The MAKING of a NEW HACK/SLASH character!
by: Tim Seeley
So, I should be drinking glass after glass of water to nurse my hangover, while watching HOW DO I LOOK on the fashion channel right now, but instead, I'm here to give you guys a behind the scenes tour of THE MAKING OF A NEW HACK/SLASH character! Woot! Are you tingling in the pants yet?
Hack/Slash issue 19 introduces SAMHAIN, a new slasher..or is he? Yeah, that's kinda what we'll be playing with in SAM's case..he looks like a slasher, and can take damage like Jason Voorhees, but he appears to be on Cassie's side. Not only that, but he seems to be helping her against a whole new threat, The Black Lamp Society!
The truth is though, SAMHAIN didn't begin life as a Hack/Slash character! He actually started as a superhero, and the evil Black Lamp Society actually began as Sam's team.
Every week, the denizen's of Chicago's underground comic artist society rise out of the sewers and dungeons and meet at a bar for a beer or nine, to draw...for fun.
Samhain came about one night when Mike Norton's sketch of a very Steve Ditko-esque superhero gave me inspiration. So, I started doodling my own design for a sort of swinging, Creeper-like superhero..a masked, back alley type vigilante.
I had just started drawing the HALLOWEEN comic for DDP at the time, and the name SAMHAIN was sort of in my head. It seemed like a good name for a guy with a Halloween pumpkin head. so, I went with it.
As often happens with me, I'll get REALLY excited about a new idea or charcter, and begin listing stories, and personality traits...not always even really being sure what I'm going to DO with the character. At some point in Sam's story, I wrote the name BLACK LAMP SOCIETY. Something about that just stuck in my brain. So, while I should have been paying attention to my fiancee or shaving, I was plotting the stories of this Samhain guy, and his team of kooky, horror themed Superheroes, THE BLACK LAMP SOCIETY. I came up with a few more members; The Gripper, The Perfect Ten, Rebel Angel, and Sabbath. I wrote a backstory, playing the team as a sort of late night superheores in Chicago who responded to that lighting of a black colored lamp that only they could see.
And then I forgot about them.
Okay, well, maybe not FORGOT. But i moved on to some other stuff, and started working on a teen-sex comedy comic, and a bunch of other stuff that only I would want to read.
Then, while setting up what would be the fallout of the RE-ANIMATOR x-over in Hack/Slash, I came up with the idea of having a slasher-worshipping cult that isn't too happy with Cassie killing off their messiahs. I was trying to think of a good name, and the Church of Stabbin' just wasn't cutting it. But, on a flip through my sketchbook, I came across Samhain, and then a WHOLE SHITLOAD of ideas came at once.
So, the BLS became the cult instead of a superhero team. And Samhain, instead of a wise-cracking superhero, became a side-switching slasher who may or may not be a good guy. Gripper and the rest of the team didn't make the transition to Hack/Slash, but I'm sure I'll recycle their spandexed asses somewhere else.
So, there ya go..there's Sam in all his glory is issue 19 as drawn by guest artist Kevin Mellon, and colored by Mark Englert. Sam appears again in 20, in a really fucked up story that I'm pretty proud of. I hope you guys like him, and the new storylines he bring with him to Hack/Slash. At the very least, reading this has probably taught you a few things, not the least of which is this "Comic artists are like kids with ADHD who just drank four cans of Monster energy drink."
More on Tim at his website: www.TimSeeley.com.
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