Here There be Monsters Press is proud to present its first print serial: Eleison ~ the epic battle between good and evil premiered July 14, 2005 at the San Diego Comic Con.

Synopsis: Father Marithé swore poverty, chastity, and obedience, but that wasn’t always so. His new vow: make right what has gone wrong by hunting down 101 demons unleashed on earth by his own disobedience. In a wilderness between native superstition and the supernatural forces of the western world, he has his work cut out for him. Not to mention that rabbit-headed child of his ~ quite the distraction when trying to vanquish evil.

Some Background on this Project: Christmas, 2003. As if it had never occurred to us before, during the annual two week visit home, my brother and I colluded to “make a comic”. I had arrived without a story ~ without even an idea ~ and we commenced to dive in headfirst with no plot, all the wrong materials and media, and a character who was variously referred to as “Pim” and/or “our Lord” due to the unfortunate circumstance of my initial conceptual drawing looking a bit too much like Jesus. The concept was sort of Dances with Wolves meets Solomon Kane.

Needless to say, like almost all of our “let’s make a comic” projects before it, by the end of two weeks we realized that gouache doesn’t do well on cardstock, that what we were calling “Slaine” (say it like you’re talking about the raunchiest heavy metal band ever: Slaine!), still had no title, that I can’t draw (let alone count how many fingers are on the human hand), and that try as we might to just do it “quick and fun” it was neither quick nor fun at times due to the frustration of warping board, bad artwork, and a complete lack of a plotline. At the end of two weeks we had five pages of a comic of which only two were completed and an underpainted “cover” which had necesitated a rather involved photo-shoot of my brother with the Archangel Michael drawn on his back with a Flair pen.

Recovering from all this took a few months. We set aside the project to attend other things, hoping a plot (and a name for the main character) would come. It did.

Easter, 2004. By the time the next big holy day rolled around, we had it all: not only one name for the main character, but two: his Christian name as well as his Indian name (Nimbaabaa Waabooz ~ which means Father Rabbit in the language of the Ojibwe). Everything fell into place: a title (Eleison which means “mercy” in Greek), and lastly, a plot involving the Legion of Decimus Quintilius, Shiloh the rabbit-headed baby, and one hundred other creatures from the depths.

Stay tuned! More good things are coming to those who wait!

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