(originally posted by the artist here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2724489/here)

Ladies and gents, in anticipation of the imminent release of HC3, allow me to lift just one little corner of the veil…

Private Military Companies operate on the fringes of the international conventions of warfare. They can provide a cost-effective altrnative to regular military personnel and resources, and can be employed for purposes which might be too politically sensitive for national armed forces. From providing security to ‘friendly’ foreign dignitaries to securing areas officially no longer patrolled by an occupying force to performing duties abroad with native employees, PMCs have grown in international significance over the last few decades.

None more so than Praetor, founded by the reclusive Irish industrialist Connor Skromeda. Early in his career he was mired in controversy surrounding his supposed involvement with the IRA in his youth, and suggestions that he continued to be affiliated, none of which could ever be proved. What was evident however was his ability to evaluate and seize opportunities in a heartbeat.

Founded during the late seventies Praetor was originally a private security company contracting to businesses in Galway and smaller cities in Connacht province, it quickly expanded on a national scale, but it was not until the company branched out to Northern Ireland that its explosive growth truly started. Carefully fostering a corporate culture of unity, Skromeda was able to create teams of employees whose backgrounds suited the area of their deployment that included sufficient diversity to defuse local cultural tensions. Specific examples include a predominantly Irish Catholic law firm operating from an office on the notoriously Protestant Shankill Road in Belfast, which enjoyed a near-perfect security and safety record for the duration of its contract with Praetor.

Seizing on his company’s informal reputation as a ‘peacemaker’ the company began a campaign of European expansion, with each new acquisition overseen by Skromeda personally, whose formula of unity through diversity proved particularly effective in areas of high ethnic tension, such as the contested and unrecognized ‘Basque country’ which straddles the border of Spain and France at the Bay of Biscay. Creating teams which represented the local and opposing factions, all operating under the Praetor banner, the local operators had high cultural sensitivity and conveyed intimidating strength simply by being seen working together.

Only the Cyprus operation marred this record of excellence, and simultaneously spurred the evolution of the company from private security to private military.

Skromeda had foregone personally overseeing new acquisitions during 1983 to oversee the centralization of the company’s administrative facilities, and the lack of hands-on leadership was likely the direct cause of the Cyprus operation’s failure. Instead of deterring culturally-motivated aggression through employee diversity, the Praetor staff deployed to cypriot businesses proved a lightning-rod which ignited after the Turkish Cypriots’ Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

While the political upheaval didn’t include official armed conflict, substantial criminal violence was directed at the Praetor offices in Nicosia, and companies which contracted with Praetor. In response, and without Skromeda’s direct involvement, the local management requisitioned personnel and assets that pushed the envelope of acceptable force by private companies.

Skromeda’s response, upon becoming aware of the situation and taking personal control, was radical. The local operation was reorganized as an independent subsidiary, its deployment of heavy armament retroactively validated by its designation as a PMC. Rather than face public embarassment and litigation, both by the local governments and by the relatives of the deceased employees, Skromeda spurred the company’s second major growth spurt.

Instead of a failure in private security as Praetor Cyprus, the newly formed Praetor PMC became an instant success as a peacekeeping force on the UN-administered border zone between the reshaped Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, paving the way for the global expansion that ingrained Praetor in the global theatre of conflict.

With the original corporate security division continuing to represent the public face of the company, the PMC subsidiary was further bolstered with divisions specializing in counterintelligence, cybercrime, identity theft, as well as training centers throughout the world that provide country-specific training to foreign military personnel serving in the area.

Controversy continues to surround the company, and Skromeda personally, ranging from accusations of fostering local conflicts to prolong their peacekeeping contracts and a long-running investigation into the classified operations performed by Praetor under its contract with the former East-German Bundesrepublik prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, to continued suggestions of Skromeda financing or arming paramiliatary organizations he’s personally sympathetic to, including the IRA.

Despite this, Praetor PMC is thriving and stands head and shoulders above their competitors in their ability to operate in conflict areas such as the Israeli-Palestinian border, the Korean Demilitarized zone and the Kurdistan region, especially since the company’s reorganization in late 2001.

Most recently the company has been in the American spotlight due to the deployment of Praetor assets in urban pacification, providing SWAT-equivalent services in municipalities whose budget doesn’t support the maintenance of standing teams of their own. In some industrial areas where Praetor was already the primary security contractor, local police have outsourced their patrols and crime-response to Praetor units, a trend so successful (and economic) that some larger municipalities are investigating the possibility of replacing portions of their law enforcement bodies with Praetor equivalents.

When asked about the concerns some pundits are voicing about the privatization of the police, and what might be the next frontier for Praetor, Skromeda has been reported to have simply smiled, and is quoted as saying “One brick at a time,” declining comment when pressed for expansion on that cryptic statement.

Heathen City 3 will debut next week at Mephit Fur Meet in Tennessee and Eurofurence in Germany. I’ll be attending Eurofurence, where I’ll give a series of panels on Heathen City, writing, art, editing and publishing. HC3 is currently available for preorder at discounted price with our friends at FurPlanet.com. The Praetor logo was designed by Chris Goodwin.

- Alex F. Vance

Three months after the events of the first book, the world seems to have calmed down. For those three months, things seem quiet, and everyone who survived what happened on the Corinthia gets to catch their breath… even if that means being hooked up to life support.

But there are shadows moving on the horizon. As our heroes struggled to survive, they brushed against powerful forces, and fate has a way of turning things back on you. Powerful forces like a multinational private military contractor that’s simply itching to expand their domestic urban pacification contract and privatize the police.

Tony and Imelda Caulfield, mother and son, find themselves locked in a cycle of murder, euthanasia, forgiveness and rage that transcends time, space, life and death. Malloy learns all too plainly that anything he touches withers, and anyone whose life he enters is worse off for it. And one lone cop on the wrong side of sixty tilts at windmills one last time.

Guns, conspiracies, betrayal, madness… and just that faintest glimmer of love, and hope of a normal life. This is Heathen City at its core.

This third volume will debut on September 1 in both the US and Europe. Alex Vance will premier the book at Eurofurence, while FurPlanet will represent it at Mephit Furmeet. For all pre-orders and all sales at those conventions, HC3 is discounted to $19.95 – and to help new readers get up to speed, we’re also offering a bundle with all three issues for $15 off! Check out http://heathencity.furplanet.com

Early life

Multiple conflicting and equally implausible reports exist about this dog’s early life, but one thing is clear: he’s been shrewd, artful and steeped in illicit activities from an early age, with numerous aliases even before he came of age. His official history solidifies somewhat in the early ’90s when, using the name Deacon McCall (see No Other God Before Me in Sofawolf’s fiction anthology X) he was remanded to the custody of an English priory under the tutelage of Father Argyle.

His criminal activities continued to adulthood, with drug trafficking and burglary furnishing him with an income. He made the acquaintance of Owen Zelazny around 1999 and while in Paris they tossed a coin to decide where they’d move next: Amsterdam or the newly-renamed city of Maranatha.

Maranatha City

After settling in Maranatha, Malloy expanded his criminal repertoire and became affiliated with one McIlwain, a significant figure in the upper echelon’s of the city’s rapidly dwindling criminal population. As the economic significance of the city declined in the early 2000s and major crime operations moved elsewhere, petty crime ran rampant among the remaining population. Malloy distinguished himself among his fellow felons by a makeshift moral code precluding the sale of drugs to underaged kids.

At some point in 2005 Malloy was apprehended by the Maranatha Police Department and the multitude of charges brought against him landed him in Maranatha Penitentiary. A voracious autodidact, Malloy was one of the more broadly-educated inmates and had prior dealings with a modest but significant portion of the prison population. This, coupled with his existing nickname ‘Preacher’ led to him adopting an informal role as chaplain, leading prayer groups for Christians, Jews and Muslims, and leading open oecumenical debates.

Presumably these were, at least in part, a cover for his preparations to escape, as in late 2005 he was central to the instigation of a prison riot. Almost simultaneously with the outbreak of violence the prison’s IT systems were critically compromised, with even the hadwired failsafes shortly thereafter being overridden, apparently from within the administrative stronghold.

Malloy is known to have escaped, with at least two fellow inmates and reportedly one prison guard.

AMAZING.

See how many differences you can discern!

Also, testing out a new blogging app for iPad, so pardon any awkward formatting or obnoxiousness

- Alex F. Vance

Disposable characters in particular are difficult to convey because they’re only on-screen for a few frames, and usually they’re too busy moving the plot forward to expand ont heir personal histories and motivations. The same applies to their dialog; they only get a handful of lines and those typically need to propel the plot as well, leaving less room to define their character. I try to assign different speech patterns for different characters depending on their origin, personality and emotional state, but that’s also tough to convey in only a few lines and its value must be weighed against the impact an unusual turn of phrase might have on the flow of the reader’s experience.

Thankfully, the interplay between text and art and the placement of multiple characters synchronously allows much more to be inferred by the reader han is expressed by the page. It also harnesses the creativity and insight of both writer and artist, since a good artist (such a Zoosh and the many others I’ve been fortunate enough to work with over the years) does more than just draw what’s in the script.

Allard Bellamy, the horse thug from Heathen City Vol. 1 I referenced in my last journal, originally had neither a name nor dialogue — nor even a species. In the script he was one of ‘three thugs’. Seeing him as a horse, in a leather jacket, jeans, and with his mane bound in a pony-tail, suddenly told a lot about this character. Caulfield employed mostly carnivores, with the exception of the muscular and dim-wittedly optimistic bull he referred to as ‘Beef’, though whether that’s a nickname or a pejorative is left unclear — and the exception of Allard.

In Heathen City Vol. 2, Tiber Ferrum alludes to the claustrophobia and other anxieties herbivores suffer in urban environments, though he may be referring specifically to ‘hoofers’, those rare throwbacks whose genes express anatomical features more common among their animal kindred than anthropoids of the same species. Tiber had hooves, Allard didn’t, so maybe it’s easier for regular anthropoid herbivore to deal with the stress of the urban landscape. Or maybe Allard’s just that tough.

Further, the easiest way to define any two characters is to have them talk to each other about each other. The complexities interplay between language, intellect and emotion allows each party to say as much about themselves as they do about the other. Someone who puts down someone else’s addle-brained ideas is intelligent, but a bully. Someone who ignores the bully’s barb and persists in his assessments is rational, but unassertive. And so, in only a half-dozen frames and about as many lines of dialogue, the personalities and relationships between Allard, Wayne and the unnamed third member of the team sent up to Malloy’s apartment are clearly understood by the time they make it to the door.

This same power allows a pact to be struck with the reader when you’re writing a mystery, which is what Heathen City is. You make a habit of delivering rich characters through the techniques described above, so that when there’s a character you explicitly don’t want to describe, you can get away with that. You can load the character up with clues, visual and verbal, which make no sense without context, and if you do this right, the reader will accept it. The pact between reader and writer, in this case, is that the character clearly expresses traits and qualities that suggest there is more to him than can presently be understood, and that when the ‘key’ is delivered, he will make sense.

Meanwhile, as with any good mystery, the reader gets to enjoy the thrill of curiosity, finding the clues that let him formulate the questions he wants answered and developing hypotheses to evaluate and evolve with every new piece of information he receives. Take, for example, the various executives Tiber’s office in HC2. As Zoosh is all too aware, every one of them has a name, a backstory and significant personality traits, and in some cases a relationship with one of the other attendees. In the panel where Tiber places his hands on the shiny table, and we see all of them arrayed, Zoosh has in fact captured the essence of everyone in that room — the reader simply has no way of decoding what he’s seeing.

In HC3 we’ll meet one or two of those present in more attentive detail, and some of their posture, behavior and attitude will make a little more sense.

Pay attention, if you will, to the threateningly arrogant Irish wolf Connor Skromeda, if you have a copy of HC2 on hand.

Look at those pretty, pretty eyes…

- Alex

When we first started distributing the six-page samplers for HC back in january ’08, I was struck by the number of responses we got to the taser-totin’ horse character that was in there. He was from a particularly dynamically-illustrated sequence where a set of Caulfield’s thugs bust into Malloy’s apartment. Maybe it was the cool look (there’s something just so right about a leather-jacketed stud with his mane in a pony-tail) or the intensity of his posture, but a few people came away thinking he was a major player in the story.

The sequence was originally going to play out silent, with only a philosophical voice-over from Caulfield, but it was clear these little people deserved better. The horse got a name (Allard Bellamy) and the thugs each got enough lines to establish their personalities. Depending on the reader’s disposition, Allard’s either icy cool or a pretentious prick who deserved what he got — but even then, I made sure we got a glimpse of him later on, to see just how severely his uppance had come, and let the reader ponder whether Allard really did deserve the fate that was dealt him.

In Vahnfox’s story for HC2, “What It’s All About” this happened with even more intensity. Originally this was going to be a straight-up heist story whose value derived from the cleverness and excitement of a break-in, with Malloy joined by some old friends from his criminal social circles. Vahnfox and I get on like a house on fire (minus the screaming bystanders) and our conversations would never stay focused on the job at hand very long, so as he created character sketches, I began to notice parallels between the art he was producing and the experiences we shared as people.

Both of us are older brothers, both of us had strong female figures in our lives, both of us had the same experience of competing with our younger siblings until we moved out of the house, and then forged a very strong, loving relationship with the snot-nosed brats we’d previously derided.

It started to feel like these guys were family. That they were different species didn’t matter (in the Maranathaverse, anthropoid polyspecies’ bifurcated tetraploid genome and the agency of the servant molecule permit species templates to be inherited recessively and express many generations down the line), rather it only accentuated what family is: a churning contrast between unity and disparity.

It was a perfect fit for Malloy, too, who started out as an exaggerated, cookie-cutter archetype of the manic, cool, alternately ballsy and melancholy Byronic hero, but who harbored deep and secret self-loathing, denying himself his profound yearning for peace and family, whether by blood or otherwise.

And that brings us to HC3, doesn’t it?

In the third book, the story branches into dramatic new territory, both in terms of action and, for want of a better word, mindfuckery. As the stories developed it became clear that the book needed some anchor points, some means to ground the reader and remind them that, while the story often arches into the hyperreal, the principles of mortality, happiness and love all still apply, no matter how archetypal some of the characters may be. The book needed some regular people.

These guys only appear for a scant few pages, and we likely won’t ever see ‘em again, but it always amazes me how much creativity can come out of working with an artist. Check out the character designs attached, for Mark, Lucy and the Kids (they’re not Mark & Lucy’s kids!) and see how much they convey, even without words.

Mark and Lucy are married, but he’s a rolly-polly, nerdy raccoon while she’s a drop-dead-gorgeous, sophisticated woman. The simple fact of this dichotomy speaks volumes about their relationship, how there must be a regular sense of inadequacy on Mark’s part, the feeling that he doesn’t deserve her or that she can do so much better — and that she might. Perhaps, in her social circles, Lucy endures some barbed mockery of her husband, which she can never quite fully put out of her mind and which bothers her far more than she’ll admit even to her hubby.

But they’re together, and have been for a while, and in HC3 they’re just moving into a new house together. A nice one, a big one, and for a young couple like these two to move into a house like that implies, without it being mentioned in dialog even once, that they don’t plan for it to be just the two of them living in that house for very long.

The Kids are a bit of a different story. This Scoobie gang of high school teens is clearly very diverse, recalling the unity/disparity contrast of the Miles family, but with a different basis: like all teenagers they’re in the process of individuating themselves, apparently with few restraints. Tran, the short, stocky dalmatian has all the hallmarks of a goofy oaf, but in his chest beats the heart of a wolf. Fearless, confident and full of energy, he forms the heart of the group, among whom his attire, at least, paints him the most ‘regular’.

West had a lot of fun with the character designs, and it shows! Lulu, the mouse girl, became a loligoth (when West told me that I actually had to look up the word — way to make a guy feel old!) with layers upon layers of frilly clothing, and little plastic spiders dangling from her umbrella. She evokes a sense of directionless, timid yet passionate creativity; I imagine she’s secretly really into arts and crafts, ‘enhancing’ her wardrobe with her own modifications. Her diary must be a spectacular tome covered in decorative affectations and glitter.

Bea, being tall and lanky is a natural beauty with an airy, slightly out-of-sync disposition. Often she innocently trails the tail-end of a conversation, her mind prone to wandering, but she can be a lot sharper than the others might expect from her. From the mouths of babes!

Rory, the buck, is the odd man out in a group of odd dudes and dudettes. He’s handsome and cool and comes from money, so, really, Rory should be part of the school’s social elite, who spit upon the freaks he hangs out with. However, he’s intimidated by the expectations his peers and parents heap on him, and he’s man enough to know what he does and doesn’t like. In this group he’s accepted and appreciated for who he is, rather than what his last name is or how he looks, and he likes that Tran tends to take the lead and introduce adventure and ambition. He was designed as a young buck, lean and good-looking, and since he has developing nubs on his head rather than full antlers, this excellently illustrates the precarious divide between his masculine potential and his present immaturity.

I love the Kids, and I love Mark and Lucy, just as I loved the Mileses. It pains me to see them used only so briefly, so incidentally, because I’d be more than happy to write entire issues devoted only to their adventures… and if the readers agree, then I guess the artists and I have done a good job!

- Alex F. Vance

Here we see an expressionistic manifestation of one of Tony Caulfield’s experiences under the care of medical professionals.

I’ve never, personally, had a bad hospital experience, but the concept of the medical world as a clinical, dehumanizing hell has long haunted me. In particular, there was a scene in the film Requiem For A Dream, near the end, where an old woman is being force-fed by two attendants. The male nurses chat casually with each other while they stuff the feeding tube down her throat, oblivious to the fact that she’s in deep confusion and distress, since she can’t communicate. What was especially striking about that was the fact that they weren’t evil guys, they weren’t even being careless.

Poor little Tony isn’t quite so lucky. His body is broken in many places, and here these ‘hands of blue’ are poking and prodding and pulling from all directions, caring only about fixing his body, oblivious to the fragile mind that inhabits it.

And yes, Phantastus is as big a Firefly geek as I am — I gave a nerdy little squee when I saw she’d actually named one of the layers in the Photoshop file ‘hands of blue’

Original here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3648051/#cid:27125833)

I gave him a big-ass laundry list of a trillion things I wanted crammed into one image. He fought back and made a sketch that contained only a billion things, saying that any more would look dumb, like a birthday cake that’s also a pretzel and a fish taco. I put my foot down and pretended to cry, but Kaji saw through it — artists are clever like that. I screamed and pulled his hair, he gave me a wedgie and scratched at my eyes and this whole thing was really starting to work for me when his girlfriend came home and we thought it’d just be best if he just drew the cover instead.

Blood, guns, chemistry, logotyped letterhead and the fragmentary scraps of significant characters in the different circumstances in which they find themselves… What more can you ask for?

I like it when a cover encodes the story that’s in the book. If there’s any chance I’ll try to think of some way to even include the ending right on the front page, hidden beneath layers of symbolism.

A mugshot. A mis-developed photo of a hospitalized figure. A feline woman in a pearl necklace shedding a tear. And whoever that scary, fangy gentleman is in the lower right.

What do you think it means?

With Heathen City #2 I wanted to deliver an extremely rich and diverse narrative and opened up many cans of wiggly, creepy little plot-worms. Exposing some of Malloy’s activities prior to Owen’s arrival. Showing the very beginning of Tony Caulfield’s character, and his mother’s, and then reveling in those carefree days when The Boys had the whole world at their feet — and the introduction of Tiber Ferrum, swathed in mystery. I strove to weave a colorful tapestries with tons of blank spaces in it, spanning large expanses of time and intimating deep enigmas, speaking of bloodlines and creating patterns of behavior that indicated, through their contrast, the unexplored presence of substantial events between them.

However, this introduced a crucial flaw: distraction.

While I’m very satisfied with each story and tremendously proud of each arc’s final form, especially the enormous creative influence and expression of the awesome artists who brought them to life, and while I feel that the structure of the arcs combined creates a framework wherein the stories that explicitly aren’t told are almost as interesting as those that are, there was just too much going on for the reader to bond with the second book as much as they had with the first.

The through-line of the book was implied rather than expressed, and while I do love to make my readers work to figure out what they’re looking at, the book as a whole didn’t make it clear what the reader should care about and what they should take away at the end. Every story an sich was tight and had a clear arc, and they were thematically, emotionally and causally connected, but it needed just a bit more continuity for the reader to connect more fully with the characters.

I love the modular structure of the second book. It has obvious benefits for production, since illustrating a full comic is a taxing job for any artist, let alone when they have day jobs and studies and a way-too-dense script from a persnickety and overambitious writer. That Ayato was able to do it for the first book still astonishes me.

Writing shorter, denser scripts with a strong arc presents its own challenges and forces me to be economical, constantly compressing the plot, excising that which doesn’t contribute enough, no matter how cool it might be on its own. Every beat, every gag is examined over and over to ensure it serves a functional purpose: establish peril, heighten suspense, misdirect attention, relieve tension — and the stories are stronger for it.

I’m certain it’s possible to combine the advantages of each approach, and I’m confident Heathen City Vol. 3 will demonstrate that. Modular stories by different artists for intense, highly-polished storylines with a mouthwatering variety of styles — but still bound by continuity, tightly related, to preserve the reader’s investment as they weave through the plotlines. Where HC2 might be discribed as an anthology, HC3 is an ensemble piece.

So this time around I even more closely evaluated the merit of each plot element, each scene and each character to strike a balance between the thrill of discovering new or previously-hinted-at aspects of this universe, and making sure the reader at all times knows what to care about, and carry that investment through to the end of the book.

And that means there wasn’t a place for nice, juicy, indulgent sex scenes like those in the first two books except for just one, to establish a new character in the context of this morally ambiguous and hedonistic world. At the same time, the sex itself, the exchange of bodily fluids and the nature of procreation suggest a particularly maudlin preoccupation of this character that’s only very gently hinted at.

There were two — maybe three, at a stretch — beats where I could have slipped a sexy interlude, and perhaps a year ago I might have done so simply because they would have been delectable scenes, but my assessment this time around was that their presence wouldn’t benefit the story as much as their absence. They’d break the urgency and suspense, they’d trivialize the danger and emotional challenges the characters are facing.

Now, you know me. I think sex is just super and I love having it, and thinking about it, and seeing it and writing it, so this certainly doesn’t mean I’m turning into a moral snob overnight. Heathen City is for me as much as it is for my audience and if I’m going to invest years of my life and thousands of my hard-earned Euros I’m going to make damn sure the result is a story thatI want to read more than anything else I could pick up at a con!

And I’m going to make sure, with every chance I get, to make my audience feel the same way.

- Alex Fucking Vance