Creator Nick Percival Talks About His Dark Steampunk Comic "Legends: The Enchanted"

I posted on this coming-in-2010 comic HERE last week and, seeing as there was quite a bit of interest between comments and Twitter, I thought I'd point you to an excellent interview with the creator Nick Percival.

In the interview with Comic Book Resources, he reveals more about the fairy tale characters he's using and how they've been given a new twist. Here's an excerpt from the long, informative and interesting article:

"The Enchanted are looked upon with fear and distrust by normal everyday folk and despised by their dark counterparts, known as The Wicked," says Percival. "Most of the Enchanted operate as vigilantes, outlaws, bounty hunters and so on - trying to find their place and purpose in a land that is growing increasingly hostile towards them. Armed with a hard attitude, unique abilities and customized weaponry, the Enchanted's world is shattered when they discover that some unknown enemy has found a way to break through their mystic immortality and begins slaughtering them one by one beginning with the killing of the half bionic/half wooden warrior, Pinocchio."

Nick Percival: We've got Red Hood, who lives with her daughter in a very dangerous place known as the Bionic Woodlands - this area is overgrown with spiked bio-mechanical trees and living, organic plant life, populated by mutated wolf creatures. Basically, she just wants to be left alone and raise her child, but the murder of Pinocchio and the kidnapping of her daughter force her to reluctantly seek out help from other Enchanted.

Jack the Giantkiller pretty much just looks out for himself. He's sly, likes to drink and burns around on a beast of motorcycle that uses Giant's blood as fuel. Jack acts as a kind of "creature killer for hire." For the right price, he'll sort out any towns terrorized by Ogre problems, which he usually solves by popping one of his "magic beans" that grant him cool powers for a limited amount of time as he starts cracking heads together.

Filling out the rest of the cast are psychic siblings, Hansel and Gretel (Paranormal Exterminators), Goldilox and Bear, her nine-foot half man/half bear boyfriend. They have a "rob the rich to give to the poor" type quest, which involves them coming up against the crime boss, Humpty Dumpty and the Billy Goats Gruff Biker Gang - it doesn't end quietly.

Amongst these, we've got cameos from Rapunzel, a soldier with unbreakable hair that she uses to attack her enemies, Miss Muffet, Rumpelstiltskin, Pied Piper, Jack Nimble and many others all depicted in the same gritty style with attitudes to match in a world filled with goth-type giants, vampire fairies, pissed off trolls, demon street gangs, and all manner of unsavory folk.


Do you have a favorite fairy tale or fable?

I have a lot of versions of the classic tales that the Brothers Grimm collected together, some great old German editions as well. I've also been heavily into Hans Christian Andersen's work, so there are way too many to choose from. But a lot of the ancient Russian folklore is fascinating, and there are some themes in that material that I'm thinking about including in later stories for "Legends: The Enchanted."

You can read the entire article HERE and see LOTS of (very gory) images throughout (which can be viewed larger by clicking).

All the details of the website, when it's available and the preview are in my previous post HERE. A warning again: please keep this away from children. This is dark stuff and definitely in the horror genre. All these new images severely cropped for posting purposes on this blog. If you can deal with the images though (the illustrations are amazing in addition to being ultra-gory), this comic and the developing story sounds like it's worth checking out.

"Legends: The Enchanted" - Dark Steampunk Fairy Tale Comic Coming in 2010

The girl above is Redhood (a.k.a. Red Riding Hood) and she's not the only familiar character getting a dark fantasy/post-apocalyptic/steampunk/horror makeover. Coming in April 2010 is "Issue #0" (yes, that's a zero) of a new comic series titled "Legends: The Enchanted".

Please be warned: despite the title, this comic crosses the line into horror, which is one of the reasons I'm posting on it - so you'll know what you're in for should you ever pick it up. While the feel is dark fantasy, the images are very graphic in both the gallery and on every page in the preview. I'm not even comfortable posting the cover (which has Redhood in a different pose with some scary-looking supernatural creatures flanking her) or the other character images beyond those included in this entry for my blog readers. Please do NOT have children around when viewing the comic website. The official blurb:

From award-winning illustrator and acclaimed comic book artist Nick Percival comes a dark, original fairy tale.

You think you know them. Think again.

Violently ripped from the pages of folklore come the Enchanted. Supernatural immortals living in a dark, steampunk, creature-infested world where nature, technology and foul magic are in constant conflict. When the twisted, burnt remains of the half-wooden, half-mechanical warrior, Pinocchio, are discovered, wolf hunter Red Hood and giant killer Jack realize the fragile rules of their existence have been shattered. With the help of other powerful Enchanted (the mercenary, Goldilocks [edit FTNH: the character illustration in the gallery is tagged Bear/Goldilox, Bear being her hairy, ogre-like companion] and psychic exterminators, Hansel and Gretel), Jack and Red team up on an adventure to stop whatever, or whoever is destroying their powers and murdering their kind.

Poor Red has had so many makeovers, this version isn't surprising enough on it's own, but teaming her up with the other characters in their various bounty-hunter/killer-for-hire personas there might be something interesting there. Steampunk Pinocchio sounds like he never made it past the introduction but Hansel & Gretel as psychic exterminators? Should be enough like "Fables" to draw some fans in for a 'looksee', yet different enough (very, very dark!) to form a new set too. From the preview (available at the website) this is just so violent and gory, as much as I'm curious to see the steampunk variation, I'll likely be giving this one a miss.

If you're still interested you can find out more about the comic HERE and see more pictures in the gallery tab HERE (including possibly the scariest Pinocchio I've ever seen - yikes!).

Keep Their Fairy Tales Away From Hospital

Here's a Romanian ad campaign for a recent charity ball (August 28th, 2009) for the Steps Towards Life Foundation. The English translation on the posters you see here was released this last week (mid-September 2009).The charity ball was run by "La Motoare" Club.

Here's the TV ad (In Romanian, but it's clearly part of the same campaign with some storytelling at the beginning).

The ad shows the phrase: "Ține poveștile copilăriei departe de spital." It translates (very roughly) as "(Keep) youngster story children (?) out from hospital":



You can see the ads full size HERE.

"Ash and Ember" & "The Irrelevant Redemption" by Binary Winter Press

Writer/designer Sheatiel Sarao and illustrator Cody Vrosh combined forces to form Binary Winter Press and have just returned from ComiCon where they were spreading the word about their new illustrated book "Ash and Ember".From the website:

Futuristic fables and storybook dissent: Snow White leads a synesthestic revolution. A homicidal pyromaniac Goldilocks stalks the Three Bears. Rapunzel driven slowly mad by the isolation of space station life. Follow our tales out of the woods and into the fire.

They have another fairy tale based book too: "The Irrelevant Redemption: A Steampunk Fairytale". From their WEBSITE:

A cyborg, coming of age fable, a post-human Pinocchio meets Alice in an apocalyptic Wonderland story.

You can read an excerpts of their books on their WEBSITE and see more images in their galleries. There's a BLOG so you can keep up with their latest endeavors and you can check out their t-shirts in their ETSY shop too. There is a definite cyberpunk feel to this collection though you'll also see influences of art nouveau, steampunk and, very likely, robots.

Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer

This is awesome! (Joins the "Why didn't I think of that idea?" club)

Coming in September is a new comic book written by Van Jensen in collaboration with artist and creator Dustin Higgins, titled "Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer".

It's the story of what happens after vampires kill Gepetto and the little wooden boy swears revenge. Armed with a pack of lies and his ever-growing nose, he ends up being humanity’s last hope against enslavement by the monsters.

In a very interesting interview with Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources Van discusses how Carlo Collodi's original story provided a lot of the fodder for the characters and situations.

From the interview:

Van: There’s very little [about the original Collodi story] that isn’t compelling. It starts out, “There was once upon a time a piece of wood…” It’s just such a strange, funny story. Like most fairy tales of that era, it was later stripped down and recast as a simple moral lesson, and it lost all of its weirdness and texture. And Collodi’s Pinocchio is kind of a rotten kid, which also is a lot of fun.

Van answering "Will we see other characters from Collodi in the book?": The fairy is a major character in the story, as magic plays a big role. No Monstro. I think he’s just a giant nameless fish in the original. And the cricket also plays a big role, though he also doesn’t have a name. His character is a great example of Disney’s changes. Collodi actually has Pinocchio smash the cricket and kill him, and then the cricket’s ghost later returns as a friend. And our version continues that, so we have a ghost cricket floating around and offering Pinocchio advice. To me, that’s way more interesting.

You can find the rest of the interview, which discusses Collodi's story, Van's research and process and how he found his way to SLG Publishing, HERE. And yes, if it sells well there are already plans for books two and three.

Below is a trailer to give you a taste, though the full page preview at the bottom of the page HERE gives you a better sense of how the story develops. I recommend you check it out.

Steampunk Fairy Tales - Part III of III

Here's the final post of 'steampunk-ing' fairy tales illustrations I've been showing you this week. You can find Part I, posted 7/12/09, HERE (with introduction) and Part II, posted 7/14/09, HERE.

Again, you can click on the images to see a larger version (highly recommended), while the links to the artists are in the title and name above each piece.

SLEEPING BEAUTY by ANTONIO CAPARO

THE PRINCESS AND THE NIGHTINGALE by MAURICIO DAL FABBRO
(after The Emperor & the Nightingale)

STROMBOLI'S CATCH by LIOR ARDITI

CHESHIRE ADVICE by ERIC CLAEYS

I'm including one more which, while not rendered in the same fashion as the others, still has real charm and explores an interesting concept for "The Little Match Girl" (you'll see what I mean when you click on the pic to have a closer look).

THE LIL' LAMP GIRL by MAX ARKES

That concludes my pick of steampunk fairy tale illustrations on the web to date. I do hope to see more artists exploring fairy tales this way in future. If I find any you can be sure I'll post them too.

Steampunk Fairy Tales - Part I of III

CINDERELLA'S COACH CONCEPT by GORO

Halfway into jotting down my myriad ideas for a new fairy tale retelling, I realized the genre it fit perfectly was: Steampunk.

Gulp!

How can I possibly write steampunk? Don't you have to be part genius to handle everything from the Victorian language and sensibilities, combined with all that technical mechanization and steam technology? Then I realized many fairy tales are actually well suited to the genre and that means I'm already well on the road. It also explains why the ideas just kept coming and fell into place.

I knew there was a contest by CGSociety called "Steampunk: Myths & Legends" (which included fairy tales) toward the end of last year, with the contest winners announced in late February. (You can find all the contest entries HERE) I remember loving the few entries I saw and thought I'd post some to show you just how fun this idea can be. In further Googling, I found even more 'steampunk-ing' of fairy tales, not limited to the competition.

I thought I'd collect my favorites for you into a few different posts and link you to the creators. You can click on the images to see a larger version (which I highly recommend). The artist can be found be clicking on the title/artist note above each one.

So here's 'Part I' of Steampunk Fairy Tales.

Enjoy!

STEAMNOCCHIO by FABRICIO MORAES

STEAMPUNKED CINDERELLA by GORO

BAKTOFAIRY by LAURENT PIERLOT

ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN STEAMLAND by GUILLAUME DUBOIS

Parts II & III are coming later in the week (Tuesday and Thursday).