Salvete, Amiculi!

As the image at left makes clear, I'm putting the brakes on Pythia Kickstarter preparation for the moment with the full intention to resume operations next spring. I feel the project needs more long-term attention than I am currently capable of giving to it, and plan to revisit the campaign for issues 1-2 with vigor in 2020. 

This also means I'm putting my Prophecies of the Oracle blog posts on hold as well, as it doesn't make a lot of sense to tease a project that won't make an appearance for 9-10 months, anyway.  

This is not to say I'll be idle for this next year. (Seriously, am I ever?) In fact, there is a new Amiculus project coming this fall that I will be making an announcement on later in July. I'm planning to revisit the original series one last time before moving on to new stories both within and without the world of Amiculus, a revisiting that will both expand and expound on my beloved flagship vigilante from the shadows. Part and parcel of this will be new art, a new map(!) and new story. Keep an eye out for this soon!

But I'm burying the lede here. 

In response to the fantastic impact and reception that the new Amiculus Books release of the new horror comic Sugar Creek has generated, I've decided to revisit a project that I'd put on the back-burner following the cancellation of the Sugar Creek Kickstarter. This was an illustrated journal by one of the key characters, Jim Corrie, intended to accompany the comic book. This explores the backstory and history of Sugar Creek leading up to the day of horror featured in the comic. It follows his archaeological discoveries at the headwaters of the creek,  his dawning horror at what is about to be unleashed, and his desperate attempts to stop it from happening. I'll be presenting this story here a series of blog posts, the the first of which is below. So, without further ado, here is the first chapter of:

 June 10, 2013

This is so f_____g stupid.

​(OK, better keep this clean or hide it permanently from Rachel, or she'll skin another pound of flesh off my...hide.)

So Rachel bought me this sketch journal after my last visit to the shrink that she basically demanded I go see after my forced - uh, "early retirement." It's pretty slick - this leather-clad tome with my name embossed on the cover in gold leaf or something that you'd be more likely to associate with a banker or accountant than someone who draws for a living. Just wish it didn't feel like an albatross around my neck. 

​I don't see what the big deal is. Anyone would be a little down from being downsized from a 20-year teaching career, being forced to move away from civilization to this bloody hamlet out in the hinterlands. Anyone would feel the dual humiliation of having to move back to a town they'd been desperate to escape from and staring down another twenty (thirty?) years of slowly turning into compost. Could always try to get another job, but I figure the prospects for a 53-year-old ex-history professor are even worse here than in the city. At least the livin' is cheap, I guess. 

So anyway, my shrink (Dr. V______) said I was "brooding" too much and needed an "outlet for my thoughts," hence the journal. She recommended that I get something I could draw in, too (she caught me doodling in the margins of my brochure while I was pretending to listen to her - something that got me through a lot of department meetings). This would let me "express myself through art as well as words." (One more reason why I will never forgive Rachel for this.)

Fine. They want me to pour my heart out like a teenage girl? Illustrate my feelings with rainbows and unicorns and sad faces and storm clouds? Sure, why the f___ not? What else should I do while I rot here? 

So here's my first project: the creek. 

​The water from this disgusting drainage ditch flows right past our house, out of a large growth of trees that look older than anything around it for miles. Dense, too. It looks like night inside - you can't see more than a dozen feet from the tip of your nose once you're in there. Makes my skin itch just looking at it.

I don't think there's anything that quite encapsulates my feelings about this place more than this sluggish open wound of a waterway. Asking price for our house was pretty cheap as a result of it (and other reasons that I don't feel like getting into right now). It's one of the reasons I was so desperate to get away from here when I was young - all the stories and superstitions about Sugar Creek that brought out the most benighted aspects of my friends and neighbors. Our parents told us never to drink from the creek, never to play here, especially after dark. Yet it's the symbol of the town? The name? Why even build next to a place like this?

Looking at my drawing now, and I'm not impressed. Pretty piss-poor rendering, actually. You can't even get a feel for this place without the color of the water. I'll have to come out again, once I've gotten some colored pencils or something.

Jesus, am I actually getting into this? Please just kill me now. 

The Sugar Creek launch date is fast approaching! This one-shot, 32-page story will see its debut at not one but two shows: Small Press & Alternative Comics Expo (SPACE) and Gem City Comic Con on April 27-28! The book will be made available for purchase on Amazon shortly thereafter.

As excited as I am to see this project reach fruition, and to explore the prospects of a potential short film version (very much in early days at this point), there are other places I plan to discuss this further. For now, I want to dedicate this space to the next comic project on the horizon, the oft-aformentioned Pythia. In a past posting, I explored the possible sources of the Oracle of Delphi's prophetic power. Here, I'd like to begin a new Fun Fact Feature series exploring the prophecies themselves. In researching the hundreds of oracular premonitions recorded over 1500 years, it surprised me to learn that so many of them are considered legend, and cannot be corroborated by history. Many of these are the most famous Pythian legends. Does this bother me? Not especially. The Greeks believed them wholeheartedly, just as they did in the Trojan War, and the kernels of truth in that legend was revealed when Troy's ruins were found in 1869. Besides, a great story is just a great story. 

If there is a story of the Pythia that is the most famous, it is her prophecy to King Croesos of Lydia, the world's richest man at the time (c. 550 B.C.). Crapulent with wealth and power, Croesos was nonetheless concerned about the aggressive actions of his eastern neighbor, Persia. He wondered if he should attack them preemptively, but was uncertain. So he sent a messenger to Delphi to ask the Pythia what he should do. Her response was that if he attacked the Persians, he would destroy a great empire. Croesos went ahead with his attack, was routed in battle, and the Persians marched into his kingdom and took it over. The empire he destroyed ended up being his own. 

At least, that's the shorthand version, a version that on its face seems...kinda lame. Like a first draft of a Rod Serling script that he wisely chose not to include in The Twilight Zone. And it's barely a prophecy. Of course it will destroy a great empire! That's a key factor of war, after all; someone's gotta lose. It also begs a few questions, such as "Why the hell didn't Croesos ask which empire? How dumb was this guy?" 

Actually, Croesos wasn't satisfied with this answer, and he did try to confirm this, in a roundabout way. He asked the Pythia if his reign would be long. She told him that when a mule became king of the Medes, he should run for his life. (The Medes were an Iranian people related to the Persians that Persia had just conquered.) This was of great comfort to Croesos, who couldn't imagine any kingdom being so idiotic as to crown a mule king. 

Ah, but that's where things take an Obi-Wan Kenobi "from-a-certain-point-of-view" twist. The Persian king who had just conquered the Medes, Cyrus the Great, was the product of a Persian father and a Median mother, essentially a hybrid of the two. A "mule," if you will. 

All of this is something of a long way round to saying that this type of prophecy was a specialty of the Pythia: the "gotcha" ironic punishment type. Versions of this oracle appeared dozens of times throughout the centuries, of recipients being hoisted on the petard of their own misunderstanding. Usually, it seemed to be reserved for the most hubristic ones, such as big-shot-moneybags Croesos, as an appropriate punishment for pride or arrogance before the gods. One slightly-better Twilight Zone prophecy was the one to Daphidas of Telmessos, a sophist who took a dim view of the Pythia and wanted to humiliate her. He went to her to ask if he would find his lost horse, which was a trick question, since he didn't own a horse. The Pythia told him that he would find it, but that it would throw him to his death. Daphidas left thinking he'd gotten one over on the old girl, but the joke was on him. Years later, he would run afoul of King Attalos of Pergamon, who had him tossed from a high cliff known locally as the Cliff of the Horse.

However, it's worth noting that some of these creative word-play prophecies were delivered to poor schmucks who didn't deserve their fates, and were handed bad luck just because they weren't able to suss out a really obscure word puzzle. The Phocaeans were told to "found Kyrnos," which they took to mean found a colony on the island of Kyrnos (modern Corsica). The colony was a disaster, and had to be abandoned. Later, it was revealed that they were being told to set up a shrine to the Greek hero Kyrnos (obviously, right???). In cases like these, it kinda seems like the Pythia was just being a dick to people. But who knows the mysterious ways of the gods and their human mouthpieces?

Not to say that the Pythia herself didn't get comeuppance every once in awhile from unhappy customers. Next time, we'll look at the fates of some of the Pythiai.

Happy New Year, Amiculi!
​As sorry as I was on one level to see the most successful year in Amiculus Books history end (with one notable exception, *coughsugarcreekkickstartercough*), there's no room for sentiment in this game! New Year, new challenges, and new conquests are on the horizon!

Such as:

This planned series with Amiculus artist Giancarlo Caracuzzo is slated to begin its fundraising life this year! In case you are not familiar, Pythia will be a speculative historical fiction limited series in the same vein as Amiculus, set in ancient Greece at the twilight of the classical world and imagining one possibility for what the last prophecy of the Oracle of Delphi might have been, and how it might have doomed the Olympian gods. I plan to produce this story in 5-6 single issues, around 20 pages each, over 3-4 years, and the fun could begin as early as this summer!

 No doubt many of you, my elite Amiculi, are fully acquainted with who the Oracle of Delphi was, and the outsize importance she held in the Greco-Roman world. If you don't, however, don't despair! This is an opportunity for you to find out in the best way possible, through a...

 The bulk of the research that I have done for Pythia includes numerous ancient sources: Herodotus, Strabo and, most crucially, Plutarch, who was an adherent to the Pythic cult and provided some great insider information.
I've relied on other modern sources, such as Joseph Fontenrose and this excellent book  extensively detailing the discovery of a possible source for the elusive Delphic vapors that many archaeologists thought never existed. For a great shorthand on the facts in the previous book, you can also check out this article at biblicalarchaeology.org. For all of you TLDR types, here is the shorthand of the shorthand. 

The basic image of the Oracle of Delphi is perfectly demonstrated in the picture by John Collier at left: a young (or middle-aged) woman seated on a tall tripod over a rift in the earth from which the sacred pneuma rises, mysterious vapors from the depths. She sits motionless, trance-like, when all at once she speaks in a voice that does not seem entirely her own. The god Apollo has entered her, and speaks prophecies of times yet to come. Sometimes these utterances are in verse, other times in plain prose, and very occasionally are expressed in delirium, shrieking and wild thrashing. In the last case, the Pythia dies within days. 

Interestingly, few of the ancient sources agree on the source or even the existence of the vapors that provided the Pythia with her prophecies. Strabo's version provides most of the details above, but Plutarch, a servant of the Pythia, never saw any evidence of vapors. Some writers attribute the source of the Oracle's visions to the waters that bubbled up through a spring beneath the temple. Regardless, the lack of consistency in the story has been a source of some frustration to historians, classicists and archaeologists.

In the late 19th century, a French archaeological team excavated the site of the Delphic sanctuary. While they reported that the bedrock beneath the Temple of Apollo was riddled with fissures, a single large, gas-emitting cleft in the earth could not be found. Based on this, it was declared that the lack of volcanic activity at Delphi meant that the area could not have produced the gases the ancients claimed were there, and that they were either mistaken, exaggerating or flat-out lying. This effectively killed the idea of the Pythic vapors for the next several decades. 

Evidence that these French archaeologists could have been wrong started to surface in the early 1980s. A geologist noticed that a fault line ran from east to west through the region near Delphi, and later examination revealed that its path went directly beneath Apollo's sanctuary. The fault line could not be seen at the temple site due to landslides and construction. While it is true that no volcanic activity is present in the area, this fault line, later called the Delphi Fault, has been linked to one of Greece's most geologically active areas, a great rift filled by the Gulf of Corinth that formed a "mere" two million years ago. This rift continues to widen, triggering earthquakes along its length. (One of these earthquakes destroyed the temple of Apollo in 373 B.C.) .

In the 1990s, a second fault line was discovered, running north-south and intersecting the Delphi Fault beneath the sanctuary.  This was named the Kerna Fault.

Starting in 1996, a team comprised of a geologist, an archaeologist, a chemist and a toxicologist began surveying the area around Delphi and devised a scenario that could, in fact, explain the source of the Pythia's mysterious vapors.

The place where the Delphi and Kerna Faults met would have been the focus of intense heat and pressure. The limestone bedrock at Delphi contained petrochemical deposits, which this heat and pressure would have vaporized into light hydrocarbon gases: methane, ethane and ethylene, all of them intoxicants. Water and rock samples from the sanctuary revealed trace elements of these hydrocarbons.

If any of these gases were responsible for the Oracle's visions, ethylene would be the one that most fit the bill. The side effects of breathing this intoxicant sound very much like the Pythia's different trance states described in antiquity. In low concentrations, ethylene can produce  an "out-of-body" experience, causing an entranced individual to speak in an altered voice. In high concentrations it can cause unconsciousness. To a certain subset of people, it can cause a violent, even deadly reaction, potentially explaining the Oracles who lapsed into screaming, thrashing fits. The sweet scent of the gas also matches descriptions from Plutarch, even though he never professed to have smelled it himself. 

So if these gases were present at Delphi, and the description of their effects tracks so closely to the Pythia's trances, why was there so much ancient discrepancy about the Delphic vapors? Plutarch offers a tantalizing explanation. He states that the vapors from the temple were strong and steady until the earthquake in 373 B.C. After this point, the gas became unpredictable and its strength steadily diminished, until by his own time, its emanations had virtually vanished. He suggests that either the quake had blocked their flow or the supply had exhausted itself. Either way, the fortunes of the Pythia declined with it. 

Salvete, Amiculi!

As some of you have seen, I made the difficult decision to cancel the Sugar Creek Kickstarter on October 10, three days before the end. At 36% funding, the headwinds were simply too strong to overcome. This does not, however, kill the project! I plan to finish this horror comic on a slightly smaller scale and a slightly longer timetable than the Kickstarter imagined. Expect to see this book at conventions and for sale online in the spring or summer of 2019!

Moving forward, I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss an upcoming project that shifts the Amiculus Books focus back to the ancient world. This is a story that I've been considering for some time, and that I've previewed to an extent in the News section of my website. It takes place in late antiquity, about 120 years before the events in Amiculus, and revolves around one of the lesser known pivotal moments in human history: the moment when classical paganism tried and failed to reassert itself against the rise of Christianity. This moment is heralded in a famous story of the final prophecy of the Oracle of Delphi, the Pythia, as delivered to the Roman emperor Julian.

The Oracle of Delphi, or Pythia, was the most famous soothsayer in the ancient world. By the time of the events of Pythia, in AD 362, her cult had been in existence for nearly 2000 years. Its existence is believed to predate the archaic Mycenaean Greek culture of the Iliad and the Odyssey, reaching back as far as prehistoric times. At its beginning, the Pythic cult was dedicated to Ge or Gaea, the earth. The famous myth of Apollo slaying Gaea's champion, the Python, and seizing Delphi as his own sanctuary, is likely an allegory of a possible forcible takeover of the cult by Apollo's followers from its original owners.

Curiously, many elements of the old cult survived Apollo's takeover:

1. The Delphic oracle continued to be female. This was unusual, as oracles in the ancient world tended to be uniformly male, particularly those dedicated to Apollo.
2. The oracle's name, Pythia, honored the fallen guardian of Gaea, rather than the god who vanquished it.
3. The Pythia continued to receive her visions from vapors emanating from a cleft in the earth. This would appear to reaffirm her original connection to Gaea, rather than to Apollo.

​

By the time of his death in AD 337, the Roman emperor Constantine the Great had cemented Christianity as the chief religion in the Roman Empire. This tradition continued into the reigns of his sons, Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans, driving the classical pagan religions of the ancient world into steep decline. Constantine had formalized Christianity as the official faith in order to bring unity to a fragmented empire. Yet his sons, driven by ambition and sectarian squabbling, went to war with one another to be sole ruler. 

Julian was a nephew of Constantine, and an obscure, unassuming figure in his cousins' war for the throne. He was also a convert to Neoplatonism, a philosophy that celebrated the Olympian gods. Constantine II died in battle against Constans, and Constans fell to a usurper emperor, Magnentius. Constantine's remaining son Constantius II defeated Magnentius and appointed Julian as Caesar of the western empire. Julian was a scholar, and had had no real experience in military matters, so Constantius likely saw him as a reliable lieutenant who would be no threat to his rule. 

But Julian was crafty, ambitious, and a very quick learner. 
​

By trial and error, Julian became a war leader of the Western legions in Gaul. He led a campaign against the Franks that resulted in a spectacular victory at the Battle of Strasbourg (Argentoratum) in Alsace in AD 357, one that must have deeply worried his cousin Constantius. In the late Roman Empire, victorious legions had the nasty habit of declaring their generals emperor.

This is exactly what happened in Luletia (Paris) in AD 360. Constantius demanded that half of Julian's troops be relinquished to him for an Eastern campaign. Julian's legions instead declared him Augustus. Constantius prepared for war, but his untimely death in November 361 left Julian as the last remaining heir of Constantine.
​ 

In AD 362, Julian sent an embassage to the Oracle of Delphi in the interest of reviving the ancient cult, in exchange for a favorable prophecy for his reign and, ostensibly, an omen of good fortune for his upcoming war against Persia. It is at this point that Pythia ​begins. 
​

This story will take place in five to six 20-page installments, each one telling a story of this immortal cold war as it moves toward its climax. It will begin with the founding of the cult, with Phemonoe, the first Pythia, harnessing powers no man was strong enough to hold. It will re-imagine the battle between the Python and Apollo as a battle between two faiths, with the Pythia leading an army against the encroaching sun worshipers, failing, and then triumphing when all seems lost. It will demonstrate the empire of influence that the Pythia establishes, and Gaea's anger as she relinquishes her gifts amid a terrible cataclysm. It will show a nearly powerless oracle facing down the emperor Nero, invoking his wrath and, at the same time, earning Gaea's forgiveness. And it will end with an unassuming young woman bringing down the curtain on an ancient religion and sealing the fate of an empire. 

As you can tell, I am very excited to begin work. Look for more updates as we move toward the inevitable crowdfunding campaign sometime in 2019!

Salvete, Amiculi!

I hope you are as excited as I am for the campaign for the next new Amiculus Books project Sugar Creek. There's something exhilarating breaking ground on a new idea after working for so long on the first one, especially one so far removed in time and subject as this book will be from the Amiculus trilogy. In a way, this sophomore endeavor may be more important in determining the path forward for Amiculus Books than its inaugural project, so I'd better not screw it up, right? 

This Kickstarter, launching September 5, will have a lot of familiar elements to Amiculus backers, with some new ones that will be more in-line with a horror concept. Additionally, this crowdfunder will hopefully pave the way for a later short film project, which (fun fact) is how this idea first generated. It seems to be a theme with a lot of my comic-book ideas: they all start out as something else first.

Below are some of the concepts for backer packages I am planning for the Sugar Creek Kickstarter:

A Sugar Creek "Film Package": As a nod to this book's origins (and its future?), I will be offering a copy of the original screenplay in a special "film package." Also, Amiculus Trilogy fans will be happy to know that we will be bringing back Giancarlo Caracuzzo for this package! We have commissioned him to draw the "movie poster" for Sugar Creek, which will feature all the elements Amiculus fans have come to know and love!

Sugar Creek "Draw-In" Opportunities:​ The main story has a limited number of characters, so unfortunately, I won't be able to offer the option to be included as a character here. However, there will be several opportunities to be included as a character in the illustrated "Legends of Sugar Creek" journal! Backers can be featured as one of several characters who mysteriously disappeared in Sugar Creek over the centuries. There will also be opportunities in this vein that will not be included in the book, but will be offered to backers as their own custom art. 

As always, I am eager to hear from you about the rewards you enjoy and might like to see in this campaign. Hit me up in the comments below! 

One last thing for you Amiculus-philes: a really spot-on painting by Sugar Creek artist Brent Bowman of the mad Roman Emperor Caligula, based on an original bust which I have included for comparison. I think he really captured the unhinged gleam in his eyes. 

Salvete!

I hope spring has finally arrived for you as it has for me. The Amiculus Books show year is going swimmingly, with three shows so far under the belt (like SPACE, the show pictured) and many more to come!

I've already revealed the local Ohio history and concept behind my new horror project, Sugar Creek, but there's another more far-flung history that I'd like to touch on that was heavily influential to this project: a celebrated three hundred year-old battle in Scotland that, according to legend, created one of the most uniquely haunted places in the British isles. 

There's something about Scottish ghost stories that send an extra shiver up my spine. The story of the Pass of Killiecrankie in Scotland holds a particularly special place for me, though. This was the site of the ferocious Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689, One of the major engagements of the First Jacobite Rising, it pitted the government troops of King William III against Scottish loyalists of the overthrown King James II. Twenty-four hundred Jacobite (after James) soldiers clashed with a government force of 3500, resulting in a total Jacobite victory. It was over in just 30 minutes, and the Williamites were routed, suffering over 2000 casualties. However, the Jacobite forces suffered a terrible toll as well, losing close to 800 of their own men and their leader, the Viscount Dundee. 

The hauntings at Killiecrankie began even before the battle. During the stormy night prior to the battle, the Jacobite commander Dundee was visited by a terrifying, bloody apparition that some later claimed was the Devil himself. The figure gave Dundee a premonition of his own death in the Pass the following day. Not to be outdone, Dundee's own ghost was said to have appeared to a Scottish laird who had not made it to Killiekrankie at the moment Dundee died. 

The most memorable haunted elements of the story, however, accumulated over the next three centuries. Centered around the anniversary of the battle (July 27), ghostly occurrences include a baleful red light that hung over the battle site, and grass that would suddenly turn red and sticky with ancient blood. Footfalls, cries and musket shots would be heard all around. Phantom regiments appear in the woods, fighting and dying all over again. The ground would become littered with the ghosts of the fallen, and their cries and groans would echo through the dark.

But for those who witnessed the apparitions of Killiecrankie, the worst part for them all was the appearance of the girl.

The girl is the most commonly-sighted spirit at the battle site, and the most terrifying. She is described as pale, with long, black hair, walking among the fallen bodies with a wicker basket on her arm. She immediately begins stripping bodies of valuables, cutting off fingers to retrieve rings and driving her dagger into any wounded who are still alive. Pure darkness appears to swirl behind her eyes.

It is suggested by some that she is the specter of a scavenger, who looted battlefields like vultures after armies had passed on. Others suggest she is something much more ancient, and powerful. Whatever she is, the fear she inspires comes from the fact that she seems aware that the living are watching her. Sometimes she turns to look at them, sizing them up with a cruel smile. She even moves toward them, knife raised. One terrified cyclist found her running toward her, full-out, shrieking and brandishing her knife, before disappearing at the last moment. In every encounter, her appearance brings with it a new level of malevolence and dread, as if she has stepped out of the past to continue violence upon the living.

I first read about this haunting in middle school, and the story has stuck with me ever since. It was the first place I came across the theory that spectral battlefields might be places so afflicted with trauma that, like a mind with PTSD, it is compelled to repeatedly replay the traumatic incident, soaked up in the rocks, trees and ground itself. The wrinkle added by the girl suggests what could happen when a place is not merely scarred by violence, but enticed by it as well. 

Salvete, Amiculi!

Guess what time it is? 

ROMAN DEBAUCHERY FUN FACT TIME!!!

And you know what is especially fun about this Fun Fact?

IT'S ABOUT ME!!!

(Sort of.)

So anyway, to preface things, my mom is really into genealogy. I mean, REALLY into it. She has spent the past 15-20 years scouring every database imaginable, sending into every DNA test available, trying to track down our family's farthest-flung ancestors in the deepest recesses of history. And it's taken her down some pretty weird rabbit holes. 

A few days ago, she calls me with a somewhat strange question: "Did Constantine the Great ever spend time in Britain?" This is strange for her, as she could normally care less about Roman history, but when she needs to know things about it, she naturally calls me. I answered yes, he did spend time in Britain. "HOLY CRAP!" she yells into the phone. "WE'RE RELATED TO CONSTANTINE THE GREAT!"

Once my ears had stopped ringing, I asked her how she could possibly know that. She told me that, on a new ancestry site she had been exploring, she followed one branch of the family that went much, much farther back than the rest, and had discovered an unbroken line of forbears that ended with the first Christian Roman Emperor.  The guy who saw a cross in the sky, got religion in a day and gave it to the rest of the Roman Empire and eventually a third of the world. Yeah. THAT guy. 

Admittedly, I was skeptical. I knew these ancestry databases could be thorough, and some people are able to trace their families back almost a thousand years. But Constantine? Anything that far back seemed impossible. The centuries following Rome's fall were called the Dark Ages for a reason, after all.

​I asked her to show me the site. She provided me with some screenshots of her search, which I included below with some arrows clarifying the line in question:

It's interesting to note that they didn't include Arthur Pendragon in the genealogy. I guess they figured having one mythical figure in the family tree was acceptable, but two was just crazy! Also, is anyone wondering how Constantine supposedly managed to sire Uther over seventy years after he died, or how Ol' Stonestabber managed to have a daughter over 700 years after his death?  I don't remember reading that in Le Morte D'Arthur. 

It's also worth noting that the timeline gets Constantine's birth year wrong, too, and shows his father marrying his mother a year after his birth, although this by itself is not disqualifying.

But that's not all...

In addition to inserting King Arthur's dad in the timeline, the genealogy gets its Constantines completely mixed-up. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Uther's father was not Constantine the Great, or any member or descendant of the first Christian emperor's family, but the so-called Constantine III, a usurper emperor who did Britain the enormous favor of taking the last of its Roman garrison and abandoning the country in an ill-fated march on Rome.

Of course, Geoffrey seems a little confused about his Constantines as well. He refers to Constantine III as Constantine, or Custennin, the Second of Britain, and it is suggested that he may have mixed up the Roman usurper with a British king of Dumnonia. (Jamie Delano wrote a very diverting story about this king in the DC/Vertigo series Hellblazer, presenting him as an early ancestor of John Constantine.) 

I suspect there was a legitimizing factor for a British/English king who could claim to be descended from Roman imperial blood, leading early kings to follow (and invent) their own tenuous ancestral connections to famous Caesars.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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...

Salvete, Amiculi!

The year 2017, or the year 2770 A.U.C. (ab urbe condita - from the founding of the City), as the Romans would call it, was a pivotal year for Amiculus. It saw the completion of the Amiculus Trilogy, a passion project a decade in the making. In this time, Amiculus has grown from just one history nerd's flight of fancy to the foundation of an institution, with backers and readers on five continents and a growing reputation locally and regionally.  For this, let me say thanks to the comic creator and artistic communities of my hometown of Columbus, Ohio (particularly the good people of Madlab and Sunday Comix Group), my artistic team and my creative partner Giancarlo Caracuzzo,  my Kickstarter backers who have stayed with me since my very first (failed) campaign in 2013, my family, and most of all my wife Becky for her ridiculous faith in me.

Now that the project is finished, it leaves me at a bit of a crossroads, an appropriate place to be on December 31. We've briefly looked back, so let's take a glimpse at some resolutions for 2018 and beyond!

I'm sure if you've checked out my newsletter or have seen recent updates via Kickstarter, you know about these coming projects. However, as excited as I am, I really can't shut up about them! So, once again, here are the planned Amiculus Books of the Future:

1) Sugar Creek is a smaller project, 22-32 pages in length, that features a modern horror story with roots in primordial history.  As a small town in western Ohio prepares to celebrate its 200th anniversary, a frantic call for help to the Sugar Creek police department is cut off, prompting two officers to investigate a home on the edge of town. What greets them is a horror centuries in the making. Long-buried at the headwaters of the creek that is the town's namesake, the dark secret underlying its origins now threatens to burst forth and consume them all...look for an announcement sometime in 2018!

2) Amiculus: A Secret History reveals the identity of the shadowy title character, and illuminates his motives. But what of his true origin? In Amiculus: Domina, we track the path of Amiculus's creation from a fateful day on a Mediterranean beach to the catastrophic Battle of Ticinum, a path that is intertwined with the tragic tale of another mysterious figure: the mother of Romulus Augustulus. The timeline on this project is a bit more ephemeral, but I'm looking at a potential campaign in 2019-2020.

3) Pythia takes place in A.D. 362, when Christianity is ascendant and paganism is breathing its last. Apollo's Oracle of Delphi barely subsists on the waning faith of the god's remaining followers. But the newly-crowned Roman emperor Julian promises a return to the old gods. All he requires from the Pythia is a prophecy of triumph in the coming wars, and Apollo will bask in the glory of an Olympian renaissance.  The Pythia must do everything in her power to stop this from happening. This project will likely follow Domina. 

I had to take a little time following my year-long blog series The Decline and Fall of the Roman Republic because, well, it ended up depressing the hell out of me. The point was to illustrate similarities between the Roman Republic and our modern one, and in the process it brought a lot of things a little too close to home.  Also, I thought the quality of the content varied significantly between posts, and could ramble at times as it descended into historical rabbit holes and cul de sacs. I aim to work on providing better, more consistent content in the future. 

Fortunately, there are also a lot of other things connecting ancient Rome to our modern times that fall into the positive column, and I plan to revert back to the format used in my "Roman Debauchery Fun Facts" posts, such as this timely tidbit: 

This will likely not shock you, but it was the Romans who formalized January 1 as New Year's Day. Going back at least as far as the Babylonian calendar circa 2000 B.C., most societies started the New Year at the vernal equinox, or sometime in mid-late March. (New Year's Day for the Romans was originally around March 15, insert eyebrow waggle.) In 153 B.C., the Romans made January 1 the day that incoming consuls assumed office, effectively making it New Year's Day for the Roman government. Julius Caesar made this custom official for all Romans in 45 B.C. with his eponymous Julian Calendar. 

Fun Fact Extra: the Roman calendar was so far out of whack by the time Caesar changed it that 80 days had to be added to the year 46 B.C. to get the months back in sync with the seasons for the year 45. I don't know if this makes 46, with 445 days, the longest year on record, but it's definitely a contender. 

With Amiculus done, I feel that my mission and, with it, my website and branding, will need to evolve somewhat in 2018. Therefore, this site will change from being dedicated solely to the Amiculus Trilogy to one for all projects appearing under the aegis Amiculus Books. This will of course include more comic book and graphic novel content, as well as possible prose works. As you've seen above, new Amiculus storylines are being planned, but so are completely original projects. Who knows? Perhaps one day you will see short films offered, in which case we would need to evolve again to Amiculus Media.

Augustus's reign was later called "The Augustan Age" for the long stretch of peace, prosperity and culture it inspired. In Roman history, it was largely unprecedented: four solid decades of  (nearly) unbroken peace, which, after nearly a century of off-again, on-again civil wars, must have seemed like a miracle. This spun off an even longer period, two hundred years, of unchallenged Roman hegemony in the ancient world, lovingly known as the Pax Romana. This age of the high Roman Empire has been regarded enviously by later cultures as a height of civilization and order that most societies dare not dream of. 

Never mind that censorship and stifling of free speech, which Augustus engaged in in earnest, was a price of this Roman order. That wealth and power continued to be gathered to a smaller and smaller oligarchy until the emperor had nearly become a self-styled god. That the privatization and professionalization of the Roman army created a permanent breach between soldier and civilian, elevating the former at the expense of the latter. That the role of an emperor as absolute ruler largely discouraged anything resembling peaceful transfer of power once an emperor died.  That in the power struggle that inevitably followed the death of an emperor,  the army itself became a force for major destabilization and chaos that helped deal a fatal blow to Roman civilization. 

Rome ultimately had no one to blame for the death of its republic other than its own feckless representatives. The Senate, divided, short-sighted and crippled by self-interest, proved itself unworthy of the task of managing a far-flung empire, and paid the price. But did it have to fail?  Did a body politic founded in freedom and dedicated in principle to the will of its citizens have to become so dysfunctional and broken that autocratic rule seemed like a blessing by comparison? 

Rome came to a crossroads all rising powers reach, where, having outgrown their initial identity as a state among states, must decide what kind of power they must be. It is a question of cui bono: who benefits? A rise in power comes with a significant increase of wealth, and for the lawmakers controlling access to it, the temptation is powerful, almost irresistible, to funnel it upward. Divisions arise, class differences widen. The common good becomes less and less for the benefit of the common. Resentment flares. Parts of a society start to see other parts as a threat for wanting what they have, others for being denied what was previously theirs by right. Lines between classes become battle lines, with the Senate House as the battlefield. Representative factions become bitter enemies, no longer looking for a common good but the opportunity to destroy the other.

This happened in Rome. I believe any hope for this to be curtailed, for a new common good to be established, died with the Gracchi. Just my opinion. But it was beyond this point that the rule of law had been so abrogated, so many red lines crossed, so many traditions holding Senatus Populusque Romanus together erased, that men of ambition began taking the law into their own hands. 

All empires have this turning point. Hard choices often have to be made to prevent it from turning for the worse. And hard choices are deeply unattractive to even the most self-aware of societies, let alone ones like Rome. I'm sure you're waiting for me to ask "when will our hard choice come?" I hope that is the question, and not "when did we make our choice?"