Sorry this is going to be a bit long, but here goes:

Hi Gull. Oh man this is so old, and -I- agree my reply was a little rude and just a poor reply, but I get really offended when someone will automatically assume that something is racist 13 pages into a really long comic. I guess that is just how things are – Racism sure is a thing that exists, and some people will immediately be on the defence about it.

I can see the problem though, you come in to the comic and there are a bunch of elves and vampires that are all human looking and all have white skin, and then there are the cherubim who are animalistic, dumb, and all have darker skin.
Did we think ‘oh, dumb and angry surely equals dark skin’ and then proceed to make the cherubim as such? No, of course we didn’t.

The cherubim have dark skin because of the origin of the creature in mythology. Cherubim are assumed to be based on mythological creatures called lamassu or shedu that were depicted in the Assyrian empire. Just like many other things related to Heaven in the comic they are based on middle-eastern culture and history because that was where all of the abrahamic religions originated.

On the other hand the elves and vampires are based on stereotypical, boring old fantasy elves. These elves are always white, and so, so are these. As the story proceeds you will find there is nothing very redeeming about them either.

We are dealing with two different races here that are both a bunch of assholes and both don’t actually have much to do with Heaven or angels.
Would it be better if they were switched around so the elves all had darker skin and the cherubim all had light skin? The sad answer is that if we had done that we’d probably never had anyone break a sweat over it – But that, to me, would be a far more ‘racist’ decision, because of how calculated and baseless it would be. I refuse to canter to that kind of gross political correctness – Just like movies where you have a specific quota of how many black people and how many asian people there should be in the cast and what kind of roles they can play.
It makes me sick, to be honest.

Both Maia and I like to stick it to the political correctness and to play around with stereotypes (so we can crush them to little pieces). I realize we might often shoot ourselves in the foot doing that, but it’s just our thing. If we cared much about being politically correct we wouldn’t be making this comic at all, oh boy.
But that being said, we are not out to point fingers at anyone or demean any sort of people groups, and it would make me very sad if anyone were to think that, because that is very much not the point.

Then you asked if there will be more of a mix of skin tones later in the comic. Yes, the characters where always meant to be very multi-ethnic, but the problem with thinking about skin tones is that most of them aren’t human, nor look anything like humans. Then how can you define ‘characters of colour’? Mostly by their culture – But that is something that takes time to establish.
Also, let’s remember that ‘characters of colour’ does not necessarily equal ‘characters who are black and of African decent’.