Black Rose

One of the questions we always get asked at cons is “How long have you guys been working on this?” It seems like that would have a simple answer – but no!

Those of you who have followed our artist Aaron Minier for some time may already know — this is not the first incarnation of Black Rose. Aaron actually started working on Black Rose back in his college days, along with classmate Christopher Studabaker as his writing collaborator.

Chris Arndt and I met Aaron in college a year or two later (Aaron a senior, we lowly freshmen) and became part of the same circle of friends. I dug Aaron’s art and recall proudly purchasing a copy of Black Rose #1 from their small initial print run back in 2004. (Technically, Black Rose dates back to circa 2003, making it 12 years old this year!)

Aaron will probably kill me if I start posting his old art – I’ll risk it and just show you one, the inks from the cover of old issue #1. As you can see, his style has changed a lot in the past ten years!

That’s Arion and Aliyana on the right. The central idea of the story was similar to the current incarnation of Black Rose: a brother and sister in trouble because the sister is a clandestine magic user. Other than that, though, the plot and world were quite different, and the tone of the story was much lighter, more akin to a Final Fantasy game.

Aaron and Studabaker worked on Black Rose off and on for several years, developing an overall plan for the story, with 4 or 5 issues scripted — the first 3 of those fully drawn, inked, and lettered.

After a few years, Studabaker left the project to pursue other opportunities. Aaron still wanted to do Black Rose, but needed a replacement writer. That’s where Chris Arndt and I entered the picture again…

And promptly burned everything to the ground. More on that next week!

Hi all! I’ve been away from the blog for a while, so I wanted to make a couple of announcements.

First is that new comic pages are going on hiatus for a bit. Aaron is not only very busy with freelance work, but actually drawing a second graphic novel at the same time! He’s going to catch up on those paying gigs for a while before building up the buffer of BR pages again.

“But how will I get my weekly Black Rose fix?” you say. Fear not. Instead of a new page every Wednesday, I’ll be blogging every Wednesday. I’m going to peel back the curtain a bit and give you guys a look at the history of the project, our various processes, some concept art and discarded story ideas — all the stuff we get asked about at every con. If there’s anything specific you’re curious about, give me a shout!

In the meantime, Chris and I are hard at work on the writing side. We’re fast approaching the part of the saga where plotlines need to start contracting toward the eventual climax, so we’re putting together a very thorough outline of the remaining books before jumping back into scripting issues. My constant companion is a BR brainstorming Google Doc that’s around 30 pages (and growing every day!).

We also just got back from the Indiana Comic Con (a record-breaking show for us) and have two more on the books for this year — Appleseed in Fort Wayne and Gen Con in Indy. I’ll be talking more about all those shows soon too.

Thanks for sticking around. I’ll see you next week!