Ralph Kruhm
27.09.2002, 06:06
Frisch von The Pulse für die RS-Junkies unter Euch geklaut; Vorsicht, jede Menge Spoiler, aber z.T. markiert...
BY JENNIFER "Red Stars Weaken Superman" CONTINO
I think it was Kate Keller from Sequential Tart who told me I'd love The Red Star. At that point in time, I wasn't so sure. Of course I like alternative histories, and the concepts Christian Gossett and Brad Kayl were presenting sounded interesting, I just didn't know if I was ready for some more "heavy" reading. However as with Finder, Amy Unbounded, and The Waiting Place, I soon learned to trust the advice of Tarts and rely on their recommendations as being top notch.
The Red Star quickly became one of my favorites in terms of story, art, and shock factor. Gossett and Kayl have created a powerful, compelling, and imaginative story that, after just a few pages, becomes an addictive tale. I was surprised earlier in the year when the creators broke from Image and announced they would be working under their own banner. I was even more surprised when it as announced a few months later that they would be the first series published under the CrossGen Entertainment label.
THE PULSE caught up with part of Team Red Star to talk about their recent changes and see what the future might hold for these star crossed creators.
THE PULSE: Define "patriotism" …
Christian Gossett: Patriotism has to do with not accepting the easy answers about what you country is. Not being satisfied with what you’ve been told your country is, but finding out for yourself what your country’s history is. To truly take part in your country’s present (and hopefully future) circumstances. Even in a small way. Like John Lennon said, "Think globally and act locally."
Patriotism means to try and look past the words of today’s politicians and find out what the truth is. In all of time, nation states can be analyzed in a very simple manner: Follow the Money. Who will profit? Who will lose? Forget slogans. Forget flags. Forget what CNN is telling you. Knowing where a nation spends its money tells you everything you need to know about your country. If you know more about your country, you know how best to be a champion of your country, and therefore a true patriot.
Brad Kayl: Patriotism is a love of one’s country despite the idiots that run it.
THE PULSE: How does that definition apply to The Red Star?
GOSSETT: The Heroes of The Red Star have done exactly what we spoke of in the first answer: They have questioned their leadership and have found them to be a den of liars. Not being satisfied with these wolves in sheep’s clothing (who of course consider themselves patriots even as they steal from their own country) our heroes begin a struggle against their leadership. They strike out on their own to truly fight for what they believe their country should stand for.
KAYL: While patriotism does mean love of where one grows up, TRS transcends any story of any one country and really talks about the concept of: "of the people, by the people, for the people," with the term "people" representing all the people of the world. So in that, the heroes of The Red Star realize that their country needs to serve them. And if leaders stand in the way of that servitude, they need to strike out on their own and right the injustices that have crippled their human rights– just as our own leaders once did to right things and give the country and the power back to the people (not that this lasted, mind you, but it was a step in the right direction).
THE PULSE: What inspired you to create RS?
GOSSETT: I began taking notes on what would become The Red Star in April of 1994. What really inspired it was a kind of disbelief about the public’s reaction to the ‘End’ of the Cold War. As if something of that magnitude could just be ‘over’. It was as if the average american just kind of said, "Oh cool! all that world peace stuff will work out now that Communism is dead. Now we can just kind of stop thinking about the rest of the world, and world events, or our place in the global community and let the multinational corporations colonize the planet. Yay!" I thought that a story that fictionalized the Cold War - a story that turned it into a fairy tale or an allegory, might be able to, in some small (okay, Very, Very small) way, do our part to communicate that all world events are in constant transition. Alan Moore’s Dr. Manhattan said it perfectly at the end of Watchmen to Ozymandias: "The End? Nothing ever ends…". So I thought that I could also base it in a fictional Russia namely the United Republics of The Red Star. And through my characters illustrate how all human beings are fighting the same battles all over the world. How we all have to confront our governments in our own mind and hold them responsible for keeping our countries true to the needs of the people.
KAYL: As you can see from Christian’s answer the main architecture was already penned when I came onboard at a Denny's at three a.m. J in North Hollywood (there’s more to this story—but…another time, eh?) We’ve added so much, though, since then, and Chris and I have taken these ideas and moved them forward through time to give them more depth and purpose. Chris created much of the world in a preliminary way—I’ve just added to it for the past several years.
GOSSETT: One of the reasons why Brad so invaluable to me as a writing partner is because he brings so much knowledge of the world’s big events to the table. We share a lot of the same sensibilities regarding story and what we think is cool and fun to read.
THE PULSE: Why Russia?
GOSSETT: They have an amazing history. They helped us win WWII, or as they would say, we helped them win WWII. Our two nations and a healthy serving of Brits (and others, but the Brits get special mention because they are no doubt the most fierce warrior people in our Hemisphere) stood together and crushed Hitler’s Germany. What happens next is an amazing epic tragedy: Both empires, America and Russia, realize that the world is theirs for the taking and the only competition they have is each other. So instead of continuing to work together once they defeated the common foe, they both end up becoming enemies themselves. The rest of the 20th century was defined by that conflict. History is sadly invisible to most people, but in fiction we can hopefully bring it to life.
KAYL: I think Russia is so blatantly demonstrative of what happens when you have an overwhelmingly totalitarian regime move in and dominate the people—so many people. This lesson couldn’t really be so easily realized in any other setting, I think. In our own country, for instance, I think the move to control is much more elusive and quiet. Our leaders don’t so much dominate we the people in such a blatant manner; No, they dominate third world countries as a power base, which are so far removed from our own experience that we don’t cry out against it as much as we should. So, Russia is a demonstration of the lesson that we can illustrate, in a fantasy world, much more easily and effectively.
GOSSETT: Russia in the 20th Century is a great example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is one of the ancient lessons of civilization that the people of any empire need to remember.
KAYL: This "power corrupts" theme is not only one of the most profound lessons of the ancients, it is also therefore a great theme in all epic fiction. Even in the first chapters of the Star Wars novel (Episode 4, of course) it talks about how The Great Republic became so powerful that no foreign enemy could defeat it, "But like a great tree, it rotted from within." (paraphrase! J ) We feel the strongest fiction is inspired by real events and real human truth. Even though our characters display amazing power, on a superheroic scale, their struggles are still just metaphors for actual human problems.
GOSSETT: Good point. We try to make our character’s powers reflect actual human abilities—we just add special effects. Humans are amazing creatures. We don’t give ourselves enough credit.
THE PULSE: Speaking of lessons to learn HOW, how did 9 – 11 affect the way you create comics?
GOSSETT: It proved to us that we weren’t crazy to have done all that research over the past eight years, learning everything we can about this very violent planet we live on and basing our work on truth and culture instead of tights and capes.
I know it’s easy to drink in the infinite sweetened comforts that the modern world supplies for us twenty-four hours a day. But it is our responsibility as citizens in the most powerful nation on earth to be awake to the mighty international powers that are clashing as we sleep in the bliss of endless advertising and superficial entertainment. Otherwise we won’t know what we had until it’s gone.
KAYL: Actually, we couldn’t work at all. We tried, and there this valiant effort toward creating…something, but nothing came and we ended up meeting with our friends from Violent Messiahs and having a gathering of mutual support.
GOSSETT: Nothing got done that day. My parents and I were all born in New York City, so it was tough to see the hometown take a hit. What can be said about the anger? All you want is to see those who are truly responsible brought to a brutal justice.
KAYL: There is much more pervasive psychology involved than you ever would guess, and it’s too horrific to contemplate the details of it all. Suffice it to say, it took a couple of days to refocus and begin working again.
GOSSETT: Our story didn’t change, though. Although we did cut in a quick intro to the American side of The Red Star universe in Issue #9, which we were going to do anyway, just not as soon.
KAYL: Since we were pretty much telling a story that was on a par with world events and world powers clashing, we didn’t need to curb or change any of our content at all to harden or soften it in any way. The thrusts of the story remained the same, and, if anything, it became more poignant because we had been speaking of these things for some time. For example, at the beginning of the book, the story is based in a metaphoric Afghanistan.
GOSSETT: The first four issues of TRS take place in a fictional Afghanistan (Al’Istaan). Soviet forces were defeated there in the ‘80s, and since this was a major turning point in the history of the world we began our saga there. Remember when we said we had discovered the Taliban years ago? That’s because our research we did showed us the link between the Mujahideen that beat the Russians and the modern day Taliban. Another amazing historical fact is that a young Osama Bin Laden was fighting against the soviets with the help and weaponry of the USA. Once again, just like the earlier WWII example, you have a situation where one time allies become hated enemies and one time enemies become allies. The world is a tricky place, full of plot twists that are so intense, a lot of people don’t have the guts to read history. It’s too much for them. Much easier to watch MTV until your brain is numb from advertising and forget the world exists.
THE PULSE: Who is Maya? How does she regard the world around herself?
GOSSETT: Maya is a high-ranking sorceress in the red fleet. In the world of The Red Star, sorcery has been regulated and mastered to the point where people simply accept it as another form of technology. So all the nations of the world of our story train their soldiers to use what we’ve dubbed "Military-Industrial Sorcery". This makes warfare horrifyingly powerful and devastating. She is one of the first to realize that her country has been lying to her. So she, along with her brother in law Urik Antares (commander of the Skyfurnace Konstantinov) and the crew of their skyship stage a mutiny. They steal this flying fortress of war and they embark on a quest that can free their people from the ancient evil they’ve discovered.
KAYL: Maya views the world around her with equal measures of sorrow and contempt for the lies that have been told to her, especially about her husband. So, I think originally motivating her for a good chunk of the first chapter of this long story is a sense of sorrow and a sense of despair. She really does seek to find some way to die, some way to join her husband, Marcus. She’s not brought out of this despair until a strange ghost of her past teaches her otherwise, and teaches her that there really is hope. A little girl named Makita brings her news of her husband, that Marcus is really alive, and she shakes off the despair and turns it into motivating energy to get what needs to be done, done. It really is a remarkable transformation in her.
THE PULSE: What’s the strangest thing that influenced and inspired how you created The Red Star?
GOSSETT: What wasn’t weird? I mean to do a war story based in a fictional Russia is pretty weird. Okay, here is one of the weirdest true stories that inspired a part of The Red Star:
Maya Antares, the sorceress we spoke of earlier, has been told by her government that her husband died ten years ago. At the battle of Kar Dathra’s Gate (Which takes place in the first four issues) However, this isn’t true, Marcus lived. He was taken into the Spiritrealm by the ghost of the Red Woman. The Red Woman is the spirit of her people. To make her a universal figure, she is the Spirit of Redemption, she is a symbol of the eternal human struggle against Totalitarianism and dictatorship. Now, before Marcus enters the spiritrealm, he is told by The Red Woman that he most likely will not ever escape it. So he writes Maya a letter, letting her know what happened to him. Problem: He’s on a battle field four thousand miles away from her. Everyone around him is dead. If the letter is to reach her it will have to go across desert, across thousands of miles, village after village, city after city. It finally reaches her ten years later and Maya is reborn, realizing that all her despair and sorrow cannot serve her life. She becomes awakened again as a person. Now this letter was inspired by a real story…
The real life Russian prison system under Stalin held tens of millions of people over the period of his reign. Thanks to the poor records and official tampering, no one really knows the number that lived and died in what was known as Gulag System. These were literally thousands of prison camps all over Russia. There is no one alive in Russia today whose family escaped doing time in the Gulag.
So many people were imprisoned like this (most of them without a real trial) it was commonly known that many never got a chance to say goodbye when they were sent off to prison. Many of them would be thrown on trains and taken thousands of miles east to Siberia or elsewhere, often times never to be seen again. They would write letters on the trains, because this was their only chance to reach their loved ones and let them know that they haven’t deserted them. We’re talking no paper, no pens, unless you were smart enough to somehow grab one from the courthouse or your cell… the letters were written in charcoal, the letters were written in blood, in whatever would make a mark on the paper. Sometimes they were as simple as a name, a goodbye and an address where someone might find the family. It was known throughout Russia that if you found one of these letters you did whatever you could to get letter to the family. Sometimes the letters took months, some took years, some decades. Most often the letters never got there. That letter inspired the story of Marcus’ letter to Maya. I first read about those letters in the famous series by Alexander Solzhenitsyn titled "Gulag Archipelago". These are Solzhenitsyn’s account of his eight years in the camps. He made it his personal quest to tell as many stories of the Gulag as he could.
KAYL: Troika, the major antagonist at this point, was inspired by the method by which the brutal KGB officers would interrogate their prisoners. Troika, unlike the Red Woman, is a spirit of the totalitarian regime itself, of the control and brutality that this regime represents, whereas the Red Woman is the spirit of liberation, or as Christian said, redemption. So these KGB officers would interrogate their prisoners in a series of three eight-hour shifts, thereby depriving the prisoner of any sleep. Sleep deprivation is one of the most horrible tortures ever realized, and each of the interrogators are only working a single eight-hour shift while the victim is enduring all 24 hours of pain and anguish. The agents that are ‘off duty’ get to rest and this cycle of hell continues to utterly break their victims. Troika, the unholy trinity that he is, was inspired by this torture method of the KGB.
SPOILER WARNING
The villain troika is:
a.Not defeated, and b.He can split into three identical versions of himself that are chained together with the souls of those he has defeated or harvested. He can divide himself in this manner to become a even greater adversary, and we will show him do this soon.
This reflects even more grossly the metaphor.
GOSSETT: In life Troika was made up of a team of three interrogators who through sorcery bound themselves in this powerful suit of armor so they could gain immortality unfortunately for his victims it was to torture for immortality.
KAYL: There will actually be an upcoming little miniseries that focuses on Troika’s origin story.
GOSSETT: There's a clue to the triple nature of Troika in that when we first see him appear he always speaks in sets of three balloons and that’s actually each one of the three souls trapped within him speaking individually. It’s one of those times when you’re being so subtle that no one gets it but you. J
THE PULSE: Why join CGE?
GOSSETT: They were the most exciting people we’d met in comics. And they had a really positive vision for what comics could be. A really limitless vision for comics. In a time when it seemed like so many people were writing comics off.
KAYL: We joined because I think we share a common vision for new books, telling new stories in new ways. There’s a definite presence of the old guard, which must to be recognized for what they have created, but I think there is room for things that are new and vital—this is where CGE comes in. Because of this similar vision, we thought that we fit pretty well with what they were doing and wanted to go with them. As an aside, they’re also really wonderful people on an individual level. If they weren’t that, we probably wouldn’t have gone with them.
GOSSETT: It’s true. As great as it is to be working with them, and with all of the advantages CGE offers, if they weren’t just some of the coolest, most excited, most honest people we’d met in comics we probably wouldn’t be working with them. It means more to us that they’re so fun to hang around with. J
THE PULSE: Where does this version of TRS begin?
GOSSETT: Volume Two of The Red Star begins with a really cool chase. Our heroes on board the Konstantinov know Marcus is alive and are going to find him. They’ve learned, thanks to the Red Woman, that Marcus holds the key to a better future for their nation and their people. They are running a gauntlet as the forces of the old regime try to destroy them. So we ‘re right in the middle of some great action sequences that Brad and I have been waiting to unleash for like four years.
THE PULSE: Why should new readers check this out?
GOSSETT: Because in an industry of multi-million dollar companies with hundreds of employees and established characters that have been around for almost a hundred years, a group of high school friends got together, pitched in their life savings and belief in each other, and are working hard every day to see if they can make a dream come true. If you believe in that kind of friendship against all odds, and in doing battle with the impossible, then we’re writing a story that we think you’ll enjoy.
BY JENNIFER "Red Stars Weaken Superman" CONTINO
I think it was Kate Keller from Sequential Tart who told me I'd love The Red Star. At that point in time, I wasn't so sure. Of course I like alternative histories, and the concepts Christian Gossett and Brad Kayl were presenting sounded interesting, I just didn't know if I was ready for some more "heavy" reading. However as with Finder, Amy Unbounded, and The Waiting Place, I soon learned to trust the advice of Tarts and rely on their recommendations as being top notch.
The Red Star quickly became one of my favorites in terms of story, art, and shock factor. Gossett and Kayl have created a powerful, compelling, and imaginative story that, after just a few pages, becomes an addictive tale. I was surprised earlier in the year when the creators broke from Image and announced they would be working under their own banner. I was even more surprised when it as announced a few months later that they would be the first series published under the CrossGen Entertainment label.
THE PULSE caught up with part of Team Red Star to talk about their recent changes and see what the future might hold for these star crossed creators.
THE PULSE: Define "patriotism" …
Christian Gossett: Patriotism has to do with not accepting the easy answers about what you country is. Not being satisfied with what you’ve been told your country is, but finding out for yourself what your country’s history is. To truly take part in your country’s present (and hopefully future) circumstances. Even in a small way. Like John Lennon said, "Think globally and act locally."
Patriotism means to try and look past the words of today’s politicians and find out what the truth is. In all of time, nation states can be analyzed in a very simple manner: Follow the Money. Who will profit? Who will lose? Forget slogans. Forget flags. Forget what CNN is telling you. Knowing where a nation spends its money tells you everything you need to know about your country. If you know more about your country, you know how best to be a champion of your country, and therefore a true patriot.
Brad Kayl: Patriotism is a love of one’s country despite the idiots that run it.
THE PULSE: How does that definition apply to The Red Star?
GOSSETT: The Heroes of The Red Star have done exactly what we spoke of in the first answer: They have questioned their leadership and have found them to be a den of liars. Not being satisfied with these wolves in sheep’s clothing (who of course consider themselves patriots even as they steal from their own country) our heroes begin a struggle against their leadership. They strike out on their own to truly fight for what they believe their country should stand for.
KAYL: While patriotism does mean love of where one grows up, TRS transcends any story of any one country and really talks about the concept of: "of the people, by the people, for the people," with the term "people" representing all the people of the world. So in that, the heroes of The Red Star realize that their country needs to serve them. And if leaders stand in the way of that servitude, they need to strike out on their own and right the injustices that have crippled their human rights– just as our own leaders once did to right things and give the country and the power back to the people (not that this lasted, mind you, but it was a step in the right direction).
THE PULSE: What inspired you to create RS?
GOSSETT: I began taking notes on what would become The Red Star in April of 1994. What really inspired it was a kind of disbelief about the public’s reaction to the ‘End’ of the Cold War. As if something of that magnitude could just be ‘over’. It was as if the average american just kind of said, "Oh cool! all that world peace stuff will work out now that Communism is dead. Now we can just kind of stop thinking about the rest of the world, and world events, or our place in the global community and let the multinational corporations colonize the planet. Yay!" I thought that a story that fictionalized the Cold War - a story that turned it into a fairy tale or an allegory, might be able to, in some small (okay, Very, Very small) way, do our part to communicate that all world events are in constant transition. Alan Moore’s Dr. Manhattan said it perfectly at the end of Watchmen to Ozymandias: "The End? Nothing ever ends…". So I thought that I could also base it in a fictional Russia namely the United Republics of The Red Star. And through my characters illustrate how all human beings are fighting the same battles all over the world. How we all have to confront our governments in our own mind and hold them responsible for keeping our countries true to the needs of the people.
KAYL: As you can see from Christian’s answer the main architecture was already penned when I came onboard at a Denny's at three a.m. J in North Hollywood (there’s more to this story—but…another time, eh?) We’ve added so much, though, since then, and Chris and I have taken these ideas and moved them forward through time to give them more depth and purpose. Chris created much of the world in a preliminary way—I’ve just added to it for the past several years.
GOSSETT: One of the reasons why Brad so invaluable to me as a writing partner is because he brings so much knowledge of the world’s big events to the table. We share a lot of the same sensibilities regarding story and what we think is cool and fun to read.
THE PULSE: Why Russia?
GOSSETT: They have an amazing history. They helped us win WWII, or as they would say, we helped them win WWII. Our two nations and a healthy serving of Brits (and others, but the Brits get special mention because they are no doubt the most fierce warrior people in our Hemisphere) stood together and crushed Hitler’s Germany. What happens next is an amazing epic tragedy: Both empires, America and Russia, realize that the world is theirs for the taking and the only competition they have is each other. So instead of continuing to work together once they defeated the common foe, they both end up becoming enemies themselves. The rest of the 20th century was defined by that conflict. History is sadly invisible to most people, but in fiction we can hopefully bring it to life.
KAYL: I think Russia is so blatantly demonstrative of what happens when you have an overwhelmingly totalitarian regime move in and dominate the people—so many people. This lesson couldn’t really be so easily realized in any other setting, I think. In our own country, for instance, I think the move to control is much more elusive and quiet. Our leaders don’t so much dominate we the people in such a blatant manner; No, they dominate third world countries as a power base, which are so far removed from our own experience that we don’t cry out against it as much as we should. So, Russia is a demonstration of the lesson that we can illustrate, in a fantasy world, much more easily and effectively.
GOSSETT: Russia in the 20th Century is a great example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is one of the ancient lessons of civilization that the people of any empire need to remember.
KAYL: This "power corrupts" theme is not only one of the most profound lessons of the ancients, it is also therefore a great theme in all epic fiction. Even in the first chapters of the Star Wars novel (Episode 4, of course) it talks about how The Great Republic became so powerful that no foreign enemy could defeat it, "But like a great tree, it rotted from within." (paraphrase! J ) We feel the strongest fiction is inspired by real events and real human truth. Even though our characters display amazing power, on a superheroic scale, their struggles are still just metaphors for actual human problems.
GOSSETT: Good point. We try to make our character’s powers reflect actual human abilities—we just add special effects. Humans are amazing creatures. We don’t give ourselves enough credit.
THE PULSE: Speaking of lessons to learn HOW, how did 9 – 11 affect the way you create comics?
GOSSETT: It proved to us that we weren’t crazy to have done all that research over the past eight years, learning everything we can about this very violent planet we live on and basing our work on truth and culture instead of tights and capes.
I know it’s easy to drink in the infinite sweetened comforts that the modern world supplies for us twenty-four hours a day. But it is our responsibility as citizens in the most powerful nation on earth to be awake to the mighty international powers that are clashing as we sleep in the bliss of endless advertising and superficial entertainment. Otherwise we won’t know what we had until it’s gone.
KAYL: Actually, we couldn’t work at all. We tried, and there this valiant effort toward creating…something, but nothing came and we ended up meeting with our friends from Violent Messiahs and having a gathering of mutual support.
GOSSETT: Nothing got done that day. My parents and I were all born in New York City, so it was tough to see the hometown take a hit. What can be said about the anger? All you want is to see those who are truly responsible brought to a brutal justice.
KAYL: There is much more pervasive psychology involved than you ever would guess, and it’s too horrific to contemplate the details of it all. Suffice it to say, it took a couple of days to refocus and begin working again.
GOSSETT: Our story didn’t change, though. Although we did cut in a quick intro to the American side of The Red Star universe in Issue #9, which we were going to do anyway, just not as soon.
KAYL: Since we were pretty much telling a story that was on a par with world events and world powers clashing, we didn’t need to curb or change any of our content at all to harden or soften it in any way. The thrusts of the story remained the same, and, if anything, it became more poignant because we had been speaking of these things for some time. For example, at the beginning of the book, the story is based in a metaphoric Afghanistan.
GOSSETT: The first four issues of TRS take place in a fictional Afghanistan (Al’Istaan). Soviet forces were defeated there in the ‘80s, and since this was a major turning point in the history of the world we began our saga there. Remember when we said we had discovered the Taliban years ago? That’s because our research we did showed us the link between the Mujahideen that beat the Russians and the modern day Taliban. Another amazing historical fact is that a young Osama Bin Laden was fighting against the soviets with the help and weaponry of the USA. Once again, just like the earlier WWII example, you have a situation where one time allies become hated enemies and one time enemies become allies. The world is a tricky place, full of plot twists that are so intense, a lot of people don’t have the guts to read history. It’s too much for them. Much easier to watch MTV until your brain is numb from advertising and forget the world exists.
THE PULSE: Who is Maya? How does she regard the world around herself?
GOSSETT: Maya is a high-ranking sorceress in the red fleet. In the world of The Red Star, sorcery has been regulated and mastered to the point where people simply accept it as another form of technology. So all the nations of the world of our story train their soldiers to use what we’ve dubbed "Military-Industrial Sorcery". This makes warfare horrifyingly powerful and devastating. She is one of the first to realize that her country has been lying to her. So she, along with her brother in law Urik Antares (commander of the Skyfurnace Konstantinov) and the crew of their skyship stage a mutiny. They steal this flying fortress of war and they embark on a quest that can free their people from the ancient evil they’ve discovered.
KAYL: Maya views the world around her with equal measures of sorrow and contempt for the lies that have been told to her, especially about her husband. So, I think originally motivating her for a good chunk of the first chapter of this long story is a sense of sorrow and a sense of despair. She really does seek to find some way to die, some way to join her husband, Marcus. She’s not brought out of this despair until a strange ghost of her past teaches her otherwise, and teaches her that there really is hope. A little girl named Makita brings her news of her husband, that Marcus is really alive, and she shakes off the despair and turns it into motivating energy to get what needs to be done, done. It really is a remarkable transformation in her.
THE PULSE: What’s the strangest thing that influenced and inspired how you created The Red Star?
GOSSETT: What wasn’t weird? I mean to do a war story based in a fictional Russia is pretty weird. Okay, here is one of the weirdest true stories that inspired a part of The Red Star:
Maya Antares, the sorceress we spoke of earlier, has been told by her government that her husband died ten years ago. At the battle of Kar Dathra’s Gate (Which takes place in the first four issues) However, this isn’t true, Marcus lived. He was taken into the Spiritrealm by the ghost of the Red Woman. The Red Woman is the spirit of her people. To make her a universal figure, she is the Spirit of Redemption, she is a symbol of the eternal human struggle against Totalitarianism and dictatorship. Now, before Marcus enters the spiritrealm, he is told by The Red Woman that he most likely will not ever escape it. So he writes Maya a letter, letting her know what happened to him. Problem: He’s on a battle field four thousand miles away from her. Everyone around him is dead. If the letter is to reach her it will have to go across desert, across thousands of miles, village after village, city after city. It finally reaches her ten years later and Maya is reborn, realizing that all her despair and sorrow cannot serve her life. She becomes awakened again as a person. Now this letter was inspired by a real story…
The real life Russian prison system under Stalin held tens of millions of people over the period of his reign. Thanks to the poor records and official tampering, no one really knows the number that lived and died in what was known as Gulag System. These were literally thousands of prison camps all over Russia. There is no one alive in Russia today whose family escaped doing time in the Gulag.
So many people were imprisoned like this (most of them without a real trial) it was commonly known that many never got a chance to say goodbye when they were sent off to prison. Many of them would be thrown on trains and taken thousands of miles east to Siberia or elsewhere, often times never to be seen again. They would write letters on the trains, because this was their only chance to reach their loved ones and let them know that they haven’t deserted them. We’re talking no paper, no pens, unless you were smart enough to somehow grab one from the courthouse or your cell… the letters were written in charcoal, the letters were written in blood, in whatever would make a mark on the paper. Sometimes they were as simple as a name, a goodbye and an address where someone might find the family. It was known throughout Russia that if you found one of these letters you did whatever you could to get letter to the family. Sometimes the letters took months, some took years, some decades. Most often the letters never got there. That letter inspired the story of Marcus’ letter to Maya. I first read about those letters in the famous series by Alexander Solzhenitsyn titled "Gulag Archipelago". These are Solzhenitsyn’s account of his eight years in the camps. He made it his personal quest to tell as many stories of the Gulag as he could.
KAYL: Troika, the major antagonist at this point, was inspired by the method by which the brutal KGB officers would interrogate their prisoners. Troika, unlike the Red Woman, is a spirit of the totalitarian regime itself, of the control and brutality that this regime represents, whereas the Red Woman is the spirit of liberation, or as Christian said, redemption. So these KGB officers would interrogate their prisoners in a series of three eight-hour shifts, thereby depriving the prisoner of any sleep. Sleep deprivation is one of the most horrible tortures ever realized, and each of the interrogators are only working a single eight-hour shift while the victim is enduring all 24 hours of pain and anguish. The agents that are ‘off duty’ get to rest and this cycle of hell continues to utterly break their victims. Troika, the unholy trinity that he is, was inspired by this torture method of the KGB.
SPOILER WARNING
The villain troika is:
a.Not defeated, and b.He can split into three identical versions of himself that are chained together with the souls of those he has defeated or harvested. He can divide himself in this manner to become a even greater adversary, and we will show him do this soon.
This reflects even more grossly the metaphor.
GOSSETT: In life Troika was made up of a team of three interrogators who through sorcery bound themselves in this powerful suit of armor so they could gain immortality unfortunately for his victims it was to torture for immortality.
KAYL: There will actually be an upcoming little miniseries that focuses on Troika’s origin story.
GOSSETT: There's a clue to the triple nature of Troika in that when we first see him appear he always speaks in sets of three balloons and that’s actually each one of the three souls trapped within him speaking individually. It’s one of those times when you’re being so subtle that no one gets it but you. J
THE PULSE: Why join CGE?
GOSSETT: They were the most exciting people we’d met in comics. And they had a really positive vision for what comics could be. A really limitless vision for comics. In a time when it seemed like so many people were writing comics off.
KAYL: We joined because I think we share a common vision for new books, telling new stories in new ways. There’s a definite presence of the old guard, which must to be recognized for what they have created, but I think there is room for things that are new and vital—this is where CGE comes in. Because of this similar vision, we thought that we fit pretty well with what they were doing and wanted to go with them. As an aside, they’re also really wonderful people on an individual level. If they weren’t that, we probably wouldn’t have gone with them.
GOSSETT: It’s true. As great as it is to be working with them, and with all of the advantages CGE offers, if they weren’t just some of the coolest, most excited, most honest people we’d met in comics we probably wouldn’t be working with them. It means more to us that they’re so fun to hang around with. J
THE PULSE: Where does this version of TRS begin?
GOSSETT: Volume Two of The Red Star begins with a really cool chase. Our heroes on board the Konstantinov know Marcus is alive and are going to find him. They’ve learned, thanks to the Red Woman, that Marcus holds the key to a better future for their nation and their people. They are running a gauntlet as the forces of the old regime try to destroy them. So we ‘re right in the middle of some great action sequences that Brad and I have been waiting to unleash for like four years.
THE PULSE: Why should new readers check this out?
GOSSETT: Because in an industry of multi-million dollar companies with hundreds of employees and established characters that have been around for almost a hundred years, a group of high school friends got together, pitched in their life savings and belief in each other, and are working hard every day to see if they can make a dream come true. If you believe in that kind of friendship against all odds, and in doing battle with the impossible, then we’re writing a story that we think you’ll enjoy.