Genre Crossovers With The Spider King – A Seven Page Preview

Josh Vann writes for Bleeding Cool. 

My name is Josh Vann, and I'm a writer from Melbourne Australia. I'm currently working on the graphic novel 'The Spider King'. I'm pretty excited about the project, and when you hear about it, I think you will be too.

Simply put: The Spider King is:

And why shouldn't Vikings fight aliens? If you take a look at the fictional history of the earth, the majority of alien invasions occur during the modern era, or in the near future. Which means there are thousands of years worth of alien invasion stories that need telling.

'The Spider King' is one of those stories. Because, by God I love a good genre crossover. It could be as simple as The Jetsons visiting the Flintstones, or Cowboy Charles Bronson fighting Samurai Warriors in Red Sun.

I love the clash of imagery that occurs when you throw characters into unexpected settings. Stories start to get exciting when you have no idea how a character will react because they are so far outside their comfort zone.

And that's what excites me (and hopefully you) most about The Spider King. Introducing sci-fi elements into medieval scenery means that even though the audience is intimately aware of each genre, there's no guarantee about how the story's participants will react when confronted with new and untested developments.

Because genres are established styles of storytelling, and feature repetitive conflicts and scenes, it's hard to push the boundaries and make old scenarios new again. And despite constantly improving special effects and increasingly terrifying monster designs, there's a law of diminishing returns. So each time you see a familiar trope the excitement is diluted just that little bit more.

The best part about a good crossover is that it elevates the story beyond the clichés of both genres, and like a Venn diagram, something new and unexpected appears in the middle.

And that's what we're aiming to do with The Spider King. While the book is built around a simple concept, that doesn't mean it's going to be a simple comic. The accessibility of the over-arching idea allows us to do complex and interesting things with our characters and our story.

My collaborator on The Spider King is the amazingly talented Italian illustrator Simone D'Armini, and we've just launched a kickstarter campaign to fund the production of the first volume. If it sounds like something you're interested in, please check it out. We'd appreciate your help to make this project a reality.

As a special treat for bleeding cool readers, if you pledge over $25 we'll throw in a special and exclusive reward, just for you!*

*(Once you've made your pledge, make sure you get your gift, by sending me a message via kickstarter saying "bleeding cool is bleeding cool".)

You can read a seven page sample of The Spider King below, titled: 'Fluffy the Barbarian'

*Headline by Rich Johnston. Because I think it could be.