Dispatch: Building the Identity of the Everworse

Where It Began

The Everworse project began with a dream. It was not a complete story or a world. Just a handful of images and three characters.

Over the years, those images became sketches. The sketches became notes that made me ask questions. And the answers to those questions eventually became a world. Most of the original concepts have long since disappeared with entire sections of the story being rewritten multiple times. What remains is less a direct translation of the dream and more a conversation with it.

This project taught me that creativity is rarely about preserving the first idea. It's about discovering what survives after years of revision.

 

Building a World Instead of a Story

Early versions of The Everworse leaned heavily toward the kind of comic book storytelling I grew up loving. As the project expanded, I realized the most interesting questions weren't about powers, monsters, or mythology. They were about the people.

How does grief change someone?

How much of ourselves can we lose before we become something else?

What happens when power becomes a burden rather than a gift?

Those questions gradually became the foundation of the world.

The mythology, creatures, and supernatural elements remained important, but they began serving the emotional journey rather than driving it.

 

Creating a Visual Language

As the world expanded, it became necessary to create a visual system that felt unique to the setting.

That process included:

• Designing recurring symbols
• Developing mythological iconography
• Creating fictional organizations
• Establishing character motifs
• Building an original typeface
• Developing consistent visual themes across multiple books

Rather than treating each element independently, the goal was to make every symbol feel as though it belonged to the same world.

A broken scale, an altered ankh, fractured geometric patterns, and recurring motifs tied to memory, identity, and judgment all became part of a larger visual vocabulary.

 

Designing the Memory

One of the guiding principles behind the visual identity was the idea that symbols survive longer than stories. Throughout history, myths change and are reinterpreted. Names change to adapt to the times. Details are forgotten to fit the narrative.

Yet symbols often remain. Symbols are "set in stone."

Because The Everworse deals heavily with memory, identity, and forgotten histories, many of the designs were created to feel as though they had existed long before the reader encountered them. The goal was to create imagery that felt discovered rather than invented.

 

The Name

One detail from the original dream never changed. A television sat in the background of one scene, laying cockeyed in a room littered with destruction, repeating the same phrase over and over through heavy static and distortion.

"The worst ever."

The message repeated continuously, breaking apart and reforming as the dream shifted around it. At some point, one of the figures stepped out of the darkness, stopped and listened. The words began to change.

"Worst ever." and then out of the dark, the figure spoke in a low and gravelly voice.

"Worse... Ever... Worse."

It leaned out of the darkness exposing its face. It was an image I will never forget, but more importantly, the phrase rearranged itself into something new.

The Everworse.

I remember waking up and immediately writing it down. The image itself has changed considerably over the years. That character has evolved. The scene that originally contained the television barely resembles its current form. The name remains.

Some ideas feel invented.

Others feel discovered.

The Everworse has always felt like the latter.

 

One of the earliest surviving drawings that would eventually

contribute to the ideas behind The Everworse. Created in 2000,

nearly two decades before the project formally began.

 

The Character That Refused to Leave

While the world itself originated from a dream several years ago, some of its characters have been with me for much longer.

Long before The Everworse existed, I found myself drawing the same kinds of figures repeatedly. Different names. Different settings. Different stories. Yet one particular idea kept returning.

A survivor walking through impossible circumstances. A character carrying more than any person should be expected to endure, forced to keep moving forward despite losing pieces of themselves along the way. Looking back through old sketchbooks, I can see traces of those ideas appearing years before the current story existed. Twenty-six years to be exact.

At the time, I thought I was creating multiple new characters.

In hindsight, I think I was repeatedly approaching the same character from different directions.

 

Collaboration and Revision

Although The Everworse began as a personal project, it would not be the same story without my favorite person, life-long friend, and wife Arielle. Many of the most significant rewrites emerged from conversations with her. She consistently challenged assumptions, questioned motivations, and pushed me to look beyond spectacle and mythology.

Whenever a scene relied too heavily on a trope, she would ask why. Whenever a character made a choice, she would ask whether it felt earned. Whenever a moment was emotionally important, she would ask what it actually meant.

Those questions forced me to dig deeper than I otherwise would have. The result was a story that became less concerned with mythology and more concerned with grief, love, memory, regret, and endurance.

Simply put, she made the story better. So much so I consider her a co-author to the entire saga.

 

An Ongoing Process

The Everworse remains one of the most ambitious projects I have ever undertaken. Over seven years, the world has been rebuilt repeatedly. What began as a handful of images from a dream has evolved into an interconnected world with its own history, symbolism, language, and visual identity.

The process taught me that creating a world is not about having all the answers.

It's about continuing to ask better questions.

Dispatch: Designing Red Trim Comics

Origin of the Name

Red Trim Comics wasn't originally named for a character, a location, or a fictional world.

It was named after a piece of the creative process itself.

The name was suggested by Arielle, who noticed that every comic page leaves behind a border of discarded material when it's trimmed for publication. Those thin strips of paper—the red trim left on the cutting room floor—became a metaphor for the creative work that often goes unseen.

At the same time, the name carried a more personal meaning. Our home is black with red trim, making the phrase feel both symbolic and familiar.

The result was a name that represented both the craft of making comics and the place where those stories are created.

 

Initial Concepts

Finding the Symbol

The logo came much more easily than the name.

For as long as I can remember, I have experienced recurring nightmares involving a figure standing in a doorway or window. The details change, but certain elements remain consistent: a tall silhouette, a wide-brimmed hat, and the feeling that something is watching from just beyond the edge of the light.

That figure became one of the earliest inspirations behind my interest in drawing and storytelling.

Long before The Everworse existed, before I created worlds, monsters, or characters, I was trying to understand that image by putting it on paper.

Because of that history, the silhouette in the window became the natural centerpiece of the logo.

It isn't meant to represent a specific character.

Instead, it represents the mystery that started everything.