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Description
This is one of a series of pieces I did over the last two years to flesh out the world of my sharkoid character, Jaws Chiptooth. In this case, this one features Marlin Giggles (again, pronounced Ghee-shul...yeah, I did that just to be a snot ) and his two main underlings, Marina Lasche and Aki Komodo. I imagine their introduction into Chiptooth's life would probably be reminiscent of both "The Island Of Dr. Moreau" and "The Abominable Dr. Phibes".

Giggles was inspired heavily by the 007 movie "Live And Let Die" - specifically, by the presences of Geoffrey Holder as the voodoo priest Baron Samedi and Julius Harris as the claw-armed henchman Tee Hee. Although the Holder influence had a tighter grip on my subconscious, since my earliest memory of him isn't even "Live And Let Die" - it's those old 7-Up commercials, thus accounting for Marlin's wardrobe choice here; this was a few years before I would even be exposed to the world of James Bond. Like Samedi, Giggles holds court over an island in the Caribbean where few dare tread without risking their life - in this case, the forgotten swamp-world of Prometheus Isle. It's here that Giggles and his minions take up residence in the posh Victorian estate known as Medusa - fittingly named, for trespassers who infiltrate its barriers are nonetheless stopped dead in their tracks by a multitude of mutated monstrosities and death-traps which only serve to fuel the fright of the locals. And it's from here that Giggles intends to carry out a plan conceived not by himself, but by his long-deceased father-figure, the pioneering geneticist Evan von Rofstader, whose intentions to remake all humans as empty-headed lizards so as to save them from themselves were betrayed by his last pupil, a much younger Mara Lantieri. Fanatically loyal to his dead creator, Giggles holds such a grudge over this and the loss of his right hand in the subsequent firefight with the Feds that not only does he engineer Mara's capture, he plans to coerce her into fulfilling the last part of his plan - completing the creation of the weaponized virus that, once airborne, will initiate a worldwide de-evolution.

In his entourage, Giggles has two subjects of his own creation, the finishing touches on which were perfected by top geneticists lured into Giggles' clutches since the early 1970s and done away with by gruesomely novel means once their tasks have been completed. The first of these was Marina Lasche, a barracudess whose shapeliness and otherworldly beauty belie a twisted intellect and the grim permanence of an assassin's skills. She can kill a man with but a touch and moves with such lightning-fast reflexes that even a fully-armed and expertly-trained team of Navy SEALS doesn't stand a chance against her. Unfortunately, killing is the only proficiency in which Marina displays extreme intelligence, and since her charms don't work on a certain shark-boy, this takes her off her somewhat off her guard. This is a trait that carried over from the subject I was thinking off when I was conceiving Marina's look, which in this case was Kim Cattrall. For some reason she was the one roaming around in my subconscious when I was working out the design of Marina Lasche, and even though that influence is somewhat obscured by her barracuda-like features, there's something in there that best fits Marina's overall personality.

The other cohort in the group is Aki Komodo, who fills out the Silent-But-Deadly Chauffer portion of this triad. Equal parts Bruce Lee and that freaky-@$$ snake-guy from "Dreamscape", Komodo don't talk much and don't need to. He's a tough hombre, to be sure, and he's definitely the sneakiest of the three, and Chiptooth will have to rely mostly on his wits and his resourcefulness to cook Aki's goose, since Aki is incredibly knowledgeable and experienced in about every martial art that has ever existed, and Jaws has only downloaded snippets of a handful of fighting styles to work with from memory.

Description
This is one of a series of pieces I did over the last two years to flesh out the world of my sharkoid character, Jaws Chiptooth. In this case, this one features Marlin Giggles (again, pronounced Ghee-shul...yeah, I did that just to be a snot ) and his two main underlings, Marina Lasche and Aki Komodo. I imagine their introduction into Chiptooth's life would probably be reminiscent of both "The Island Of Dr. Moreau" and "The Abominable Dr. Phibes".

Giggles was inspired heavily by the 007 movie "Live And Let Die" - specifically, by the presences of Geoffrey Holder as the voodoo priest Baron Samedi and Julius Harris as the claw-armed henchman Tee Hee. Although the Holder influence had a tighter grip on my subconscious, since my earliest memory of him isn't even "Live And Let Die" - it's those old 7-Up commercials, thus accounting for Marlin's wardrobe choice here; this was a few years before I would even be exposed to the world of James Bond. Like Samedi, Giggles holds court over an island in the Caribbean where few dare tread without risking their life - in this case, the forgotten swamp-world of Prometheus Isle. It's here that Giggles and his minions take up residence in the posh Victorian estate known as Medusa - fittingly named, for trespassers who infiltrate its barriers are nonetheless stopped dead in their tracks by a multitude of mutated monstrosities and death-traps which only serve to fuel the fright of the locals. And it's from here that Giggles intends to carry out a plan conceived not by himself, but by his long-deceased father-figure, the pioneering geneticist Evan von Rofstader, whose intentions to remake all humans as empty-headed lizards so as to save them from themselves were betrayed by his last pupil, a much younger Mara Lantieri. Fanatically loyal to his dead creator, Giggles holds such a grudge over this and the loss of his right hand in the subsequent firefight with the Feds that not only does he engineer Mara's capture, he plans to coerce her into fulfilling the last part of his plan - completing the creation of the weaponized virus that, once airborne, will initiate a worldwide de-evolution.

In his entourage, Giggles has two subjects of his own creation, the finishing touches on which were perfected by top geneticists lured into Giggles' clutches since the early 1970s and done away with by gruesomely novel means once their tasks have been completed. The first of these was Marina Lasche, a barracudess whose shapeliness and otherworldly beauty belie a twisted intellect and the grim permanence of an assassin's skills. She can kill a man with but a touch and moves with such lightning-fast reflexes that even a fully-armed and expertly-trained team of Navy SEALS doesn't stand a chance against her. Unfortunately, killing is the only proficiency in which Marina displays extreme intelligence, and since her charms don't work on a certain shark-boy, this takes her off her somewhat off her guard. This is a trait that carried over from the subject I was thinking off when I was conceiving Marina's look, which in this case was Kim Cattrall. For some reason she was the one roaming around in my subconscious when I was working out the design of Marina Lasche, and even though that influence is somewhat obscured by her barracuda-like features, there's something in there that best fits Marina's overall personality.

The other cohort in the group is Aki Komodo, who fills out the Silent-But-Deadly Chauffer portion of this triad. Equal parts Bruce Lee and that freaky-@$$ snake-guy from "Dreamscape", Komodo don't talk much and don't need to. He's a tough hombre, to be sure, and he's definitely the sneakiest of the three, and Chiptooth will have to rely mostly on his wits and his resourcefulness to cook Aki's goose, since Aki is incredibly knowledgeable and experienced in about every martial art that has ever existed, and Jaws has only downloaded snippets of a handful of fighting styles to work with from memory.