Storyline

I was inspired by various books, TV series and films: The Lord of the Rings books, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Riverdale, Rick and Morty,  Stranger Things, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse and the film Source Code.

However, a big influence was the Ancient Greek myth about Prometheus. To punish Prometheus for stealing fire from the gods, Zeus was chained to a rock. Every day, an eagle would come and eat part of his liver. Each night, the liver would regrow, and the eagle would come again the next day. It was this idea of repeated punishment that interested me.

For the storyline, I used characters I had created a few years ago – teenage boys, still at school, who get caught up in an alternative world. I wanted the storyline to appeal to teenage boys who are more likely to read comics than girls. The boys needed to have appeal, so I included features in the story to do this: the boys attend learning support in school, have character flaws which I hoped readers could identify with or recognise, but also have redeeming qualities. It was also important that the setting was familiar, so the real world is based mostly in a school, but the alternative world is very different.  I wanted the narrative to be carried by pictures, rather than words, making it a fast read. However, this meant it was important for the pictures to be clear, clean and unambiguous.