WesterNoir ... a great start.

A while ago Andy Bloor asked me to write something for him to draw that didn't involve Werewolves in suits, as he wanted a break from The Wolfmen. His idea was maybe to do a kind of Film Noir take on the Old West. A great concept and as with The Wolfmen the idea of blending genres started my mind racing off in all sorts of directions.


Over the following months I produced a script for him that introduces Josiah Black to a world that changes around him, or maybe he changes within it. But I'm getting ahead of myself as that dimension is something that was brought to the story by Gary Crutchley.

Andy, you see, whilst helping shape the story, just couldn't found the time to illustrate it and contacted Gary to see if he could. Gary is two thirds of his way through his own Western, Hard Country, and is a huge fan of the genre and someone who can really capture the mood of both the time in which it's set and the land itself.


The great news is that Gary read the script and jumped into designing the main characters.


We were off and ... riding.


Last Friday night Colin and I met with Gary at The Bleeding Wolf pub, and you can't get much more appropriate than that, to discuss the project and to see Gary's work to date. Andy sadly couldn't make it as he's suffering from a bug, the joy of having kids are pre-school.

Blimey. We were both blown away by the pages Gary talked us through, as well as his ideas about issue 1 and future issues. All great ideas which I have already added to the greater story of Josiah Black.
We are hoping for Issue 1 to be available early next year, with following issues less than a year apart.