By Zack Quaintance — Today we have another Kickstarter interview with an excellent creator about an excellent project. The project is Andraste #1 - #3 (of 12), and I recently had a chance to discuss this book with writer Honor Vincent. We also talked about basing comics on history, comics versus prose, and more. You can check out our conversation below, and then when you’re done, you can head over to the Andraste campaign page to back this book!

Check it out…

ZACK QUAINTANCE: Your new project looks great! One thing that I wondered right away was how much of this story has been culled from actual historical events?

HONOR VINCENT: You've asked my favorite question, so forgive me if I go on for a little bit!

The story of Andraste very much came from reading and filling in the (often large and gaping) blanks in the history we have from this time period. The book is set in 1st century Britannia during the second Roman invasion, when the Romans were trying to 'tame' this strange island at the edge of their known world. The writing from that time mainly comes from Tacitus, who was writing a few hundred years later. Pliny the Elder was (probably) actually there, and he's a character in the comic, where he tries to do a good job of just recording what happened. But even if we assumed the Roman records were perfectly reliable, we still only have one half of the story.

The ancient Britons didn't have a writing system the way the Romans did, which brings me to one example of making large historical leaps: the Druids. The Romans went out of their way to both propagandize them as these evil, barbaric people who swanned around in misty groves sacrificing people, and they took pains to wipe them out at Mona. There are some historical records that point to them being integral to the social fabric of Britannia, though, as judges and as the keepers of history and lore. If the Romans were to wipe out the Druids, they could wipe out the cultural memory of the Celts -- it makes military sense, as a conqueror. In the series, Druids are wonkish lorekeepers who travel around Britannia collecting and sharing stories and helping people resolve arguments. At Mona they can indeed open portals to the Otherworld, where they can talk to deities like Macha, Brigid, Old Shuck, and Andraste, keeping the other planes apprised of what's happening on ours.

Early on I struggled with how far afield to go from history, and there was a draft of the story that has no magic or Otherworldliness in it: I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. But it's also a comic! And where's the fun in that, when you can have drawings from Abel Cicero of some very terrifying looking individuals from Celtic mythology? Having so much left out of the history books is liberating, in a sense.

ZACK: What draws you as a creator to this particular time and setting?

HONOR: I first saw Boudicca's statue in 2010 when I was staying in London, and when I realized it was meant to be of a real woman I read about her life for the first time. I have not been able to shake the idea of her since then. The way she acted, the decisions she made, the battlefield speeches they say she gave -- she strikes me as a tragically brave and unlucky person, who was extraordinary and who slammed into a force she just couldn't match.

For those who don't know about her: Boudicca and her husband Prasutagus  were the co-leaders of the Iceni, a wealthy tribe in southeastern Britannia. The Romans made client-king agreements with most of the big tribes in Britannia in order to avoid all-out war and gain power over time in the region. After Prasutagus died, the Romans did not recognize Boudicca or her daughters as 'kings,' because they were women, even though the Celts had plenty of women in leadership and on the battlefield. When Boudicca tried to keep control of her tribe, she and her daughters were dragged to Londinium and brutalized in public by the Romans. But rather than collapsing or conceding defeat, Boudicca raised an army of tens of thousands, and she almost pushed the Romans off the island, until she made a few terrible strategic mistakes. 

The war and events leading up to it must have changed Boudicca as a person, and the book explores that: she goes from someone who enjoys keeping the village running to someone who can only imagine revenge. Her daughters disappear from the historical record after Londinium, but they rode with their mother on that war chariot, and I wanted to know what happened to them, too. In Andraste, one becomes a warrior, and the other a Druid, and the actions of both of them shape the outcome of the war.

So it was certainly her leading me through to this time period! I think what sealed it was going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few months after I came home: I'd never noticed this case of Celtic artifacts in a corner on the first floor, and I saw it for the first time. There's a dagger, and a diadem, and a fibula for keeping a cloak closed -- all of these really personal things that people like her might have worn and loved. It felt like a moment of recognition.

ZACK: As someone who writes both comics and short stories myself, I always have to ask this of others who do the same — how do you balance the writing you do for comics with the writing you do in prose?

HONOR: I don't know that I've found the answer to this or that I ever will! It's an extra trick, right? You have to both get the story out of your head and onto paper, and then you also have to decide which medium is best for that particular story. I love reading and writing comics and prose, but some stories are much better as one or the other. If I'm trying to write a short story after working on the script for Andraste for a while I usually need to read some prose for a few days. And vice versa; if I've been writing short stories I need to palate cleanse with some Conan and Swamp Thing and Head Lopper to get my head back in the game. Don't get me started on poetry, though.

This story announced itself from the get-go as a comic series. I love reading comics like that, and those are really the ones I want to make: stories that I don't think could be told another way. But sometimes it's trial and error, and you have to write the short story or the novel version before you realize oh, shit, this is a comic! There are so many shorts that I'd love to try as comics one day, and I have a novel I've been working on for a while that I suspect will pull that switcheroo on me.

ZACK: Tell me about your creative team on this project. How were you able to bring the team together?

HONOR: Luck, witchcraft, blood sacrifice. You know, Facebook.

I came into this cold, unconnected, and clutching my little script. I found the original inker for the book, Unai Ortiz de Zarate, in a Facebook group I joined called Connecting Comic Artists and Writers -- he'd posted some of his work, and I reached out hoping he'd want to work with me, and he did! He and DC Alonso, our colorist, are friends and frequent collaborators, so we started in on the first half of Issue 1 together. When Unai got sick and couldn't continue working, he and DC put me in touch with Luís Aramburu at the Butxido Agency, who connected me with Abel Cicero, the incredible inker for the series. 

I found Ariel Colón, who is our series cover artist/temporally displaced Renaissance painter, and Micah Myers, our letterer, in the same group. Ditto for our variant cover artists -- Ariel is Aymen Swisy's mentor, and I saw Yusuf Turgut's work on that same group and asked him to do a cover.

I truly don't know how I got lucky enough to end up with these guys. They're all incredibly talented, and kind, and whenever I get pages and covers from them I get up and run in small circles in joy. Even when we've had setbacks they've been nothing but supportive and understanding, to me and to each other.

ZACK: Finally, I recently went through my own first Kickstarter experience, and it was educational, to say the least. How have you prepared for your first campaign on the platform?

HONOR: I don't know if you felt this way too, but I feel like I have simultaneously prepared too much and also not enough? I reached out to the members of yet another comics Facebook group I'm a part of, and they have been phenomenally helpful -- there will be single issues from some of them, including Jason Cooke's fantastic Blake Undying, if we hit our goal! 

I've been slowly building a mailing list and blog since I started getting ready to publish Issue 1. I also have about 11,000 spreadsheets of margins and costs, because I love doing stuff like that. And I've been having a lot of fun putting the story page together and designing fun rewards for people. Making the video was absolutely horrifying because no one - NO ONE - likes seeing or hearing themselves on camera. So it's been a trip!

All of this has been a labor of love. I've been funding it on my own, and I'm going to keep making these books no matter what. I'm so excited to get physical copies into people's hands, and to find more readers who want to read about bloody history and Celtic monsters and Roman armies!

Andraste #1 - #3

Andraste
Writer: Honor Vincent
Artists: Abel Cicero and Unai Ortiz de Zarate
Colorist: DC Alonso
Letterer: Micah Myers
Legend has it that on the eve of her last battle, Boudicca, queen of the Iceni, asked Andraste, the Celtic goddess of victory, for favor. She was fighting the Roman war machine for the right to live as her people had lived before their arrival. After she and her daughters were brutalized and humiliated by the Romans, she carved a swath of destruction through the countryside of Romanized Britain, landing finally in Londinium, which she burnt to the ground. On the day of that last battle, Andraste wouldn't be there for her.
Back This Project Now: Andraste

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.