I mentioned this back when I was talking about Jonathan, but Dio was actually the one I wanted to draw most for Part 1. How far can a man's ambition drive him when he takes it to the ultimate extreme? That's what I wanted to depict. I wanted his name to sound cool when paired with JoJo's, so I ended up going with Dio, which means "god" in Italian. I always hear theories about how I got his name from the Dio Scooter, but that's not true! I'll just put that out there, along with the Bizarre Stories thing from last volume.
In regards to how he contrasts with Jonathan, I wanted to tackle how you represent the ultimate villain as depicted against a symbol of justice. How exactly would he fall into that role of "villain"? People always love to compare who's stronger or who's cooler. You've got Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla, Schwarzenegger vs. Stallone... I wanted there to be that sort of contrast or struggle between Dio and Jonathan.
Additionally, FBI psychological profiling was a hot topic around the time that I wrote this. Why do serial killers do what they do, scientifically speaking? I was inspired by that when I was working on Dio. Guys like that are true scumbags, rotten to the core. Yet, I've always sort of thought that they're actually incredibly strong for being table to commit such crimes. Why do they go so far? Do they do it just to see if they can? The "control" aspect of it interests me as well. There was a famous case in America where a man trapped several women in a room and brought them out, one at a time, into another room to kill them. All of these women were waiting, together, for their turn to get killed. I can't imagine what their mental state was like at that point... Thinking rationally, you wonder why they wouldn't try to make a break of it, or why they wouldn't try to band together and overpower the killer? There has to be some way to resist. However, if you look into the process by which people control others, you start to see what's effective. There are many ways, including instilling fear, but I always found the act of controlling others strangely fascinating.
That's why Dio wasn't simply a strong villain, but a character that controls others and had admirers that served him. As an antagonist, it makes it suspenseful for the reader, as they wonder how he can be beaten. During serialization, I actually hadn't prepared a weakness for Dio. It's the best kind of suspense when you are on edge. How will they overcome him if Ripple doesn't work? The stronger the enemy, the better. It was hard coming up with a way for him to be defeated, though.
Why is Dio naked?
He wanted to show off his beautiful body. If I try, I can draw these characters to look the way they did, but they're living, breathing things. They do end up looking like completely different people when drawn in a modern style.
