ABOUT HOPELESS

Welcome to Hopeless,

A small island off the coast of Maine.

meeting colour

Trapped on an island off the coast of Maine, the people of Hopeless find life a little darker and more dangerous with every day that passes. The number of orphans rises continually, but who can say what happens to their parents? Plenty of the bodies are never found. This is not the stuff of happy, careless childhoods, it is instead fertile ground for personal demons. In Hopless, the demons are not always abstract concepts. Some of them have very real teeth, and very real horns.

Our island has been isolated for a long time. Partly because of being small, and forgotten. Partly because of the rocks and currents which do not encourage visitors. Hopeless is also surrounded by fog, overrun with nightmarish creatures, (from small things with tentacles to demons and vampires) it’s a peculiar place. Here, almost anything can happen, from the weird and unsettling to the darkly funny. With a cast of freaks, nutters and the odd power crazed psychopath, life in Hopeless is seldom dull.

That’s the surface of the story. It’s also about who you choose to be. The tale is a protest against apathy, and against the small evils that everyone takes for granted. The worst monsters frequently aren’t the ones with the obvious teeth, who are merely dangerous by nature, but the apparently ordinary people who choose to do hideous things.

The Blind Fisherman – is a tale which started life as a series of pictures and later had words attached to it. It’s a small story arc, and not quite traditional comic form. There are sea monsters, demented occultists, and other strangeness. The fisherman himself is not completely blind, but finds that his eyes are of no help when dealing with the sea. He trusts to instinct and what the waves tell him, hunting where others would fear to venture. A child of fishing folk long since claimed by the waves, he lives away from the island’s one town. The reason he has lived this long is that the sea is in love with him, just as he is in love with her.

Personal Demons  is more like a conventional comic in terms of structure and layout. It begins with the witch Annamarie Nightshade visiting a gothic house, and finding an abaondonned child. Annamarie takes the girl home with her, but Salamandra’s display of wild magic convinces her they won’t be living together. Instead, Salamandra is sent to the Pallid Rock Orphanage, where she does not fit in and is not happy. Rather than accept her circumstances, she runs away. Meeting an odd, beribbonned girl, Sal sees her new friend’s hideout, and then visits her own home. There, she has a run in with a demon. The girls attempt to leave the island, and fail. Salamandra is found by Frampton Jones, and returned to the orphanage, where she learns that her sneaking out may have contributed to the death of Miss Calder.

 Pages for this will be added each week.