The Scent!

Hunter or Hunted?

The road to the comic HUNT has been a long one, but the aim has always been the same, to create something that tells an interesting story about a man with a past and an uncertain future. A man with a life that has been shattered into many fragments and how he passes through each world and the interlink between them. From the first realisation of the character to now has seen some changes but essentially it has been the same story. The story covers many genres, mainly it appears to be a crime/detective story, down and out detective but it has elements of a survival story, a horror story and with a film noir influence in terms of style. 

I have a great love of film from all eras, Hitchcock too Ridley Scott too Tony Kaye too David Lynch. This had a big influence to set the story around a Detective story, the movie "ChinaTown" starring Jack Nicholson was part of it in a big way with its story unravelling drawing Nicholson deeper into the plot and how he deals with this, help me too forge the spiralling concept, this can be said for the David Lynch film "Blue Velvet" probably one of my favourite directors. Blue Velvet is a step into reality more for Lynch. A story beginning with Kyle MacLachlan's character Jeffrey discovering a severed human ear, his intrigue leads him into a world of crime, drugs, kidnapping and murder. A great piece of story telling and one of the most distressing scenes in cinema history. 

David Lynch has been a big influence on me in the last couple of years. His story telling is somewhat masterful in my eyes. With a surrealist eye he uses imagery that most of us wouldn't dare to think of, and this can give a story a whole other element that can draw the viewer/reader in deeper than before. A perfect example of this is found in the David Lynch & Mark Frost television series "Twin Peaks" and the scene that I am speaking off is totally Lynch. The Red Room scene is something else and for a television show is just breath taking and really draws the viewer in with everything, visual, sound, feeling and intrigue, just what did Laura Palmer whisper in Special Agent Dale Cooper's ear, who is the  dancing dwarf? If you have never seen Twin Peaks I'm sure that you are already intrigued.

All these presentations helped to shape the story that had started to come to my mind about four years earlier, with my initial character Shadow Hunter, a Superhero type character with a troubled past, I don't want to go to deep into that as it will give the story away but lets just say that the troubled past is the basis for the Hunt comic book.

In terms of comic books/graphic novels my influences have stayed the same for the last few years. My main influence has always been Vince Locke, another master in my opinion in bring stories to life, even bringing music to life with his images that he produces for the Death Metal band Cannibal Corpse. But it is his work on the graphic novel "A History of Violence" that has made me want to bring this story to life. With my style of working, by that I mean black and white imagery that book really showed me that you can use black and white in an interesting form and you don't need to use colour to bring an image of the page.

The comic has a very traditional layout that really helps make you feel you are following a story, almost like a movie rather than a comic. A History of Violence was subsequently made into a movie. And has that film noir feel to it also, even in the text that is used. The story again is about masking ones identity. A man has a past in which he got involved with Gangsters at a young age and eventually this lead to him having to leave New York and set up a new life somewhere else, but inevitably his past catches up with him and he must face the consequences of his actions, and his family have to deal with his past life that has been trailed back into existence.


A book that I had came across last year was "Road to Perdition" which was also a feature film, although I hadn't seen it until after I read the graphic novel. Again this has a very strong film noir feel, set in 1930's America the story follows a hit man for the mob who is involved in booze running and other criminal acts, but he has a family and keeps what he does from his children, spotting a theme here? So once again wearing a mask of sorts and living this double life. With circumstances that he becomes involved eventually leading to the death of his wife and young daughter, he and his son must escape his past life and make a new one, but with his old life not far behind it has a survival element to it, with revenge a part of it as well. The artwork is almost realism in some aspects and again you can see exactly why this was made into a motion picture, they really didn't have much to do, but they did it wrong in my opinion this could haves been a great film but they strayed from what made the book great , in the same way that A History of Violence was all there for the taking and they just didn't follow it and tell the story as it was meant to be told, but thats my opinion.