Downtown’s looks were based on a combination of a couple of guys – Gary Dourdan’s character Christie from “Alien Resurrection” and Lajon Witherspoon from the band Sevendust. He’s also a bit of a mix of some of my friends, so I knew that Downtown would be great to include as Jake’s amigo.

Downtown’s clothes have remained in a Western-style for “In Ruins”. I thought it’d be interesting if he took the clothes from a predominantly White hero culture (at least in a Hollywood movie sense, in reality there were actually quite a lot of Black cowboys) and made them his own. Downtown is the owner of the Pontiac he and Jake travel in (it’s his version of Silver, the Lone Ranger’s horse).

I thought that instead of a lone survivor trudging across the wasteland, it would be cool to make the “In Ruins” comic more like a buddy film. It allows the guys room to express thoughts and argue, but when the chips are down, they pull together. I think it’s worked out well in the comic and creates something different from the “Mad Max” films it’s obviously based on.

Unfortunately, I don’t have Isaac’s original character sheet with me in Europe (it’s somewhere in my gaming stuff in New Zealand). But, I do have another pic of Downtown from 2003 (Jake was still known as Mike in those days).

In Ruins – Downtown

There you go! A little backstory on the design of Downtown.