The Coronavirus situation has led to interesting changes in media. For one, animation is thriving while live action productions struggle to meet deadlines. Meanwhile when it comes to the comic industry, more and more creators are bringing their projects to life themselves.
One such case is Michael Oden, who has started his own publishing company to help writers do just that. With the intent to become a big name company that houses new names and unheard of talent, Oden has started 9 Realms Publishing, and his first project is called Elysian Fields.
Elysian Fields is currently on IndieGogo and is several hundred dollars from hitting it's goal. While the campaign ends tomorrow, the project has already received nearly seven grand in backing, guaranteeing the book's success. To support the comic, we spoke with the creator himself, Mike Oden.
We picked his brain about his publishing company as well as his new comic. Check out what he had to say below!
Joe: What can you tell me about 9 Realms Publishing?
Michael Oden: 9 Realms Publishing LLC is my personal publishing company that I have started. And it's really exciting to be doing this. One of the reasons I’m doing this is because there isn't a lot of ways for people to be passionate and get their ideas out there. I know DC has a contest to get in new writing talent, but Marvel doesn’t have that at all.
And its a shame because I remember both companies would ask for story line ideas from the fans. And a lot of pitches got sent in that were empty but every now and again there would be one or two that hit dynamite and those people would start to work their way into the industry. George RR Martin actually got his start sending short stories into Marvel.
And making a comic book isn’t something anyone can do. It takes a lot of passion and a lot of heart and lot of drive and it’s as exhausting as it is fulfilling. I wanted to provide an angle for any person to come up to me and give me their elevator pitch. Right now we’re focused on Elysian Fields but the long term idea is to be this big publishing entity that takes in new ideas and new talent and gives them the resources to get a book. That’s the big thing we’re pushing for.
Joe: Can you give me a summary of Elysian Fields?
Mike Oden: The easiest way to describe Elysian Fields is that it’s a tournament based story that takes place in the Underworld. It's a tournament that happens every thousand years. All the pantheons of world mythology, their respective Gods of death have teams of heroic champions that fight on their behalf in the tournament that crowns the next lord of the underworld.
So our story follows Achilles who in the #0 issue dies and goes to his warrior’s heaven. He gets dragged out of this peace in this heaven to go fight in this tournament, which he’s not too keen about but Hades gives him this promise that if he helps him become the Lord of the Underworld again that he will grant him his greatest desire. That’s really what the overall crux of the story is and what we have set up here in the zero issue is kind of getting everybody to the tournament. We showcase the final battle of Achilles and show how he gets to the tournament.
Joe: Why did you focus on Achilles?
Michael Oden: The Iliad was my favorite story growing up and one of my biggest things is that there have been numerous portrayals of Achilles in mass media and none of them have really hit the mark. This provided me to showcase the characters I like from the Iliad and the Odyssey. I’m looking forward to bringing my view of Achilles to life. I feel that people are going to really like watching him fight but people are also going to hate him a bit because he’s an arrogant ass. He’s very hot headed and very brash and as I said I wanted this to be as authentic as possible.
If you look at the character design one of the big points that I emphasised when I was talking to Marcello was that he has to look young. He has to look like he’s in his early to mid twenties. Because if you go by the actual timeline of Ancient Greece Achilles was between the ages of 13 to 16 when he went to Troy. He was a child soldier and this plays into a lot of his psyche because when you’re being told that you’re the best Greek warrior in existence from the age of thirteen and that you’re going to be leading men into combat on the shores of some distant land, that’s going to get to your head and that’s going to affect how you perceive things.
So as fun as Achilles has been to write I think there are a lot of people who will look at my version of Achilles and think he’s kind of an ass. And I’m going very authentic to the myth where Achilles was dipped in the river of Styx. And so he was invulnerable during his life with the exception of his heel. And so later on I play with the idea that he’s never been wounded before. And in this tournament for the first time he can be injured. How is that going to affect him? Will he be able to brush it off or will he go into a full breakdown?
Joe: Where did the idea initially come from for this project?
Michael Oden: The chief inspiration was my love of mythology and that was spurred by the Iliad and stories like that. But I will say that the big thing that pushed me towards doing this tournament style book and the project that probably gave me a lot of influence as to how I wanted to handle things was the Fate Stay anime series. I really enjoy the manga and anime but I haven’t really gotten into the video games. But I saw this as a cool way to have all of these people be in their own element as long as I have a way to summon them all.
Like, in the Fate series there are mages who are summoning heroic spirits through artifacts that they get a hold of. And they use these spirits to fight in what’s called a holy grail war where they go after an omnipotent wish granting device. I thought that was really cool so I was like, well how can I put these people in a tournament and what should the stakes be? Obviously everyone in the Fate series wants to make the wish that makes them top dog. So I thought, how could I do that? Every single religion has their own god of death so I thought, here we go, pull heroic spirits from cultural stories and give them a chance to fight for their god to become the new lord of the underworld.
What other gods will be appearing? On team Hades you will have Achilles, Theseus from the Labyrinth, and Heracles. Gilgamesh and Onkidu, Nergal, the Mesopotamean god of death. You’ll see Osiris and Anubis and Imhoptep, the person credited for building the pyramids. He will be the single champion for their round and it will be very exciting.
I have plans to go into gaelic folklore and a few Arthurian characters but it will be done in a way that I feel like everybody overlooks. Obviously the Norse will have time to shine in this, you can’t have a tournament without the Greeks fighting the Norse -- and I’m saving that for the second to last arc. I have a lot of it plotted out and its going to be insane. The current lord of the underworld is Lucifer so they will be going up against some judeo christian figures which is going to be really fun. You don’t see them for very long but you see the champions of Yama the Japanese god of death. Miyamoto Musashi using his wooden sword, Hanzo Hitore, and the samurai bladesmith Masamune.
What do you guys think of these comments from Michael Oden? Check out the preview for Elysian Fields below and share your thoughts in the usual spot!
Achilles fought with a fiery rage for glory during his short life when he arrived in the underworld and reunited with his beloved comrade Patroclus, he thought he could finally spend eternity enjoying the things he missed out on in life. This was not the case, after a momentary reunion the Best of the Greeks was ferried away to an amphitheater where he was to fight alongside other heroes of his world: Herakles and Theseus, for the God Hades to regain his dominion over the underworld.
With the world’s pantheons expanding, and past pantheons crumbling, Hades is willing to grant Achilles his greatest desire.
Elysian Fields' Indiegogo Campaign ends tomorrow. You can snag your copy or contribute to the campaign here.