Happy New Year, Amiculi!
(It's still January, so I can still say that.)
It's a bit strange to be in this position. After so many years, and building an amazing catalog of art, story and content with the Amiculus series, to be back again at square one with a new project. No finished art, just concepts and a wildly different story to tell. It is distantly related to Amiculus, in that its roots are in history, but it is a history a world away and centuries apart from ancient Rome, and it directly touches the present in the storytelling. It is a story that envisions the toll that history, particularly violent, bloody history, can take on the present. In this case, the toll is a literal one. Sugar Creek is a horror story, a ghost story, set in an unlikely place: the rural landscape of western Ohio.
"Waitaminute...Ohio? That bland, boring, flat place between a lake and a river? Sometimes notable during presidential elections but rarely otherwise? 'Gateway to Indiana' Ohio?"
I know what you're thinking and, nope, that's not the place I'm talking about. The Ohio I'm referring to has a deep and fascinating history, stretching back at least 3,000 years to the mound-building Adena tribe, responsible for such amazing earthworks as the Great Serpent Mound.
(It's still January, so I can still say that.)
It's a bit strange to be in this position. After so many years, and building an amazing catalog of art, story and content with the Amiculus series, to be back again at square one with a new project. No finished art, just concepts and a wildly different story to tell. It is distantly related to Amiculus, in that its roots are in history, but it is a history a world away and centuries apart from ancient Rome, and it directly touches the present in the storytelling. It is a story that envisions the toll that history, particularly violent, bloody history, can take on the present. In this case, the toll is a literal one. Sugar Creek is a horror story, a ghost story, set in an unlikely place: the rural landscape of western Ohio.
"Waitaminute...Ohio? That bland, boring, flat place between a lake and a river? Sometimes notable during presidential elections but rarely otherwise? 'Gateway to Indiana' Ohio?"
I know what you're thinking and, nope, that's not the place I'm talking about. The Ohio I'm referring to has a deep and fascinating history, stretching back at least 3,000 years to the mound-building Adena tribe, responsible for such amazing earthworks as the Great Serpent Mound.
Great Serpent Mound, Adams County, Ohio
George Rogers Clark's march on Vincennes, Indiana in 1779. Clark clashed with British and Native American forces in the Ohio River Valley throughout the American Revolution. Ohio also has a long history as a battleground. The indigenous tribes of Ohio were largely wiped out or driven out by the Iroquois Confederacy during the Beaver Wars of the 17th century. For the English in the 18th century, Ohio was the "wild west," the site of clashes with the French in the French and Indian War. Pontiac's rebellion in the 1760s saw the British nearly driven out of Ohio by Native American uprisings. During the American Revolution, the American Midwest saw pitched battles, campaigns and guerrilla clashes between British and native forces and Continental militia, including the Battle of Piqua in western Ohio in 1780.
Battle of Fallen Timbers, 1794 The fighting between Ohio's Indian tribes and the Americans only intensified after the Revolution. The Northwest Indian War erupted in 1785 between the native Western Confederacy, American settlers from Kentucky and American militia and regular troops. What followed was ten bloody years of battles, massacres, reprisal killings and exterminations of Indian and American settlements in Ohio, only ending with the American victory over the Confederacy at Fallen Timbers in 1794. This war was as brutal, savage and deeply personal as any of the more famous conflicts of the mid-to-late 19th century further west.
Indian ambush and American rout: St. Clair's Defeat, 1791 This war also produced the most disastrous defeat of an American army at the hands of a native force in our nation's history: The Battle of the Wabash, or St. Clair's Defeat. An expedition in 1791 led by General Arthur St. Clair advanced into Ohio, ready to smash the Western Confederacy and avenge an American defeat at their hands from a year earlier. What resulted was "The Battle of a Thousand Slain": a total ambush and rout of the American forces that succeeded in wiping out a full quarter of the standing American army at the time.
The ultimate defeat of the Western Confederacy and the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 ended this conflict, but Ohio's battleground status continued into the War of 1812, where British, natives and Americans clashed one last time across its forests, fields and lakes. Peace fell, and the land at last grew quiet.
The ultimate defeat of the Western Confederacy and the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 ended this conflict, but Ohio's battleground status continued into the War of 1812, where British, natives and Americans clashed one last time across its forests, fields and lakes. Peace fell, and the land at last grew quiet.
Or did it? What of places that were the sites of repeated violence, repeated chaos and bloodshed, for over two hundred years? We know how this kind of trauma can affect and change us: can a place experience the same trauma? Can it be twisted, corrupted by so much death?
Can it become hungry for it?
This is the subject that Sugar Creek examines. This fictional village in western Ohio sits atop such a place, whose hidden history of violence and death goes far deeper than the two centuries mentioned above. On a normal day in 2015, as the town prepares for its bicentennial, a pair of local policemen respond to a frantic call for help, little realizing they are driving into the very epicenter of this darkness, just as the barriers holding it in are on the verge of giving way completely...
Can it become hungry for it?
This is the subject that Sugar Creek examines. This fictional village in western Ohio sits atop such a place, whose hidden history of violence and death goes far deeper than the two centuries mentioned above. On a normal day in 2015, as the town prepares for its bicentennial, a pair of local policemen respond to a frantic call for help, little realizing they are driving into the very epicenter of this darkness, just as the barriers holding it in are on the verge of giving way completely...
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