Now, I've been writing genre for as long as I can remember. Fantasy, horror, science fiction, and several mixtures of the two. So, I was kicking around a novel idea and was trying to describe the creature concept in the story to a friend and made the off-hand comment, "well it's not like they're alien zombies or anything..."

And I stopped. And I thought, hmm.... that would be kind of awesome. Alien zombies. Hell, I gotta write that! And suddenly, Netherworld became my obsession. Everything else that I had been writing, planning to write or thinking about writing, got put to the side and I started hammering the keyboard like a mad person. And Netherworld came out in a flourish of alien body parts, political intrigue, human body parts, characters compromising their principle and lots and lots of blood.

Now, I could go on and on about how its cold-war-political undertones are an homage to the classic sci-fi movies from the fifties, or the emotional struggle the main character, Emily, has as a pacifist forced on a mission with a military objective, but Netherworld is really an action-packed gorefest. When I started the project, the first thing I had to do was design the aliens themselves. I knew I didn't want anything humanoid with a bumply forehead. I knew I wanted them to be monstrous and I knew I wanted them on page one. So phase one, design super-cool alien.

And what we did was create some kind of reptilian insect or an insectile reptile (I can't really decide which), treading on three legs with a single, mantis-like claw. Meet the Thanati, an alien species locked in an interstellar Cold War Arms Race with humanity.

I have to thank our concept artist, Peter Lam, because he took my initial, very rough sketch and turned it into something much more terrifying. For those of you keeping score at home, Peter also did the creature design for our book Hybrid.

Next, we hired RB Silva as penciller, and off we went. The story opens on the Thanati Colony world of Erebus on the border of human-controlled space, where we see the aftermath of a terrible accident.

The coloring was particularly tough with this book. Silva has a very polished style, and the inclination was to coloring these in a more traditional comic book style, but I had to keep reminding the colorist that this was, at it's heart, a horror book.

I gave the artist lots of photos of WW2 Europe as reference for the buildings. They had to look alien, yet destroyed. And with this spread we get a better sense of the destruction. The sense of an impending war is something that I wanted serve as an undercurrent of the first issue and I thought it was important to get that right visually.

And in keeping with the eerie mood we turn Silva's art into something more ominous.

With the story ramping up, we shift gears to our human protagonists. And here's where I think Silva really shines. I had to introduce my characters, their situation and their world in the "mission briefing." Essentially I asked him to draw talking heads and make it interesting. He did a great job of capturing those few beats of motion and emotion. And I knew if he could make this sequence interesting, he'd kick butt on the action sequences (and he did, btw).

And using the holographic table as a light source, we were able to give the sequence a more campfire story feel.

And continuing the briefing, Silva finds more little character moments as the abducted research scientists learn that they've been drafted by the highest authority, and the war-mongering colonel is loving it.

And in the finals...Colored.

So, there you have it. A behind-the-scenes look at Netherworld. On page 313 of January Previews! Go now! Order! ;)

Thanks,

Chad Jones -- Studio 407 Editor-In-Chief

Find out more about this comic at Studio 407.

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