For (almost) every new Secret Knots comic I make a Patreon exclusive post with sources, references and details of world building, including ideas that were left only as background concepts. This is the dossier for the comic “The brief adventures of the Circle of the Salamander”.
1. Inspiration
The original idea went something like this: a story about mid-XX century artists, their struggles and intent to push creation into the realm of the strange, except the world has already gone really strange because of an alien invasion, “war of the worlds” style. Do they become heroes of the unusual? Do they go on with their lives, confined to the act of creation?
I think that premise came, as many ideas do, from the juxtaposition of two unrelated interests: I had been watching the tv miniseries Bauhaus, about the first years of the German school of arts and design, prior to WWII, and not long ago, the beautiful season 3 of Babylon Berlin, so I was in the mood for things in the 1930s. On the other hand, kaiju-sized disasters are never far from my brainstorming process, so the weird half of the concept easily went to something colossal, that anyone can see by simply opening the window.
It had the shape of a graphic novel project, or a series. But I decided to give it a shot in Secret Knots comic format, in the way that some actions can be assumed off camera, and many things happen really fast. In that sense, my favorite part is probably the “paperboy” yelling the news, because it reminds me of classic movie montage, common places we recognize even if we haven’t seen the original sources (the “spinning paper” cliché could be another example).
A lot is left to the imagination in this case. Also, for the sake of the short story format, the alien invasion became a surrealist explosion coming from an unseen vortex, which gave me a chance to wrap the story by vacuuming its heroes and their deeds into the void, and making the “real” world forget about them. It’s implied that the resulting world of the tale is not our world, and that this singularity may have prevented “a major war”, the upcoming world war, probably. Which could mean that surrealism briefly taking over the world could have cured it of its neurosis, but this is more of an afterthought and not something I had necessarily in mind when I worked on the many versions of the ending. In a previous version, the character buying the paper was a shady figure in a hat and suit, talking to himself:
“Surrealism! Bah! Whim and nonsense! They should have listened to us: The Futurists!… But now, when we activate our own Vortex Machina, we’ll give the world what it needs to leave its infancy behind: Strength! Velocity! Acceleration!… The world of tomorrow!”
– And the panel would have shown the silhouetted figure going away on the street, with a plane in the background, leaving a smoky trail in the sky. It was yet another twist, and probably a too niche joke. (In a story with a subject that’s already pretty niche). Let’s leave it here for now, as a deleted scene.
2. References and process
The look of Nora Faux-Pas is based on American art patron and socialite Peggy Guggenheim.
The painter is loosely based on the artist Max Ernst.
References for objects in the studio
Process of the big hair and sauce explosion scene.
The eyes in the explosion come from this painting by Remedios Varo called Insomnio I (1947) . Making a story about surrealists, I knew I had to put something of her somewhere.
Various references for the streets.
3. Head Canon
Things that were considered, could be happening, or definitely happen, in the background of the story
As it been said above, in the world of the story, and as a side effect of the surrealist vortex happening, WWII probably never happens. What is the future world like? What about its art? Is it carrots forever, or does it produce, at some point, a trend of creation that speaks to the subconscious? Maybe the alt surrealists in this timeline start to conjure images from a horror that was averted, coming to them in dreams they can’t explain.
What about other countries? Does the US get its own art phenomena? Maybe at some point in the 60s, people in NYC start to become serialized, flat color posters on the walls, in some Pop Art unreality incident. Or do they become four-tones comic book characters?
The Circle of the Salamander closed the vortex, but they never retrieved the first lady of France. She comes back many years later, in the 21st century, -thanks to a sigil-imbued NFT- in the shape of a sentient cryptocurrency spreading online and collapsing all economic systems, to the tune of every cellphone in the world ringing “La Marseillaise”. Who will save reality now?
*****
I hope you enjoyed these notes! If you got this far, please leave a like, feel free to comment, add to, or contradict the head canon as you wish. There’s a Discord channel where we can hang out and discuss this story as well.
Support on Patreon makes The Secret Knots possible. Thank you very much!
Juan.
