Witches' Quarter
‘Sup dawg,
Don’t mind me, just here to promote…
A brand spanking new title five years in the making!
As avets start creeping in through the Witches’ Quarter, its protector must rise to the occasion and stop them from invading the human world!
I’ve been itching to do this title since 2014. It all started as a weekly online challenge on Twitter, and one faithful November week the theme was “witches”, so I gave zero thought and scribbled this piece right here:
I liked the character so much that I started working on an outline for a comic, but my work on Ibrahim Coyle took all of my attention from it, so I put it on the back burner for the time being. I was finishing up the Jaded Town in august of 2016 and decided to take a break from Coyle. It didn’t take me long to find out to realize that I was itching to do something. I had plans for The Golden Road, but I wasn’t there yet, since I was burned out on that title in particular, but if something else would pop up…
and
I decided to do a combo between Inktober and Drawloween on Instagram and try to make a comic out of it, so it came naturally to me that I should use that little witch whose concept art was hanging over my monitor for the past year or so. I did the whole thing and shelved it until I had the right opportunity to publish it. Later that year, in December, the kids from my workshop and I started a fanzine called STRAVA (Serbian: СТРАВА) and posted it on our Facebook page. They liked it, so we decided to do a zero issue with our previous work and have it be a limited print exclusive, as well as issue two which would come out both in print and digitally, so I’ve put the story “Pandora” in it.
cover by: Stefan Krunić
Here are a few pages from it:
I’ve never gotten to translating it, even though it was supposed to be a pilot for a potential serialization. I’ve even referenced it in Coyle a few times.
In the original Serbian version of the short story “Adieu”, it is flat out said that Bono ended up in the Witches’ Quarter. I opted not to reference it in the English version, because at that point I was developing the concept and wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be public knowledge (canonically that is). Later, when I decided that I can go weird with it, I flat out wrote it on a street sign.
Even though I had a solid outline for the story, It was very similar to Coyle's, setting vise, as it was the same old tired hired gun trope, only in a horror/fantasy genre. I started workshopping with various people, but a lot of it went nowhere. I needed some time to reassess everything, and as soon it got to me what could make it unique, I wrote a completely new outline and started doing the layouts.
You can read it in this month’s issue of STRAVA both in:
The plan is to have it there on a regular monthly schedule, and have a separate version on, probably, Tapas. Don’t quote me on that one, a lot could happen. Speaking of witch… (heh)
SPIRAL HIGHWAY NEWS
You can read Spiral Highway now in multiple formats - US, manga, and webtoon! It would mean a lot to me if you would engage with the Manga Plus Creators version in any way possible (liking, sharing, even just flipping through).
Thanks!
- Filip