XOTH! The unspeakable city

I think I finally recovered from the shock of finishing the comic. That is why I bring you a big Grande blog entry on my comic: “XOTH! – the unspeakable city”. Let me give you some facts first: it’s a full color hardcover book with 80 pages of content, 66 of these pages are my comic and I have a foreword by comic journalist Noah Berlatsky. I worked about one year on the comic, with bigger and smaller breaks, between 6-10 hours/ page (depending on the complexity of it).



The story behind the comic
The story BEHIND the comic: In 2006 I found a book in a NYC comic book store called “The Art of HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos”. Being a fan of the American horror author Lovecraft, I was very interested in the possibilities of visualization of his horrific, unspeakable monsters, ancient cities and impossible artifacts etc. I decided to make a comic interpretation of Lovecraft, and, to make a perfect concept, I decided to write a diploma thesis on him. This thesis not only dealt with the theoretical background of Lovecraft’s life, his work and his impact on popular culture, but also included a practical part where I developed the alien city of XOTH and its inhabitants.

The world
Xoth is an incredible big city on an unknown planet in an unknown galaxy in an unknown dimension. Its organic sandstone buildings, cyclopean towers and ancient underground empires spread in all directions of the planet’s surface. The inhabitants of this city are not less impressive: Tentacly spawn of Cthulhu, fishy deep ones, squishy Shoggots, scary formless clouds, gods of chaos, and of course: the rulers of the city, the Great Old Ones.

The Story
This is the world Jacop O’ Damsel ( at the beginning of the story an earth inhabitant who never even could dream about a city like Xoth) gets pulled into. A gigantic, glowing space monster takes him with it, and he wakes up surrounded by strangeness. There are the deep ones, strange fishy creatures, who worship humans in their “Ordus Humanus”, a counter religion to the religion of the “Great Old ones”, and they want Jacop! He escapes, being chased by horny fish, assassinators of Cthlhu and other life threatening thingies. He gets help from one of the daughters of Shub-Niggurath, the Dark Goat. Yen is her name, and she thinks Jacop is cute. Good thing, because that why he stays alive in the first place. And so the two of them try to find out why Jacop is here and who is behind the Ordus Humanus – the mysterious creature in the dark!








When
Xoth! Will be published at the end of October at publisher Zwerchefell. It will also be available on Amazon. I will try to have a release party in Graz in November. Also, I will be at the Frankfurter Buchmesse this year for the first release party. Within the next months, I also plan to put a page online for the comic.

Well, that’s it so far. I guess I will work on the second part now…..or will I…. Tantantaaaan!