PROJECT
Charles Barton first conceived of the Vikings Versus Samurai story on a gorgeous spring Saturday while in Covid-lockdown. The story was intended to be a fun writing project that would serve as a creative exercise to take his mind off his PhD research and the depressing realities of spring 2020. He began by writing a series of notes and short story concepts. In January of 2022, he decided to pursue the story further, and eventually decided on making it into a comic book, starting with turning his short stories into comic book “vignettes” to gain experience with writing in graphic novel format and learning to work with illustrators. In the spring of 2023, Darko Reljić, a friend and experienced creative director, encouraged Charlie to begin actively working on creating the comic. Darko introduced Charlie to Dejan Mandić, an illustrator with whom he worked before. They met for coffee under a mural of Frank Zappa, and a league of bald creative gentlemen was born. The three started brainstorming possibilities and plans for the Vikings Versus Samurai project. Vikings Versus Samurai employs an impressive artistic style, created by Dejan’s applied art background and years of experience in comic book production, combined with Darko’s fine art background and his vast experience as a seasoned creative director in a great variety of projects. While Dejan’s illustrations are impressive by themselves, after Darko’s inking, coloring and designing, the panels achieve an impressive level of detail that draw the reader into the story. The story required a level of historical detail. A challenge in writing about medieval Japan is the scarcity of relevant information. Want to know the population of England in the 12th century? You can find that online. Want to find the population of Kyushu in the 12th century? It turns out that finding the answer is not an easy task, even if you speak Japanese. Further, we needed to create names that were authentic in nature. We can’t have names for characters that don’t go along with their positions – a name related to nobility being assigned to a peasant for instance. So, we asked our friend Yuko to join the team and do some research for us. And, by Thor, research she did. We estimate that her research was worth 4 university credits at least. Now, such research wouldn’t be important at all if we weren’t concerned with ensuring that our narrative choices had respect for Japanese culture and history. Yuko has also translated the website and comics into Japanese in the hopes that our story can reach Japanese readers as well. One massive challenge we struggle with is exposure. The internet, as you may have noticed, is a vast space yet paradoxically a non-place (somewhat akin to our minds, when you think about it). Gaining exposure for this project in this vast no-space is not an easy task. If you like what we’re doing here, please donate so we can create more works, but also, consider forwarding our works to friends and family members who would take an interest in a strange and unfolding tale like ours. We aim to guide the Vikings Versus Samurai saga on a path that steers clear of clichés while always maintaining respect for the readers and their ability to sense a contrived narrative path
PROJECT
Charles Barton first conceived of the Vikings Versus Samurai story on a gorgeous spring Saturday while in Covid-lockdown. The story was intended to be a fun writing project that would serve as a creative exercise to take his mind off his PhD research and the depressing realities of spring 2020. He began by writing a series of notes and short story concepts. In January of 2022, he decided to pursue the story further, and eventually decided on making it into a comic book, starting with turning his short stories into comic book “vignettes” to gain experience with writing in graphic novel format and learning to work with illustrators. In the spring of 2023, Darko Reljić, a friend and experienced creative director, encouraged Charlie to begin actively working on creating the comic. Darko introduced Charlie to Dejan Mandić, an illustrator with whom he worked before. They met for coffee under a mural of Frank Zappa, and a league of bald creative gentlemen was born. The three started brainstorming possibilities and plans for the Vikings Versus Samurai project. Vikings Versus Samurai employs an impressive artistic style, created by Dejan’s applied art background and years of experience in comic book production, combined with Darko’s fine art background and his vast experience as a seasoned creative director in a great variety of projects. While Dejan’s illustrations are impressive by themselves, after Darko’s inking, coloring and designing, the panels achieve an impressive level of detail that draw the reader into the story. The story required a level of historical detail. A challenge in writing about medieval Japan is the scarcity of relevant information. Want to know the population of England in the 12th century? You can find that online. Want to find the population of Kyushu in the 12th century? It turns out that finding the answer is not an easy task, even if you speak Japanese. Further, we needed to create names that were authentic in nature. We can’t have names for characters that don’t go along with their positions – a name related to nobility being assigned to a peasant for instance. So, we asked our friend Yuko to join the team and do some research for us. And, by Thor, research she did. We estimate that her research was worth 4 university credits at least. Now, such research wouldn’t be important at all if we weren’t concerned with ensuring that our narrative choices had respect for Japanese culture and history. Yuko has also translated the website and comics into Japanese in the hopes that our story can reach Japanese readers as well. One massive challenge we struggle with is exposure. The internet, as you may have noticed, is a vast space yet paradoxically a non-place (somewhat akin to our minds, when you think about it). Gaining exposure for this project in this vast no-space is not an easy task. If you like what we’re doing here, please donate so we can create more works, but also, consider forwarding our works to friends and family members who would take an interest in a strange and unfolding tale like ours. We aim to guide the Vikings Versus Samurai saga on a path that steers clear of clichés while always maintaining respect for the readers and their ability to sense a contrived narrative path
