Working On Monday

Mean Streak kicks off the first arc of our comic book Eclipse. But it’s journey to becoming the comic’s first chapter has been a bumpy ride.

After the decision was made to handle every aspect of producing and publishing the comic autonomously we spend several years trying to find “a way in”. Eclipse, which had always been an umbrella-name for various ideas, had evolved into an extended universe of intricate design and we struggled to find the right way to introduce the audience to it. After shelving several failed attempts at a first chapter the answer finally presented itself in the form of another one of our projects.

In the early noughties, prolific media artist Devion Dark had joined the ranks. He met with Maahes Jones from the comics team to discuss the outlining of a new project. They felt that there was a narrative missing from the realm of fantasy-horror, something they wanted to see, preferably on the silver screen. It seemed however that in pop culture following conventional wisdom meant everyone had become stuck in the same formula. Figuring that if they’d want that missing element to become part of the narrative, they’d have to be the ones to deliver it. They began working on a script for a motion picture called Maandag (Monday). The story followed a girl called Luna who struggles with mundane existence only to discover there’s more to the world than just life as average Jane. The story, much like Eclipse did a decade earlier, reflected the frustrations of those that don’t fall in line. The script itself went down a similar avenue in that, while stories like these have existed in pop culture since the early twentieth century, only a handful are written half way decently. With that in mind the screenplay was written with great care for its thematics, which is in part why, to this day, we continue to be so clandestine about what the story is really about.

Meanwhile the comics team was still struggling with the introduction issue until one day we had an epiphany. The journey of discovery the protagonist in the screenplay made was essentially the same journey of discovery we were hoping to send the audience of our comics on. The screenplay was adapted to fit the world of Eclipse and renamed Mean Streak. The writers finally had something to work with and the Zeal Arc was born. Attention has since shifted away from the motion picture but we have certainly not forgotten about it.