Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Antique Books, Arthur Rackham, dc comics, kickstarter, Scott Boyce, zuda

Antique Books, Horror Creeps Up On Kickstarter

Published Sun, 12 Jan 2014 16:00:50 -0600

Scott Boyce writes for Bleeding Cool:

It all starts with Arthur Rackham.

He was one of the premier illustrators of pre world war one british books.

His illustrations of fantasy creatures, demons, gods, and literary characters were the first drawings where I recognized a specific artists hand.

His illustrations were also most likely the point where I associated line art and books with tapping into imagination and the psyche.

Fast forward many years, Ridley Scott and H.R.Gigers ALIEN instills in me the desire to create a creature. One great creature.

But it can't be derivative so it can't be sci-fi. So the creature has to be taken as far away from sci-fi as possible.

What could be more anti sci-fi than an antique bookstore?

Antique Books is an original horror graphic novel currently on Kickstarter. Pencilled and inked traditionally and coloured with Copic markers and iOS devices. The story first appeared in DC Comics online Zuda competition four years ago and has been percolating ever since, getting stranger.

The story is set in a hole in the wall antique bookstore that houses obscure and arcane volumes. Only very particular collectors know what the store has in it's collection. The lone clerk wiles away the day waiting to see if today is the day she sells a book that will cover the slow months. Isolated amongst the dusty tomes she obsesses over last nights fight with her boyfriend and wonders about the strange owners. The cold woman and her increasingly agitated mother. The elderly woman's ramblings about the rising moon have become more frequent and frantic. Her cold daughter actually seems rattled beneath her put together veneer.

The story is a variation on the "demon in a box" structure. One day, one location, five people, one creature and by the end of it everything is much darker than when it began.