Origin Stories: David Johansen

Written by Tony Ross

If you’re familiar with my books, you’ve run into David Johansen. He came into Victor as a side character and quickly morphed into the main guy in the Shadows of Sunlight City series and Ghosts of Killdeer. He’s even got a cameo appearance in Orion: The Hidden Man, which would chronologically be his first appearance, since that book’s a prequel to the others named above.

But that’s not technically David’s beginning. He’s been around for a long, long time, and I thought I’d tell that story in this month’s blog.

David Johansen first came on the scene in the very early 1990s, as a character I made for Battletech, a futuristic tabletop role-playing game where guys go to war in giant robots called “mechs.” I think I did the unfinished sketch of him I’ve included here around that time. I was reading a lot of Marvel comics back then. Here, Dave’s got that typical superheroic build and looks a bit like the X-Men character Longshot. In the game, he ended up with some metal parts like Wolverine; it’s a sci-fi game, why not? I borrowed a bit from Jae Lee’s art style; he’d just come on the scene with Marvel, drawing for X-Factor and Namor, and I liked his stuff.

David later transitioned into a major character in an early attempt at writing a novel, as a futuristic character pulled, along with his battle-damaged mech, into a fantasy world where beings from all kinds of times and dimensions intersected. (Actually, now that I think about it, the sketch probably comes from this version of Dave.) He was brainwashed by the bad guys into combining his mech with magic to create an exceptionally potent weapon. The good guys crossed dimensions to bring in David’s dad, who was a legendary mech pilot in his own right, to even the odds. Things got interesting. The book was chaotic: plenty of language, blood and gore, warfare, prophecy, demonic possession and an antichrist figure. I never tried to publish it, because I came to know Jesus at that point in my life, and the world didn’t need another book like that.

David’s next stop was my first attempt at a novel from a Christian perspective. This would’ve been the early 2000s. In that book, David was a detective who got hit in a drive-by shooting and ended up in a coma. While in that coma, he found himself in a fantasy world, a medieval wasteland that represented his spiritual condition, and faced a demonic enemy intent on destroying him.

Does that sound a little bit like Ted Dekker’s Circle books, where Thomas Hunter is grazed by a bullet, falls asleep not long after, and wakes up in a medieval fantasy world? I thought so, too. Ted Dekker released Black, the first book in the Circle Trilogy, right around the time I was wrapping up the first draft on my project. So I let my project go. Ted beat me to the concept, and good for him; he did a far better job with it than I would have, and his Circle books are some of my favorites.

But David carried on. His next stop was Victor. If you’ve read my books, you know the rest.

Other fun bits of trivia…

Dave’s gotten a haircut since the sketch, dresses a little nicer (though he still likes to be comfortable), and he’s not so ridiculously proportioned now. I had fun with this sketch at the time, though.

David’s strong Christian faith, believe it or not, is actually a holdover from his Battletech days. At one point, he joined a military unit that operated on a godly foundation with a no-kill order. The gamemaster had me roll to see how well he understood Christian doctrine. I maxed out the roll. Dave’s deep knowledge of Christianity carried over to the current version.

Martial arts have always been a part of David’s character. He’s still quite competent with swords, but he’s now primarily a stick fighter, preferring a hanbo (half-staff in Japanese) as a less-lethal option. Hey, did you notice he’s holding the sword in his right hand in the sketch? That’s different; in my books, he’s left-handed.

Last bit of trivia… Dave’s original version was raised by his British mother, so he spoke with a British accent. Can you imagine how different my books would’ve been if I’d kept that?

That’s it for now! Did anything I shared here surprise you? Is there anything else you’d like to know about David, or any other character? Let me know. I’d be happy to share.

Until next time, take care, and God bless you.

Tony