For most Secret Knots comics, I make a post with sources, references, and bits of world building. This is the dossier for the comic Abyssal.
Inspiration
Two things, mainly, inspired this plot. One is this anecdote about a director and a producer, who first met and teamed up because they both used to rent the same niche movie. I heard that story on a podcast, and now, as if I had dreamed it, I’ve been unable to track the source and check who they were.
The second idea, perhaps a main theme in the story, is the appreciation of weird art. By weird art, I mean the kind of thing that’s hard to classify and is rarely featured in awards: movies that are unfairly low rated on IMDB, semi-known pieces that deviate from genre conventions and narrative mathematics. I feel we need unusual art more than ever. Even the studio movie industry needs it; after all, it feeds from fringe ideas to expand the range of what’s possible. The appreciation of weird art also means accepting imperfection. Strange is often irregular, almost always flawed in some way. Sometimes it’s ugly, awkward, or annoyingly sweet and beautiful. Too much, too little; too loud or eerily silent. I’m sure this means different examples for different people, and I don’t really want to drop names or make lists, because it has a lot to do with personal appreciation in the end; sometimes with the things that resonate with a specific person, at a given time.
Now, the world of “cult” appreciators who make niche works a part of their personality, is prone to snobbery and gatekeeping. In that sense, the fight between the two fans in the comic is not entirely surreal.
It was also the part that I found most difficult to draw (maybe I had too many poses and preconceived ideas in mind), and it even led me to discard some drawings:
Having these characters sing the praise of stranger stories meant the comic had to be a little odd too, and probably that’s why the deer clerk is left unexplained. The deer itself comes from a vague source of inspiration: years ago, I saw on Tumblr a video of a deer inside an empty church. I remember it was whimsical and reverential at the same time. The image felt strangely pagan and meaningful, even if I had no idea of what the exact meaning was. I wanted to channel a bit of that feeling, specially in the ending of the comic, without giving a clear narrative reason behind it. It’s the door that’s left open in the story. Later, though, someone tagged the comic on Tumblr saying Love is the answer, and I guess that’s a completely valid, even satisfactory, way of wrapping things.
References and concepts
I shared before the full cover for the Crater movie, but here it is again, just in case.
This is the streetview snapshot of the actual place where my Blockbuster was. I kept the background building in the drawing.
Luckily, there was a ClipStudio 3d antlers model, because my first-hand knowledge of deers is poor (inexistent, actually).
Head canon
Things that were considered, could be happening, or are definitely happening, in the background of the story
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Crater is an independent film, about an alien that convinces a college theater company to perform a play that’s a poorly remembered version of a classic from its planet. The group is infiltrated by a government organization that believes the play lists key details of an invasion. It ends with the realization that a few of earthling drama classics come from the same extraterrestrial source. (Also, the government is right about the invasion).
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Abyssal is about a town underground, a community of tunnel excavators that have developed a religion around telluric energies. When explorers find evidence of multiple cultures from the past gone hiding underground, the community is divided among those who want to persevere in their own faith and customs, and those who want to join past refugees in the inner layers of the planet. The main characters keep digging, and find the people below. The ending is a psychedelic segment a la 2001: A Space Odyssey. There’s a small Easter Egg: a scene where the community seems to be watching the play from Crater.
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The deer is indifferent to most movies, except for Christmas movies, which he hates.
*****
I hope you enjoyed this post! Thanks a lot for your support and your patience, because this comic took a while. Thanks too for the great feedback the story has had. I hope you have a lovely end of the year season.
Juan.
