The TWIDI style of vampires conceptualises them as an extreme form of a shadow person: a spirit so condemned, listless and unable to move on that they need to violently drain another’s life-force to maintain their existence. When they accumulate enough life they gain and wield all sorts of supernatural abilities, some of which will be seen later. The really bad vampires may continue attacking even when they no longer need to eat, or pass their curse to their victims by not consuming all of their life. These victims are then trapped to a similar hunger/immortality/inability to move as their liege.

While TWIDI vampires can be drawn quite creepily, especially their shadow selves – it’s really important to me that Zeynel is never depicted as un-human, even though we can see he’s capable of assuming and shifting into that shadow self at his ravenous moments. This is in contrast to Mora, who’s all out visually indulgent with his lack of a grasp in humanity. The reasoning behind this difference, besides the fact that Zeynel is a different personality and therefore a foil to Mora, is the reality that Muslims are unfortunately portrayed by the West as inhuman entities or monsters in real and fictional media. That kind of ground needs to be treated with serious care.

This scene was an interesting challenge since Zeynel’s vampirism needed to be drawn, but the reveal can’t be done the same way as Mora’s. For Zeynel specifically, his vampirism is only depicted to the reader in parts, never in full – and especially never fully from the front. Most importantly, his face must never be shown as distorted – except the teeth.