Time Bomb

This is a Character Illustration for the "Serenity Role Playing Game", published by Margaret Weis Productions. The RPG is derived from Joss Whedon's movie "Serenity", based on the TV Series "Firefly". This character is one of the crew from the ship "Aces and Eights", a cast of characters created for the book.

Painted in oils on gesso board in 2005.

Character Decription from the Serenity RPG:

Joe Henderson (AKA Time Bomb), is the ship's mechanic of Aces and Eights and demolitions expert. A short, meek-looking young man, Time Bomb is often mistaken for an accountant. He wears wire-rim glasses, for he is quite near-sighted. He is very neat and tidy and precise in everything he does-borderline obsessive/compulsive. He always cuts his food--any food--into one inch squares before he will eat it.

The twenty-five your old Time Bomb was born and raised on a mining colony. His father was the owner of the mine and Time Bomb could have lived a life of relative ease, but he was fascinated with explosives and spent as much time with the miners as possible. After an accident in which he nearly blew up himself and the family home, his father took the boy to the mine foreman and told him to teach him all he knew.

Having learned all he could about blasting rock, Time Bomb went to college to learn more. He studied chemical, mechanical, and civil engineering and accumulated a lot of hours, but never bothered to take the courses necessary for gaining a degree.

The commercial flights from his home planet to the college being long and boring (with nothing to blow up), Time Bomb became friends with the ship's mechanic and spent his time studying the ship's engines, which he found almost as interesting as explosives. Maxx met Time Bomb on one of these voyages. Bored himself and always interested in ships, Maxx wandered down to the engine room. Before the end of the trip, he'd hired Time Bomb as ship's mechanic.