-

Austin Faust

"You ever heard the story of Austin Faust?"

The air swirled lazily overhead, a dense mix of cigarette smoke and the scents of a couple dozen kinds of booze.  The old pub was dimly lit by a lone lightbulb, hanging from a simple lamp chained to the ceiling over the bar.  One man was hunched forward on his stool, his elbows on the bar and one hand wrapped around the handle of a large glass of beer.

"Naw, I ain't heard-a him." He said, before taking a heavy gulp; his white ten-gallon hat nearly falling from his head in the process.

Somehow, the man behind the bar didn't seem surprised at the other man's answer.  He smiled the slightest of smiles, and reached up to take the somewhat stained towel from his shoulder.  The bartender kept his hands busy drying another glass as he told the story.

"Back about five years or so, there was a local musician by the name of Austin Faust.  He was only a kid, about sixteen maybe, but he could play the guitar like nobody had ever seen.  I saw him play live once, and it was the most amazing thing I ever saw."

The images, those of a teenager playing his bright red electric guitar before a small, franticly cheering crowd, flashed by along with the tale.  His short black hair was spiked upward, and his hands were practically a blur as he played.

"The problem is that he brought down the house... literally."

Those words were set around the image of a club that looked as though it had just been hit by a small tornado.  People looked on in a dazed bewilderment, and even a younger version of the bartender could be spotted in the crowd.

The words that followed were stationed back and forth like a twisting pathway, wandering around a series of other pictures and snapshots of the man's history.  A picture of a woman in a red dress who was mostly shrouded by darkness, a different collapsed club, and a picture of Austin walking, with his guitar strapped over his left shoulder.

"Rumors began to spread about the Faust boy almost immediately.  The one that got around the most was that he had made a deal with the devil, or one of the devil's underlings anyway, for the ability to play the guitar better then anyone in the world.  But there's a funny thing about those sorts of deals: they never go your way.  And every club that the boy tried to play in was wrecked in the same way as the one I had gone to.  He's also the reason nobody uses the phase ‘blow their minds' anymore."

Back in the bar, the story had gotten under the skin of the barfly.  He looked up from under his hat at the bartender, who set the glass down on a shelf behind the bar, one in front of a large mirror.  Neither man bothered to look back as the bar door opened up, and another person entered.

"Last I heard, he's been working for the very same person that gave him his guitar-playing skills.  Except, he's doing some more violent work.  A hitman, some people would call it.  But I hear he still carries that guitar around, and that he's kind-of hard to miss because of it."

The new arrival had taken a seat on the stool directly behind the bartender.  He only says one word.  He only needs to.

"Scotch."

The bartender looked up at the mirror, and froze, wide-eyed, where he stood.  Over the reflection of his shoulder, he can clearly see the head and part of the neck of a guitar.  The man in the cowboy hat didn't seem to pay this any mind, and asked a question of the barkeep.

"How d'ya know if this guy's targetin' ya?"

Austin Faust, his hair grown long since his younger days, reached into the overcoat he wore and pulled forth a revolver.  And, while the shot is not shown, the final picture is of the gun extended, and it's muzzle smoking.  Austin sat in the background, holding the strap of his guitar with his other hand.  Calmly, coldly, he speaks once more.

"Trust me, you'll know."

-

This comic, as you've probably gathered by now, stars a man by the name of Austin Faust.  He's a former wannabe rockstar and a current killer in the employ of Mona, who is, herself, working of the Devil.  However, Mona seems to have her own agenda, and Austin is left as little more then a tool that she uses to take out a number of admittedly oddball targets.  Of course, when it comes to situations like these, there's always much more going on then meets the eye.

The art style I'd hope to use on this would be very stylized, somewhat abstract, yet simple and not the least bit time-consuming to create.  It would use very few colors, but those that it did use would stand out a great deal.  If you thought of the Sin City comics, then you wouldn't be very far off at all.  I'm hoping to give the artist a chance to really make a mark: although, to be fair, I'd probably be persuaded to change my mind and go with another style if I were shown something particularly amazing.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  What do you think of the idea thus-far?  Is there anything that you think I should change, expand on, or otherwise tweak?  Feel free to be as brutal as you like, this idea is nowhere near set in stone at this stage.