Explanations

Hello, everyone. DAMC here...
There are so many things i want  to share here about Leo and the universe he has showed to me in all these years we've been together, but i have to control myself, this is a step by step process, right?
Right.

Yesterday i explained a little bit who Leo is and where does he come from... More or less; so today i want to talk about the webcomic itself.
Just as it happened with Leo, the webcomic came to be way before it's actual current name Der Kaiser ist kaputt. For those who don't know, that's german and translates to The Emperor is out of service... Or broken, or wasted, or exhausted... You get the drift.

This is not just a silly joke. I mean, it is, but it has a little bit more meaning than that.
I already explained Leo started life as my own alter ego, or at least that's what i choose to believe (I wouldnt be surprised if during this process of pulling him out of my head to exist in the "real" world i end up discovering he was an entirely different person all along). Although, i have toyed A LOT with the idea of rather explain him as an alter universe version of me... We'll see.
But be as it may, Leo started being me, so he was bounded to be deeply impacted and shaped by the same events that impacted and shaped me; and of course everything i learned, heard, experienced was also lived by him even after he developed his own personality paralel to mine. So, much of my appreciation of myself found fertile ground on him, and it festered instead of sprouting in a healthy way i think. Calling one self an emperor without really having an actual empire to rule is not exactly sane, but in Leo that idea became fundamental for his understanding of his place in the universe. He even has some pretty awesome supernatural evidences to back his claim to the ultimate crown. Because Leo wouldnt settle for just any throne and crown in a dark hall somewhere on a mountain. No.
 Leo was THE Supreme Emperor crowned with stars and wielding a sword of fire, master of his own destiny.

Sounds absolutely stupid, i know, but just consider the backstory for Leo. He had to grow up in a represive enviroment where god was the only one dictating your destiny. No way out if you wanted to be happy in the after life with all your loved ones. So, much of what a person can do is always mutilated by the fear of that omnipresent entity silently judging you from beyond time and space. No self respecting emperor would ever believe in such nonesense (in my head), and Leo is not just any emperor able to think for himself and realise the world does not work that way and that religion is just another one of the many systems actively operating to control masses for a greedy purpose. Leo knows more and is not afraid of death or what is beyond that point. Plus, he has full access to his amazing inner world where he could travel freely anywhere.
He tried to explain it all to the people around him kneeling in fear, but eventually he left them to their own whispers in the dark.
Now, please, dont understand this as the explanation for an egomaniac. It could sound that way, but Leo doesnt really has much of an ego in the way people usually do. Being able to see life from an outside perspective may cause a person to not really care about building an ego (in my head). The emperor title in him became a mission. He was the emperor just as naturally as he is male or has a nose. It wasnt a right or a claim, it simply was. He was meant to (somehow) rule and change the world. Yeah, that's the deranged part, you can laugh there.

Blah, blah, blah, right? But why is he kaputt?

Well, that's an s&m story involving me in Canada and a guy in México city that ended terribly for me.
The impact this dude had in my life was the equivalent to surviving a very bad bear attack. I lost so much during that disastrous story. A lot more than i  actually realised at the time.
To give you a perspective, he made such an impression on me it actually motivated Leo once and for all to show himself to the world in the fabled webcomic i always talked about. That was 2011.

His departure caused so much pain and suffering it impacted Leo and the webcomic.

Let me explain to you the webcomic's posts on kaiserkaputt.blogspot.mx:
The first five posts are meant to express who Leo is. 1, 2 and 3 show him as a stonner who sees the world as a bunch of masked people faking their best. Number 3 introduced silently a new character, MJ. Yes, she is supposed to look like a goddess/supernatural being. Yes, she is the manifestation of marihuana in Leo´s inner world. Yes, she can interact with Leo as a persoun would, and yes, she is meant to regularly appear in the strip. Here, let me show you.

This unfinished one was meant to be an alternative number 7. MJ has been redisgned now, but the wingged narwhal stuck and is still around, though im not sure if i still want it as MJ's steed, i havent decided yet.
Number 4 is a bit grim, but it was meant to show his lack of ego, considering himself next to nothing. Come to think of it, i think its also a take on the way i was dealing with the lonelyness i felt at the time... Moving on.
Number 5 is a bit of his motivations. So far Leo sounds a bit like a jerk? I hope not, but i promise you he is a good guy, in a way, sort of... When faced with the choice, he almost always picks the good thing to do. Boring, i know, meh... But he grew up alone and learned to give himself this little pep talks to keep him moving forward, so for him comes natural to do the same for everyone else, if he is not annoyed or angry or horny, that is.
The idea in number 6 was: "I'll save myself, thanks." A reflection of his past when separating himself from his family's fate, and was the first time i showed Leo with his sword and coat. That's what i wanted him to look. I was setting the stage for the real story to develop. Leo refusing to accept anyone's rules and doing his own thing. In the real world this meant i had made up my mind to leave my life in Canada to go back to México city to be with the guy i mentioned earlier. Yes, you can also laugh there.

Now, let me show you what was meant to be the post number 7:

That's what the first six posts were leading to. From then it was gonna be the adventures of Leo and V-XI, his companion/real life slave.
Shit happens, he left. I debated a lot wether or not publish this one. In the end the pain won and the webcomic changed forever. I tried to keep it afloat as it was with the unfinished MJ strip i showed before, but in reality it was futile. The story that was gonna end with Leo being actually crowned as emperor of the universe got cancelled before it started. At least that story line.
The number 7 that actually happened is, i think, the moment were the Kaiser got kaputt to the eyes of the world. the real life event happened in february 2012, i was back in México city and the references to a shrink and prozac were true.
V-XI's departure caused Leo and i to be kaputt for a long time.

Number 8 was dedicated to a friend who poured all of his fear on me one night over coffee and cigs. Was horrible and i was in no shape to comfort him enough, so that Leo's picture happened, his "pick you up" attitude. Completely strange and out of place for what was trully going on in both worlds, Leo's and mine.

Since Leo was out, i couldn´t really pull him back into my head and forget about everything, but the story had changed, and i hadnt explained the "why" it changed so drastically from vanilla cute to bleak downer. I just used the pain and continued drawing. Leo simply tagged along, and that's exactly what´s happening in numbers 9 and 10.
In number 11 the  focus goes back to his world and the characters in it. As usual with me, things happen way before their names. The inner world is now known as the Memory shop, where Leo is currently in, but i will talk about that later. The internal demons have been redesigned as it can be seen in number 14 and have names that wont be revealed just yet.

Numbers 12 and 13 were supposed to explore Leo's interactions with people in the real world and i thought they were showing improvement both for Leo and i, but i actually realise just now they were my farewell posts for Leo. If you wonder why both posts are so sexual, it is because thats exactly what was going on in my life at the time before i decided to simply move on from all the pain and bullshit and started enjoying life again.

Sadly, back then, for me moving on meant leaving Leo behind.
Im ashamed to admit i actually abandoned Leo on the curve like a motherfucker son of a bitch and i litteraly took my sorry ass to the beach to get wasted.
Two years went by. Healing, maturing, growing and life took me to the man who is now my husband, my light. It is really thanks to him that Leo actually came back. No kidding, he really resurrected him.
Number 14 was an attempt to revive the old story line where i left it in 2013, but i quickly changed my mind on that idea. It felt unnecesary to keep dragging the stuff i had dealt with already, and Leo wasn't a tool to heal anymore, that thought was percived as disrespectful. But the introduction of characters from Leo´s internal world was something i wanted to do anyways. I should say that even though im usually "ok" with the designs i post, sometimes i see they need improvement, or maybe i just simply grow older and more appreciative of what the fuck i am actually doing. MJ and Death's characters have been redesigned, MJ needed that so badly! But Leo im pretty sure is gonna stay as we see him now in number 15 and 16. That's Leo. And that's the beggining of his new story.

In my eyes, number 15 is number one of Der Kaiser ist kaputt, and i would like for everyone to pretend the same with me, seriously. That would mean Der Kaiser ist kaputt is book two of Leo's story, and while the previous posts in the blog may not end up being part of book one, the reason for the title is no longer the broken heart that caused them and Leo to be in that specific blog.

I could have started a new one, and sometimes i still think i should redo the whole thing all over again, start a new blog, delete the previous posts on fb and start from scratch with an upbeat tone; call it something not downer, pretend all this 16 posts never happened and keep explaining Leo as my alter ego and nothing more.
But i have finally accepted that even though those 16 (17 if you count the apocryphal number 7 that will never ever ever ever ever be shown again) strips are part of Leo's graphic history and visual evolution. They may not be part of his storyline anymore, but there they are as a testimony of Leo's roots within myself as much more than just a made up dude. To be honest, im also not very sure what his ultimate intentions are, but i trust him enough to agree to draw him and write him for as long as it takes to tell his story... I wouldnt be writing this damn much if i hadn't right?
Right.

So, why Der Kaiser ist kaputt then? It really is now a metaphore for being a jaded idealist who embraced nihilism, but  i think the real answer will be found somewhere along the way. For now i think it's enough. Im hungry.

DAMC out.

Trivia fact: For a little while, the webcomic was named Die schlampe ist kaputt, which in german means something like the slut is exhausted, or broken, but due to german censorship and the fact that i realised schlampe is writen with a femenine article i choose to abandon that joke. I think in the end i was really the only one who found the whole sentence hilarious, but it really had no place being associated with Leo, at least not as his main title.