Character Analysis: Elizabeth
Elizabeth is a pretty important character, having her own comic series and kind of taking over the comics as of posting this (we’ll see what happens when the Candy comic launches!) so it’s about time she gets her own Character Analysis!
Elizabeth is 11 years old at the start of her series, Elizabeth the Compunctious. She lives in an unspecified town in Colorado, with her mother and her father. Her family has a good amount of money, but for the most part Elizabeth is not raised as a “rich kid”, living a fairly modest lifestyle. She is, at least at the start of the comic, curious, impulsive, creative, and she has a pretty immature sense of humor.
She has a boyfriend Jack, who is also 11 and in her same grade at school. They hold hands, hang out, like most kids that age who “date”. It’s really more of a label then anything else. Her best friend is Candy, but Candy leaves for her own journey in her own comic. She has other friends, like Jessica and Eric, and she’s fairly well known at school. She’s not “popular”, but she’s also not that one kid who always gets picked last in teams.
Overall her life as a first year middle schooler is pretty average.
Of course, things change when the wand enters the picture. Without spoiling details Elizabeth finds the wand during events in the short prequel series The First Comic, which name aside I recommend you read after starting the other comics since it is intended to be a prequel… the wand changes things quickly for Elizabeth, setting her on a whole new path for a crazy set of events which will forever change who she is. Wow, that did not sound vague at all!
You’ll have to forgive the vagueness a bit. I am writing this before the completion of her comic series and I am trying to avoid any spoilers. Maybe someday we can have a second Character Analysis of the older, more mature Elizabeth we get at the end of the comics!
Back on topic, Elizabeth uses the wand for all sorts of antics but the most important for this post is the first thing she does with it: creating a magic meat grinder. That’s important because of what it does to Elizabeth physically, or more accurately, because of what she does to herself with it. In the very first chapter Elizabeth runs her hair though it… not really a spoiler, this is a core storytelling mechanic as we can roughly tell when any events in the story are happening based on her hair!
Or, if that’s still not clear here is the meme-y version:
I’ve talked about her hair and the changes it makes before, in the 2019 Retrospect for example I showed how her hair length mechanic messed up the first few pages of her comic. I had to have Seasan revise those pages because they took place at a future time when her hair would not look the same.
I made up this handy little graph from Seasan’s model sheets to show approximately where her hair would be at different stages:
It’s not 100% accurate to real world hair growth but it is close enough. It needs to be workable as a storytelling mechanic, even if that means it doesn’t grow back exactly as it would in real life. The expressions on her face are part of her growth throughout the story, as the events that occur change her views on things and her personality some. You know, my novice attempts at character growth and development.
I don’t want to venture too much further in this direction. The spoiler potential is too great! Instead, let’s take a look at some older artwork from before the comics were a thing!
Here we see Elizabeth with her mom, Isabelle.
Within the lore for the franchise Isabelle is a US Senator, usually in DC during the week and returning home for the weekends. This leaves Elizabeth with Russell, her dad. She has an older sister, Claire, but Claire has her own kid Luna, works, and goes to school, so she’s pretty busy and can’t really help much with Elizabeth. This also helps explain how Elizabeth is able to get away with some of the stuff she does in the comics, since she is left unsupervised more often than other kids her age might be.
Here we can see a bunch of the kids playing together at the beach. Since the story is set in Colorado, it must be a lake… anywho, this is a good time to put some faces on some of the names I’ve been dropping:
Elizabeth has dreams, like anyone. And nightmares too! Below is a drawing of a nightmare Elizabeth had after watching Stranger Things.
She has a pet hamster, named Comet!
She attended Karate, or Taekwondo, or, whatever. It doesn’t really matter which one. She’s 11, 10 when she attended these classes, she didn’t become a black belt or whatever. At that age it’s more of a distraction, an after school thing so parents can get more quiet time at home.
Still, she had fun! Here’s a sequence of drawings depicting a session:
I mentioned before that Elizabeth’s family has money. Even though Elizabeth and her older sister were raised humbly that doesn’t mean the family never indulges.
Below is an example of Thanksgiving dinner at their home. You can see a lot of people attending, including most of her friends and family. Elizabeth would not eat like this every day of course, but the holidays are a special time!
In another example of Elizabeth being an average kid here is a sequence from a sleepover she had. Before the wand enters the picture and the comics begin, things for her were pretty normal.
…but then she finds a wand.
And POOF, now her usual mischief gets amplified! Sure, even after she feeds her hair to a meat grinder her life isn’t drastically different right away. She still goes to school, she still has a boyfriend, she still does the same stuff really. But that changes as she changes, and the Elizabeth of a future Character Analysis won’t be like the one here, even if it’s only been a few years that have passed.
Here’s some cute artwork of Elizabeth after the meat grinder:
Enjoy this time Elizabeth! You won’t ever get it again.
I’ll leave you with this cute drawing, one of the last ones before UPS lost my computer and my hired hand quit, before I retired this art style and hired artists exclusively.
That’s it! I’ll update this blog post someday with a link to the post-comic version of Elizabeth. Thanks for reading!