Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Black Hole Wizard, Comics, crowdfunding, entertainment, Patreon

Take A Trip Into The Weird With A Black Hole Wizard

By Simon Berman

Do you remember the feeling the first time you encountered something truly strange? Maybe it was the cover a copy of Heavy Metal Magazine stashed in the attic, a relic of your dad's misspent youth in the 70s. Or was it Dave Trampier's illustrations in the moldering pages of the original D&D Player's Handbook in the basement?   Combine that feeling with the shock of the first time you saw a friend's older brother smoking pot, and you have a pretty good idea about what my comic book project, Black Hole Wizard, is trying to evoke.

My first tastes of the weird are twenty years gone, lost in the early 90s. These days, I work as the Marketing Coordinator sometimes as a writer at Privateer Press. For the past seven years I've been immersed in the depths of a geek world that makes my inner fifteen-year-old hyperventilate. Here in Seattle I write and market the award-winning miniatures wargames Warmachine, Hordes, and the Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying Game, as well as the ENnies-nominated roleplaying game, Unhallowed Metropolis.

I love what I do, especially the privileged opportunity to write setting and characters in the Iron Kingdoms, but for a few years now I've wanted to stretch my own muscles in ways too strange for that world. You learn a lot writing in somebody else's universe, especially when it's a tightly plotted and carefully built one.  It was probably in reaction to that that I spent a lazy summer weekend listening to music and idly making notes about a setting I thought I'd use for a homebrewed roleplaying game for some friends. A few hours in, immersed in the depths of an album by the band Sleep, I realized there was nothing idle about my notes. I was feverishly possessed, words pouring out: world building, story ideas, characters. Demons! Outer space! Wizards! The illustrations of a thousand airbrushed vans blasted through my mind and into my text document. I was imagining a world full of the genre-smashing insanity that dominated fantasy and science fiction before they became regulated by the small minds of purists.

By the end of that weekend I had over ten thousand words of setting material and the realization that this was turning into something far different than a roleplaying game.

I spent my nights and weekends for the rest of that summer immersing myself in music and art that evoked the feelings I talked about earlier. For me, that was music like Black Sabbath and the contemporary doom metal bands they inspired. I filled my ears with Sleep, Electric Wizard, and The Sword. I pored over ancient D&D hardcovers, Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories, Michael Moorcock's wildest acid trips. When I wasn't reading or writing while listening to music, I was watching Heavy Metal: The Movie, or Holy Mountain, or Zardoz.

When I had my notes in something like a presentable form I reached out to Eliza Gauger, an artist I'd had the honor of working with on Unhallowed Metropolis. Eliza is a decade deep veteran of both fine art and fringe art. Her stuff is displayed in galleries and she's collaborated with people like Warren Ellis and Jhonen Vasquz.  But most importantly, Eliza is my kind of weird. She knows the occult. She knows mythology, and she lives a life steeped in the combination of that knowledge with the digital trappings of the modern world. She deciphered my ravings and immediately started inundating me with concept art and story ideas.

Our lead character, the Black Hole Wizard, Qutaybah of El'anscopé, started resolving into sharp focus thanks to Eliza's keen eye for what makes a face interesting. Our first villain, Alastor, a demon from the Void between stars, came together equally quickly after Eliza modeled his head by mirroring a webcam image of a Humboldt squid's beak. Eliza suggested the name of our protagonist's blood-fuelled ship, the Samovar, and its sigil-based targeting systems.

We've been hammering on this for almost two years now and are finally ready to begin in earnest. We've just launched a Patreon in support of the project. We'll be churning out pages no matter how much we make on Patreon, but every dollar helps justify Eliza's time away from her other paying projects.  If you're attending Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle this month, come find us at Artist Alley booth #U-03. We'd love to talk to you about Black Hole Wizard, and wizards in general.

The first issues are written, the first pages are inked, and Qutaybah is ready to invoke his ill-advised scheme aboard the Samovar.  We have demons to chase, smoke to share with the Creedsmen, and worlds to shatter. I hope you'll join us on this weird trip.

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