Crossing the Acheron -for Hyun

Heya people!

Has been quite a while, hasn’t it? (What can I say? Life’s been hard on me lately and very busy times are on sight… and that’s more or less one of the reasons I’m submitting this gift-comic now, as I’ll explain in a moment)

So, what do we have here? It’s actually quite simple: a couple months ago, commented somewhere (but for the life of mine, I can’t remember on which journal or deviation he posted that) we needed to do a collab or something of that sort. I, of course, loved the idea but decided to do something for him first when I had the required spare time.
After reading his comment on a certain journal entry of mine, I started playing with the idea of making something Penance (an old story of his) related for this gift-art thing. Aaaand... since that story was never finished (at least not to this day and to my knowledge), I too thought of making the comic completely unrelated to the original plot(I’m just having fun here! ). Sadly, I didn’t have much time for that so I decided to wait.

Three weeks back, though, I realized I DIDN'T have much time left: according to the plans so far, I’ll be leaving for Argentina in a couple weeks for a student exchange program (six months) and thus, the chances of submitting new comics will be frankly dim (though it depends on the situation: I might be too busy and besides, the lack of a easily available scanner will be a constant problem).
Given that situation, I drew and scanned this picture that Sunday and… forgot about it until a few days ago. Yeah, Uni’s been tough but I, too, was feeling lazy and unproductive art-wise... so it’s cool to get rid of that feeling! And I too had lots of fun doing this one!

Quick explanation on the picture:
There are some references to Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, as well as some characters from the same book: Dante and Virgil are there, just like Charon the Ferryman and the River Acheron. Other more subtle references are Dante thinking of Beatrice and Virgil’s relation with Caesar Augustus. I personally love Dante's work and it seems ~Hyunthesosarian shared that love too, so that was a good start.

The jokes came up naturally (and extremely silly as usual! Travelling with somebody that hates your guts CAN'T be a good experience! But perhaps it's not Dante's fault: having to listen somebody singing the "Beer" song for that long would turn even the purest into a murdering machine!). And if you’re wondering WHY in the world did I mention Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” and Shakira’s “Hips don’t Lie”, well… regarding the latter, I’ve heard that song enough to get it engraved in my skull. And for the former… I was watching MTV some weeks ago (this is actually extremely rare: I NEVER watch MTV) and they were making all sorts of jokes about the freshly-started FIFA World Cup; the best was, without a doubt, the one where they showed a photo of “Ronaldinho” singing “Beautiful” (because he’s truly the OPPOSITE of Beauty!)… I literally ROFLed and *knew* I had to include that in this little comic.

Regarding the design of the ferry (which I rather like, as it not only looks quite devilish but it allowed me to compare Hyun’s style of drawing dragons and my own: you’ll notice Hyun here was drawn using “this” picture as a model. There are strong differences, like the way we draw the chest scales, the horns and the fact I don't include headfins to my dragons) was inspired in “this” picture of mine.

It’s rather late so I better leave now. Hope you enjoy Hyun, as well as the rest of you guys!

Hyun ©
Dante, Virgil, Charon (that version) - moral rights to Dante Alighieri
Art © me!

Addendum: After reading ~boolean263's comment I realized I didn't explain something very important! The ferry looks that way because the dragon weights a LOT more than Dante. Charon and Virgil are, on the other hand, spiritual beings (not too sure about Charon but the former poet is a "Shade" that resides in Limbo) and thus, they can't help Dante to counter the other's weight. This, of course, is enough to make him a "tiny" bit angry at Hyun.

* "Penance" is a story about a boy that's turned into a dragon (as a result of liking this form better than his original, human one) and must go through Hell and avoid temptations in order to recover his human body. Very good, I say!

Addendum Nº 2: Due to another oversight of mine. That tail you see over Hyun's head is NOT his. It's part of the ferry (after all, it was carved to resemble a somewhat dragonish Hydra)