Post Apocalyptic New Jersey

Post Apocalyptic New Jersey
This all started with a crazy idea I had for my son’s Halloween costume in 2015. My initial idea was “What if Star Wars was made as a low budget movie in the 1965 rather than the late ’70s?” It would have been cobbled together with items from army surplus stores and recycled props from other movies. As I worked on the costumes and the many doodles that followed, I jettisoned the Star Wars idea and developed a tale of Post Apocalyptic New Jersey. Following a nuclear conflagration in 1981, the once verdant Garden State is reduced to a hellscape overrun by mutants, monsters and merciless marauders. The Atomic Warrior figures into this world along with a cavalcade of other freaks. This is the skeleton of a story to which I am adding flesh in my sketchbooks. It may be a comic one day.

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Atomic Warrior Halloween 2015
Atomic Warrior early sketch
Loser of the Swamps
Atomic Warrior skulks
Atomic Warrior strikes
You, yeah, you! Stand still, laddy!
With this drawing, I thought COMIC!
Atomic Warrior lights up the joint
Which one is Pink?
In New Jersey after the Apocalypse
First drawing of Pink Zeppelin. He just sort of rolled out of a blue Derwent pencil
Atomic Warrior in red
Atomic Warrior
First Derwent Dark Wash drawing
King Ricky
Thumbnail for an Atomic Warrior page drawn with my beloved mechanical pencils with red leads
Atomic Warrior swinging an Atomic Saber
Pink Zeppelin in a moment of calm
Water Witch
Butcher Shop Variation or Pink Zeppelin is Peckish
Charge!
Costume details
Playing with blue and red Inktense pencils
Atomic Warrior
Run through
Atomic Warrior with a raygun
The Thief Thwarted?
©Joe Williams
Doodles of the fearsome Atomic Warrior
The hideous two-headed, mutant monster that was the horrifying result of the fusion between a Led Zeppelin fan and a Pink Floyd fan. Pink Zeppelin!
Variation on the Atomic Warrior
The two-headed monster that guards the ruins of a record shop
Atomic Warrior
Atomic Warrior
Whoops
A swing and a miss
Pencil and watercolor
Pink Zeppelin Attacks!
The Jersey Legion
The Forager weighs a situation
Fleeing through the weeds
The Forager
The Little Sketchbook Intro
SMASH!
Coveting a treasure
The Forager’s C.V.
Thumbnail for a comic page
Scavenging Trio
Pink swings
Trying not to think about it
Forager
Scavengers — The Muscle
New Helmet
RUN for it!
Scavengers — The Muscle
Tight spot
Atomic Warrior faces Pink Zeppelin
Atomic Warrior sword aflame
Scavengers – the forager
Scavengers – the muscle
Pink Zeppelin ink
Pink Zeppelin pencil
The Forager
The Muscle