Personal Demons
by Bryn Colvin; © 2009

This weekend, Personal Demons launches as a webcomic – www.itisacircle.com For those of you who haven’t encountered this form before, it’s basically a graphic novel that appears week by week on a website, and is free to read.

With the launch of Personal Demons, Tom Brown and I finally get to properly introduce Salamandra O’Stoat to the world. When I first encountered Tom four years ago, he had a comic underway involving experimental occultist Salamandra and her friend Owen. I became an instant fan. Several years passed, and Tom convinced me to have a go at writing his characters. A bit intimidating at first, but I loved them, and the setting. I’m very proud to be part of the Copper Age team.

I spent quite a while constructing a long story arc involving all kinds of paranormal strangeness and adventure. Sometimes with stories it’s as tempting to go backwards as forwards. Having a group of characters, I found myself wondering when and how they first met. So I went right back to what I thought was the beginning with Salamandra as a very young, abandoned child, being rescued by Annamarie Nightshade (a witch) and exploring how she gets to meet Owen.

‘Personal Demons’ normally refers to the kind of emotional baggage people haul around with them. It’s certainly true that our young heroine has more than her fair share of that. However, the demons also exist in some very literal ways and fighting them off, in all their forms, is very much the theme of this tale. Salamandra is in some ways the classic misfit child – a bit out of kilter with the world around her. I’ve been watching my son (who is seven) falling in love with her, and empathising with her oddness.

Although the central characters in the webcomic are children at the outset, I wouldn’t say this is writing for younger folk. It’s more for the kind of adult who can remember what it was like to not belong, and to inhabit a personal world somewhat removed from everyone else: Those of us who grew up daydreamers, more interested in The Hobbit than My Little Pony.

The temptation to go backwards has led me into writing the aforementioned Annamarie’s back-story as well, although I think that’s enough delving into fictional history for now. Copies of ‘Annamarie’ are available in pdf file for anyone who joins the Copper Age newsletter – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/copperage

Copper Age is a creative enterprise focused on comics but also producing art, stories, music, video, and pretty much anything else that seems like a good idea at the time. The Copper Age, historically speaking, came before the Iron Age we now live in. Copper is not as good a metal for killing people as iron, but you can make nice body decorations out of it. So that’s Copper Age – Awen touched, tree hugging, in love with folklore and mythology, and far too fond of tentacles to be healthy.

The Blind Fisherman – a tale which started life as a series of pictures and later had words attached to it. It’s a small story arc, and not quite traditional comic form. There are sea monsters, demented occultists, and other strangeness. After this comes Personal Demons – which is more like a conventional comic and begins with the witch Annamarie Nightshade visiting a gothic house, and finding something entirely unexpected.