HELLCRAFT

A page-by-page analysis of HELLCRAFT through the eyes of the writer. The pages discussed on this blog can be found at Ravencroft.ca

[hellcraft]

060

This is it, readers.

We’ve finally reached the end of the HELLCRAFT series as it exists today. It’s been an incredible journey to post it all online and write about it page-by-page, and I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for being a part of it.

If you, like me, can’t stand the thought of HELLCRAFT ending this way, I urge you to take a look at our Kickstarter and pledge any amount to help us reach our goal. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1026913243/hellcraft

Just like last week’s page, this one was very difficult to letter. I wrote too many words! And now that I’ve re-read it with fresh eyes, I have to admit that I am not happy at all with panel 2, where I placed Hank’s line, “please leave” much too high.

It was fun to write the miserable, depressed Hank of the final two pages. Being miserable is such an important part of my own personality that I found it easier to write Hank in this moment than when he is in Hero-mode.

One final shout-out to Greg, for sticking the landing perfectly. 10/10. The final panel has such an eerie-ness that was brought to the table completely by the art.

Thank you all again for reading, and take care.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

059

Hello readers.

Page 59 was a huge pain in the ass to letter. I just want to make sure you all know that.

I suppose throwing that little fact out there makes this blog a good time to talk about the letterer attached to Hellcraft 4 (if we get funded on kickstarter). I’m very excited to be working with DC Hopkins, who I worked with previously on an unreleased project that you may be able to see at Ravencroft.ca soon. The dude is a pro, and he’s been on huge titles including a few of the Star Trek books out by IDW. His lettering is definitely going to elevate Hellcraft 4 to a whole new level, and then add all the experience and growth as an artist that Greg has had since Hellcraft 3, and you know the next issue is going to be BEAUTIFUL. I’m going to have to write my ass off to keep up.

So on Page 59 I had to toss in a lot of expository dialogue, and that’s always a huge concern for me. I worry a lot about pages like these. The goal is to shed enough light that readers aren’t confused or underwhelmed, but to leave as much in the dark as I possibly can. The more that I can leave unsaid, the better.

Hank losing his arm was a huge choice for this series. Before issue 3, I was adamant on keeping every issue self-contained. It was important to me to not tell an overarching story, and just work on making each issue as standalone story that a reader could pop in and out of any time and not feel lost and confused. Needless to say, I threw all of that out the window. I don’t really have any explanation as to why, it’s just something that I had a gut feeling about.

See you next week for the final page of the series as it is.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

058

Hello readers!

I have a very exciting post this week, because I have finally launched the Kickstarter page for the next Hellcraft!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1026913243/hellcraft

Please click the link and check out our page. We’re offering some very cool rewards for some very fair prices.

Honestly, I was so excited about the Kickstarter, and working so hard to promote the thing, that I forgot all about my writer’s blog. This post should have been up yesterday, and for that, I am very sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever missed a day before, and I will endeavor to never miss one again.

So to talk briefly about this week’s page; this week featured a huge cliffhanger. Hank’s arm? For real? What happened to Warren? Why does his face look like that? Well, my friends, there are two pages left in issue 3, in which (some of) your questions will be answered.

If the end of this story has been interesting or exciting for you, please keep that Kickstarter link in mind! The only way you will ever get to read more Hellcraft past the next two pages is if we hit that goal in the next couple weeks.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

057

Hello readers.

This week we’re talking about page 57. Only three pages left in the series as it exists right now. Though I am trying very hard to add another 40 pages.

So in page 57, Hank has finally made it out of the tomb. Mostly. There seems to be a part of him that hasn’t quite cleared the portal.

On the bright side, at least Warren seems to be safe. That means Hank completed his mission and cleared Randolph Carter’s good name.

The second panel of this page features one of the best thumbnail images of Hank. This picture, of him holding his gun and dashing to safety very nearly became the dedicated profile image for all Hellcraft social media accounts. It came down to a choice between that image, and the one we’re currently using, from page 54. The decision was made by weighing horror against action, and horror came out on top.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

056

Hello readers.

This page is a big deal in the Hellcraft lore.

Hank just read the Necronomicon. This is going to have some a serious impact on the state of his mental well-being, and possibly on the well-being of the entire world.

When I devised this issue, I thought that this would be a way to add a significant tool to Hank’s arsenal, that could start to bring him up to par with some of the monsters he’s going up against, but I later realized the significance of a character actually reading this highly forbidden and volatile text.

Now, Hank does have a nearly superhuman tolerance to the mind-shattering Lovecraftian horror that he’s gone toe-to-toe with three times now. A major criticism that I could see being lobbied against the Lovecraftianism of my comic is the lack of mental consequence that the horror has on the protagonist, but I want to be clear that this concept is well-embedded into my brain, and that there are in-world reasons for Hank’s psychic fortitude.

But those reasons are secret.

There is a chance that I may get into the deep, horrible secret of Hank Hellcraft in the fourth issue, so please keep this in mind when I launch the Kickstarter campaign to get that issue funded.

The contents of the Necronomicon on this page are an almost direct lift from HP’s The Dunwich Horror, including the reference to Page 751.

Now that I’m thinking about it, the other line on the page, Warren’s “curse these hellish things”, is also a line straight out of Lovecraft’s work. That line comes from the story that inspired this entire Hellcraft tale, The Statement of Randolph Carter.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

055

Hello readers.

This week on Hellcraft, the negative space of the page is trying to kill our hero. This is the culmination of half a comic’s worth of build up, where the panels have been growing more and more constrained by the page gutters. There’s nowhere left to go for Hank & Warren, the comic itself is reaching out to seize them.

After I had finished Hellcraft 2, Nyarlathotep, one piece of praise I was given was on my use of negative space. I assume that had to do with the page after Hank & Anna spend the night together, and Hank is surrounded by space and made to look small and alone in the middle of the page. Anyway, I took that praise and ran with it. If negative space was something that Greg and I did well together in Hellcraft 2, I could make it the main focus of Hellcraft 3. So I basically made it another character in this issue. The gutter is the villain.

I think that has a very distinct Lovecraftian quality to it. The ‘monster’ that is in this tomb, that is trying to kill the protagonist, is completely unknowable. It’s indescribable, incomprehensible, unnamed and unnameable. The antagonist of this story is more of a feeling than a being. I know what I’m writing doesn’t make any sense, but that’s kind of the point.

A goal that I tried to reach with this story was to create a sense of dread or claustrophobia in the reader. Especially with a physical copy of this issue, I wanted to give the feeling that the pages were shrinking, that the deeper Hank got into this tomb, the less space there was on the page. It was a major experiment for me with the comic as a medium, and I do think that it worked.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

054

Hello readers.

Page 54 of Hellcraft is one of my favourite in the whole series. That third panel is just so beautiful.

Something that I wanted to go for with this series was a Freaky Stories sort of urban myth thing. That’s the reason for the very EC Comics-esque Nyarlathotep plot using electrical signals from human brains, and it’s the reason for an octopus bursting through a woman’s face on this page. Sadly, I don’t think that style is going to come up at all in the next issue.

So now we’re completely caught up on all of Hank’s backstory that I’m going to tell in this issue. We’ve made it through all the numbers listed on that page 52 floor plan. Through this process of blogging and reflecting, I’ve made myself really interested in telling more of the backstory. I’ve had a particular story in mind that dives deep into the history of Hank and his brother for years, and recently Greg (the artist) tweeted about how he has never worked in the war and romance genres of comics, and that tweet got the wheels turning in my brain, and now I desperately want to go back to that point in Hank’s story.

But I can only tell one at a time, and the next on the chopping block is already written, Greg has already begun working on it, and it will be up on Kickstarter in a few weeks. If that is a success, then I can start working on the Hank & James Hellcraft team-up book.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

053

Hello readers.

Page 53! I love this one!

Last week, I mentioned the thought behind this crazy experimental sequence of pages, but I’d like to reiterate all of that again in this week’s blog. Now that it has context, I think it will make a lot more sense.

Page 52 is a floor plan of an apartment, with each room coded by a number, and this week’s page (and next week’s) serve as a legend to that floor plan. Pages 53 and 54 are a sort of walkthrough of Hank’s unexplored backstory.

You can also see in this page the other main experiment I tried with this issue, which is the shrinking panels within the tomb. With the present and the past lined up beside each other, the encroaching darkness grasping for Hank becomes obvious. In the coming weeks, that through-line will come to a climax, and there will be a great blog post for that.

A really quick note about the names introduced on this page:

- I let my girlfriend choose the name of Hank’s wife. She chose Rosina because that is her middle name, and I guess she wanted to be included in the story.

- Hank’s brother James comes from a very good friend of mine. The name seems to fit the era of the comic, and I think is a good pair to their father’s name, Jack.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

052

Hello readers.

Page 52 this week! The beginning of a 3-page experiment, which is one of the favourite sequences I’ve written for Hellcraft. 

The idea behind this sequence was to do a sort of floor plan for an apartment on this first page, then in the following two pages, go through the numbered rooms one by one. You’ll see exactly what I mean next week.This sequence really throws us straight into the high-stakes climax of the issue, so we’re almost there.

It feels like we’re flying through these weeks now, and I’m running very low on Hellcraft content. The Kickstarter campaign is getting closer and closer and I definitely don’t feel ready for it. That should probably worry me more than it does. It’s difficult for me to imagine not getting the funding for Hellcraft 4. Honestly, I don’t know what I would do. Writing comics means so much to me, and so does the future of the Hellcraft series, that I can’t fathom having the definitive moment that says ‘stop writing comics now’, but I need to treat that moment as a distinct possibility that isn’t very far off in my future.

I hope we get funded when the time comes. Can’t stress that enough.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

051

Hello readers.

Last week, I mentioned the page border growing page-by-page, and while I think it’s still a bit too early to explain my motivation for that, this week’s page is a good example of it. Last week’s border could have been mistaken for part of the labyrinth, while it’s clear this week that there is a thick black border around the entire page, growing and trying to dominate the story.

The lettering on this week’s page was an absolute nightmare. I had to struggle very hard to fit all of the text on the page, and I did have to make some unfortunate cuts. One piece of advice I was given on the earlier version of Hellcraft was that the font was too small and could be difficult to read at times, but now that I have increased the font size, I regularly find it difficult to letter some of the more expository pages. Although there are only one or two more pages left in the story that I had difficulty with. Very soon, the art is going to take center-stage as the action-packed climax rolls in.

So this week I finally introduced a concept very important to the Lovecraft mythos, which will remain important to the Hellcraft story moving forward, which is the Necronomicon. I’m sure most people are aware of the legendary book of the dead by now, as it has appeared in countless works of fiction, but many of you may be unaware that HP Lovecraft invented the concept. What a brilliant writer he was to come up with such a word.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

050

Hello readers.

We’re getting dangerously close to the end of the series now. Only 10 weeks (and pages) left in the vault.

As I said in last week’s blog, there will be more Hellcraft in the future, but I’m going to have to kickstart it first. So 10 weeks left until a bit of a break.

This week’s page, 50, is another experiment of mine. It is supposed to be a mirror of two week’s ago, page 48, in which Hank descends a stairway and enters a black pit in the centre of the page.

Now Hank emerges from that same black pit to find an eldritch labyrinth in place of those stairs.

An astute reader may also notice a page border growing more and more ominous as Hank muddles around inside the tomb. It was first introduced on page 46, and has been slowly closing in on our hero page-by-page. I’ll definitely be writing more on that border in the coming weeks. I don’t want to give away too much today.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

049

Happy New Year!

2018 is finally upon us, and I’m going to strive to make this a big year for Hellcraft. I’d like to take this week’s blog to do a quick breakdown of what I have planned for the series this year.

First, I’m obviously going to continue posting weekly pages every Monday to Ravencroft.ca and to Webtoons. This week was page 49, and I have 50-60 ready to go. That should last until the middle of March.

After page 60 goes up, I’m going to have to launch a kickstarter to try to get some help for the rest of the series. Unfortunately, I can’t continue to create Hellcraft without financial assistance from the fans. Writing the series is something that I love to do, but it’s not feasible to keep it up without help. So in March, I’m going to turn to all of you for help! I’m working on writing the next story now, and starting to piece together idea for kickstarter goals and rewards.

Hellcraft 4 is going to be a double-sized edition. 40 pages of Lovecraftian Horror for Hank to deal with. One reward for the kickstarter will definitely be a full collected edition of all 100 pages of Hellcraft.

Meanwhile, on the website, between page 60 and the time it takes to run the kickstarter and get the pages ready, I’m going to continue posting weekly comic pages. I have a few pages of a completely different series to post in the interim, and I am very excited to share these with you. I think that the new series will be very successful, and I’ll share more details on that project in the weeks leading up to its release.

Here’s to a great 2018

- JPF

[hellcraft]

048

Merry Christmas, readers!

I hope you’ve all had a happy and safe Holiday season, and are enjoying a week full of family and turkey before the New Year rolls around.

Today I’m talking about another experimental page of Hellcraft, where he walks around the page and into the center. This page is meant to match another that will come up in a few weeks, and I’ll discuss how and why when that week comes.

I realize now, looking back on this page, that there is a missed opportunity for me to add more lettering, and to twist the balloons along with the path Hank takes down the stairs, so reading it could create a slight dizzying effect, akin to what Hank would be feeling in this page. I’m having trouble finding the words to describe what I mean, but perhaps I’ll just use that idea in a later Hellcraft page, and you’ll understand what I mean at that time.

Oh well. This is all a learning process for me, and now I’m giving myself ideas to improve my craft. Taking the time to self reflect on my writing and blog about it is turning out to be a rewarding experience.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

047

Hello readers.

This week Hank ventures deeper into the tomb. For once, I’m actually very happy with my lettering on this page. Especially in the third panel. It took a ton of work, but I spaced the text block into what I think is the perfect shape for a bubble. And using squares for Harley Warren’s lines rather than bubbles makes my job so much easier.

I’m also really happy with the work Greg did on these tomb interior pages. The setting does some entirely alien, and as Lovecraft would describe it, ‘non-Euclidean’, which is just a fancy way to say ‘there’s not really straight lines’.

Greg also did a neat thing with the paneling on this page, where the first and third tiers are sort of mirrored, and the boldness of the borders fades away. I think it adds to this feeling of other-worldliness, where the panels, and therefore time, lose structure and begin to blend together.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

046

Hello readers.

This week’s blog post will be a very short one, as I don’t have very much to say about this page. It seems to be that way for every splash page I post, which makes a lot of sense, considering these pages are all art and very little writing.

In this page, Hank enters the tomb. I don’t remember exactly what I put in the script for Greg to draw here, but it was something akin to ‘draw whatever you want’, and I was very happy with the results.

Greg captured the essence of the story with this page, as he manages to do with each cover. I find that surrendering control of the page to the artist produces incredible results. Though I suppose that would depend on the artist. I’m lucky to be working with Greg.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

045

Hello readers.

This week’s page of Hellcraft is the first of many experimental pages to follow. After making the first two issues, Sushi Dinner and Nyarlathotep, and having to decide whether or not to push on with the series, I spent a lot of time thinking about the comic book as a medium. I asked myself questions like why tell a story as a comic? and what can a comic book do that any other medium can’t do?

The answers that I came up with fueled the third Hellcraft story. I told myself that if I was going to make a third comic, I would go all out with the format and experiment with pages in a way that I couldn’t do with another method of storytelling.

That experimentation really begins here on page 45. We see Hank descend through the page, and naturally our eyes follow him as he leads us through the page in a direction that would normally not make sense for the reader. This page is broken into three tiers, and the middle tier reads the opposite way than the other two.

To put that into context, imagine yourself sitting at home reading a book. You come to a paragraph that has three lines, and the second line is written backwards, it starts on the right and ends on the left. It wouldn’t make any sense to a reader. But in a comic book, in a story told through still images, it make perfect sense. In fact, I’d bet many readers didn’t even notice that the direction was reversed (twice) while going through this page.

- JPF

[hellcraft]

044

Hello readers.

This week’s page features one of my favourite panels of the entire series. I think the close up on Randolph Carter in panel 1 is brilliant art by Greg. It captures the character so perfectly.

I’m also a huge fan of panel 5. The encompassing darkness of the panel stands out like a sore thumb when you take in the page as a whole, and it adds a weight to the bottom of the page that (when printed as a physical copy) drives the reader onward to the next page.

When I decided to re-script the entire Hellcraft series and post it one page at a time on the internet, my friend and colleague, Michael, who helps to run the website, gave me the advice that I needed to increase the font size on issues 2 and 3. So I did that, I pushed the font size up to match what I used for issue 1, and re-scripting the past few pages has been a massive headache because of that.

So much of the script that I loved from my earlier version is now aggravating to make fit in the same panels, while trying to keep the overall flow of the lettering intact. Just from a quick glance, it’s easy to see that I had trouble lettering panel 3.

That’s all for this page, I’ll see you again next week, when Hank enters the tomb! Sort of. When the party nears the tomb!

- JPF