of course, if you’re familiar with my work, you can see that I essentially ended up allocating this idea to Signals instead. Ry was hearing the voice two years before I made Signals, but after I made Signals I was like well...I probably should change that a little bit. The first recruit for the band has always been Cas—she used to be Super superstitious, and literally flipped a coin to decide on joining the band (which, I always thought was funny, so there’s a little nod to that in RChaBD).
THE IN BETWEEN
So between their initial conception (2020) and the Saints-for-Girls-ening (late 2022), I drew them on and off in my sketchbook. I wasn’t really working on their “lore” or anything, I was moreso just trying to get comfortable with drawing them. (I was definitely having a growing pains moment artstyle-wise, I was really trying to figure out how I wanted to stylize characters and that sort of thing. Ended up with a lot of bobbly-head looking drawings, lol). I’ve definitely drawn Ry the most, with Cass and Frankie following behind (I didn’t draw “Jazz” a ton—I think deep down I wasn’t happy with their design, but I didn’t feel like fixing it yet lol).
Looking back on the sketchbooks I had at the time, I was actually drawing a lot of OC stuff! And a lot of Hannibal, there’s definitely a point where that takes over the sketchbook lol. Story-wise I was really trying to develop August (the guy with the blocky eyebrows, whos story I still haven’t figured out yet lol) and Aster/Lilah (still not ready for prime time yet, but closer than whatever August’s deal is). S4G (even though they weren’t called that at the time) were just my little dress up dolls that I was playing with. Honestly a lot of these drawings are still cute, especially the Frankies :3
In 2021, the gears were starting to turn a bit more. I guess in early 2021 the “comic” was going to be named “Pop-punk Prophecy”? Which is…okay, but they don’t even really make pop-punk music, so it’s kind of a misnomer. In fall 2021 I revisited them, and they were going to be called “The Final Girls.” I was also trying some stuff out with stylizing Cass and Ry slightly differently (but in essence, the same).
I think this also lines up with a notes app document I found from around then, where the pieces start coming together: “ry has this dream where she hears the best album ever and its her band that doesnt exist yet but when she wakes up she can’t remember it at all. so the formation of the band is about her finding the other members and then them trying to remember the dream they all had thru different ways.”
There’s other parts that didn’t really make the cut—I totally forgot that I wanted Cas to be from a mafia family??? And also Frankie won the lottery..? Funny ideas, but I just don’t see them as fitting them now. I think both of these were creative ways to try to get around the capitalism doom of being in a band, but I think their collective brokeness adds to the sauce honestly. After this point I didn’t draw them for a while, I was “finishing my Bachelor’s degree” and “drawing twin peaks shit”, among other things. But, you can see that I started drawing them again in fall 2022. Speaking of…
POST-MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
So there’s this band. They’re from New Jersey, perhaps you’ve heard of them? Well, they toured in 2022 for the first time in 10 years or whatever, and basically it changed me as a person. Without getting too in the weeds, I was Not Doing Well toward the second half of 2022. Just a lot of life stuff that wasn’t going my way. So, MCR became something that gave me joy during a time where I was struggling to find it. And, this inspired me to revitalize the band! (And to start testosterone, but I digress). I saw them in September (twice! Boston night 2, and Newark night 2) and worked on S4G in between the dates and promptly after. (Also during 2022, I made Signals—this concert going came right after finishing that project, so it was the perfect time for a new brain infection to stake its claim lol)
Originally their name was going to be “Foul Bite”—this is a play on the intaglio concept (where the acid “bites” parts of the plate you didn’t intend), because Ry is an art school student (and Vincent graduated from art school already). I still think this would be a sick band name. I feel like S4G would probably write a song with that title still (you can see in fall 2021 that "foul bite" is one of the song ideas I had come up with for "The Final Girls"). BUT, there’s just something about “Saints for Girls” that feels good on the tongue. There’s a tongue-and-cheek aspect to it, something about commercializing religion and critiquing pink tax/misogyny and self-aggrandizing that’s fun. The phrase itself comes from a sticker book that Gerard Way used to decorate some part of his kit (I think some pedals? Or part of his mic?) with stickers. So it has that nod to it as well. (I was going to put a picture here but I can't find it currently so...source: dude just trust me). I think some MCR fans see the name and assume that they’re supposed to be femme MCR? Which is not the intention, lol. But also like...if you look at them, hopefully you’d see that too. It’s just a fun reference that also has merit outside of the reference!
Something I appreciate about MCR is their blend/dance between a sort of comic book-y approach to storytelling and Band Vision, but also being down to earth and passionate about nerdy shit (and playing music)! And the emotional vulnerability (mixed with embodying a persona). That sort of philosophy guided my reevaluation of S4G as a band.
Ry’s hair was changed—I had this other nameless OC inspired by Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge that I wasn’t using, who happened to have little pigtails too. But, this also allows her to wear her hair down in some kind of quasi-shag 'do. I wanted her to have some of that Bullets-era Gerard swag (if that means nothing to you, don’t worry about it)—kinda greasy and weird but earnest. Very catlike. Loves stripes. And weird belts. While I wouldn’t classify Ry as “butch,” I definitely did androgynize her style a bit. The holographic skirt was just a bit too much lol. Definitely some early Avril Lavigne inspo as well, especially in RChaBD. I feel like any outward gender expression clothing-wise for her is just Boy Drag or Girl Drag, if that makes sense. Ry is short for Ryland (though, I usually say “Ryland” like Rye-land, but I say “Ry” like “ree”...makes you think. I've started saying "ree-land" in my head though), after the bassist from Cobra Starship (hence that band’s inspiration for the origin story as well). “Carpenter” is her last name as an ode to John Carpenter (though if you wanna view it as a nod to Sabrina or Jesus or the profession, that’s fine as well I guess).
This is about where “Jazz” ceased to exist. Vincent seems to have come about first: here’s the first drawing of them to EVER exist!
Basically, tumblr bait in bassist form LOL. I love their shitty hair and pretentious affect...still kind of struggle with picking out clothes for Vincent in particular. I’m not particularly fashionable myself so I think it stems from that. “Vincent” name-wise was usurped from a different OC I had—again, not enough time to go into all that, but I just wasn’t going to use that other OC and still really loved the name, so I plucked it and gave it to them. I also like the gender play involved in the name—not sure if it’s their given or chosen name, but TBH it doesn’t matter. I also just think “Drake” is a cool last name...on that Uncharted, Nathan Drake shit. Also definitely some revenge-era Mikey Way inspo.
Jas developed into their current form in some of the following sketchbook pages. Much more butchness (thank god!), much less sleeves. I just think they like having their arms out! But also with the compression sleeve, for any chronic pain baddies out there such as myself. They’re the rare combo of nerd AND jock AND emo, like c’mon, save some for the rest of us. Their knuckle tats say “GONE GIRL,” after the Gillian Flynn book. Their other tattoos are still TBD, to be honest. (Definitely some inspo from the hard rock people who were also sensitive English majors...the Geoff Ricklys of the world). The collar is a must, along with the bridge piercing. I chose “Newport” as their last name because they play guitar, and I was thinking about Bob Dylan’s 1965 Newport Folk Festival performance. Also, it just sounds cool, which is crucial.
Cass has stayed relatively consistent. I’ve always conceptualized her style as very grungey, very Kurt Cobain...though I think out of the whole band, she’s the most likely to wear a dress or skirt. I've gone back and forth with making her hair really wavy and wild vs straightening/thinning it out a bit. I think at this point I've settled somewhere in the middle, maybe closer to the wavy and wild side, it seems to suit her. Otherwise, very similar to the smiling grinner she started as. (Also, Jeanne signals reference! This was drawn on the first day of the SBCF in 2022)
And with Frankie, their vibe kinda came together when I conceptualized them as having a lot of jazz club/jazz drumming experience. I think it’s funny to think of a wild drummer who also wears a vest and tie and button down shirt...it’s hard to articulate other than “it’s just Frankie’s thing!” I think there’s still things that I don’t even know about Frankie’s past...they just materialized into existence with all this varied life experience. Still very Sigma. Outside of the “uniform” I think they’d like wearing thrifted t-shirts with niche graphics printed on them. (TBH, the "I want to believe" shirt from the old sketches still feels like one they'd wear to this day). Cass and Frankie going to hardcore shows together is something I still think is true <3. TBH I don’t remember where Robinson came from...all I can think is Colin Robinson from WWDITS? I think I just liked the sound of it. But also, looking back on all the sketches I've done of them, I think their vibe has also stayed relatively clear in my mind.
I have tried writing S4G songs, with varying success. To be so real, I just don’t know how to play instruments, so I think that makes conceptualizing a whole band difficult. A loooot of the lyrics are also from the Bad Period in 2022, so I think that hurts them. So, picture what they sound like in your head, cuz I can’t do it! (I would like to try again, but TBH there's just sooo many things I want to make and write, and not a lot of time for honing the skills to master songwriting. But maybe someday?!?)
Lastly, if you made it all the way down here (whether you got the link from the comic, or you found it some other way), I just want to say thank you! Thank you for caring about these silly little characters. This year's been a Challenging year on many fronts, but being able to make this comic was a bright spot (even if I regret not starting it sooner, LOL). Thank you for being here, for real. I hope to keep making things, and I hope you'll like 'em!
xoxo, court