Posted in: Comics | Tagged: avatar press, comic, disenchanted, Faries, german erramouspe, simon spurrier, webcomic

Simon Spurrier Talks His New Webseries Disenchanted

Published Mon, 21 Oct 2013 12:00:04 -0500

On October 28th, Simon Spurrier is launching his brand new webseries Disenchanted with artist German Erramouspe. The series tells what happens to leprechauns, goblins, pixies and fey when people stop believing in them. How they all end up in Vermintown, a vile city filled with a million one-inch malcontents. Its a very un-Disney look at the magical creatures of folklore.

Disenchanted will be in the Freakangels and Crossed: Wish You Were Here format, giving away pages and pages of content for free every week. It will be collected twice a year.

As part of the Halloween Comic Fest at your local comic shops (on Halloween), fans will be able to pick up a copy of Disenchanted Debut from Avatar Press perfectly timed with the launch of the webseries.

Spurrier talked about his new series, the inspiration and just what he's trying to do. He's put his heart and soul into this projects…:

"Crime. Law. Ethnic hatred. Drugs. Radicalisation. Deviancy. Love. Family ties. Disenchanted takes every grim complication of the modern world – every urban obstacle – and filters them through a haze of dark magic and increasingly threadbare tradition.

Let's be clear: faeries are kinda crap these days. They've gone through the cultural ringer: spat onto the sterilised shelves of toystores in a kaleidoscope of pink tutus, glittery wands and rosy cheeks. That's a pity. Because faeries, like all dimly-remembered magics, like all the folkloric little monsters we used to believe in, like all the glamours they used to spin to avoid our attention, are related to a whole host of ancient ideas far more interesting than glitter.

Sex. Blood. Belief. Tradition. That good, oldtime religion.

Disenchanted is about the creatures of old Europe. Goblins, leprachauns, kobolds, brownies, boggarts, piskies, hobs and – yes – faeries. It's about what's happened to them all now that nobody believes in them.

It's dispossessed populations; it's about traditional ways being absorbed by a merciless future; it's about people whose defining cultures have been eroded so much they've nothing left to believe in. And no idea how to start from scratch.

It's about what happens when the mythical "little people" get sick of their empty lives and huddle together in a vast city in an abandoned London Underground station. A city made of soda cans, milk cartons, cereal boxes. A city miniature in scale but epic in stories. A city seething with commerce, organised crime, invention, magic, violence and love.

None of our characters are cute. None will grant your wish.

Disenchanted is about treating folklore in the most unsentimental way possible. It's about urban life. It's about disenfranchisement, dispossession, disillusionment. It's about the many pathways different lives can take in the melting-pot of a big city.

It's The Borrowers meets The Wire. It's fucking Fern Gulley meets Deadwood. It's an ensemble piece about urbanisation and – yes – disenchantment: the tension between the Old Ways and the New.

It's the story of five members of one family. A pair of young twins, one spinning into delinquency and the other into radicalisation; their exhausted and increasingly violent father; their unflappable but haunted aunt; and their grandmother, the elderly matriarch who supposedly represents all that's best about their history… but whose crisis of faith could bring down their whole community.

Disenchanted's been in production for four years now. It's huge. I've poured my heart and soul into it: this strange mixture of very relevant pressures and very exotic visuals. The world never seems to stop growing: there's always another dark corner, another city-wide conspiracy, another creepy mystery waiting to be found.

Who's it for? Anyone who loves a hint of fantasy in a really compelling story, but wishes it wasn't always so fucking twee. Anyone who wants to see reality at a different scale. Anyone who always suspected there were whole worlds ticking away beneath their feet, beneath their notice, but never dared look. Anyone who relishes a web of human tales – triumphs and tragedies alike – which combine in cunning ways to suffuse a whole city in the most epic fashion. Anyone who loves stories. Anyone fascinated by faith. Anyone who's ever stared at a city and just… wondered.

Also: anyone who ever wanted to see a foulmouthed brownie tear the arse off a seagull. Anyone who ever wondered why you never female pixies. Anyone intrigued by the notion of a magical overdose, enticed by riot cops with wings or curious to find out what The Great Ripper (which haunts the eastbound tunnel towards St Paul's, of course) really is. Anyone drawn to unflinching examinations of some very, very serious subjects.

Oh, and anyone with a thing for the occasional spice of magical granny sex.

Look, my aim was pretty simply: to approach urban fantasy without fear, hesitation or sentiment. No punches pulled. No cutesy. No twee. No surrender. Disenchanted I hope, in all its ugly, funny, beautiful, frightening, maddening splendour, is magical realism done right."

Check out Spurrier's new webseries starting October 28th at disenchantedcomic.com

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