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| The Devil's Footprints
#1 — Cover and sample page by Paul Lee and
Brian Horton |
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| Relentlessly modern,
but having one cloven hoof planted in a Lovecraftian
past; an inventive fantasy on magic that is
at the same time researched and authentic;
with The Devil's Footprints,
Scott Allie, Paul Lee, Brian Horton, and Dave
Stewart present us with the real Witches of
Eastwick in a stylish narrative that reimagines
the occult/horror comic in a form suited to
our present time. Recommended.
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| From Scott Allie —
September 29th, 2004: |
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| I want to thank
everyone who supported the first series, and
announce that the second story is now underway.
This time we're doing it as an original graphic
novel, 144 pages, the same size as the first
book, to come out late summer 2005. I've got
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| the script mostly written, and
Paul is beginning layouts today, as he wraps up a Batman fill-in
issue that he and Brian are doing. Brian's been doing some character
designse for the monsters in this second volume, and we're all
knocking those around right now, trying to make sure we have
something unique and arresting. |
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| Paul, Brian, Dave, and I recently
had a story in The
Dark Horse Book of Witchcraft—a non-DF story,
but the same genre and milieu—that you should all check
out. I've got a prose story coming up in Hellboy:
Odder Jobs; the story is set in Ipswich, and has a drawing
by Mignola featuring the Choate Bridge, which Brandon nearly
fell off of in the first series. Next year the bunch of us will
be doing a DF story in The Dark Horse Book of the
Dead, as a little teaser for the graphic novel. |
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| Thanks as always for the support,
and keep an eye out for Devil's Footprints II. |
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| From Scott Allie — June 29th, 2003: |
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| The Devil's Footprints
is set in a very faithful but fictional version
of my home town, Ipswich, Massachusetts. A few weeks
ago a kid I grew up with died there. His name was
John Allan Walker—as kids we called him John
Allan. He was very into Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft.
When we were in junior high school he took to calling
me The Antichrist; see I'd been doing research on
this comic quite early. |
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| I last saw John about
ten years ago. He was living on Central Street in
Ipswich; I based Brandon's apartment on John's.
When I heard he'd drowned in the Ipswich River,
I sat down and wrote a new scene for the DF collection,
in which John and Brandon meet just after Sarah's
incident with the window in issue two. The scene
broke the pace of the story something fierce, and
won't be included in the trade paperback. If you're
curious, you can read
the script. |
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| J.A.W. |
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| Paul suggested dedicating the
collection to John, but the truth is that would be pretty melodramatic.
While John's death has been weighing on me pretty heavy, we
hadn't had anything to do with one another in a long, long time.
Still, here's to John. He was a great artist, and he deserved
better than he got. |
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| Devil's
Footprints #2 |
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Brandon Waite is a young
man who's spent his teenage years studying magic, following,
sometimes too closely, in the footsteps of his recently
deceased father, a sorceror who may or may not have made
pacts with the Devil. Brandon avoids black magic. He has
a beautiful young girlfriend, helps out his brother and
sister-in-law, and lives peacefully in a small New England
town. He's a bit of a pariah, due to the reputation of
his father, but he's still got a decent niche for himself.
As a very hot summer begins, Brandon and his immediate
family are all suffering undiagnosed illnesses. Just as
Brandon starts to look into a possible curse on his family,
the illnesses take a turn for the worse, and his sister-in-law
suffers a miscarriage under very mysterious circumstances.
As Brandon tries to introduce
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| his brother to the world
of magic, and hide the real danger from his girlfriend,
he's forced to look at some of the black-magic traditions
that his father dabbled in, and which he's always sworn
that he'd avoid, for the sake of his own soul. His unwillingness
to tell his girlfriend what's going on and his inability
to really communicate with his brother are mirrored by
a few key mistakes in expressing himself during
magical operations, and serve to place everyone in even
greater danger. The story climaxes
in a demonic battle before the eyes of the entire town.
Their suspicions about the Waite family are confirmed
by the appearance of real devils and the walking dead,
right atop the old town hill. |
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| Devil's
Footprints #3 |
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| Devil's
Footprints #4 |
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In 1997 someone from Caliber
Comics approached me to create a character to be featured
in a sort of occult-detective anthology. At the time I
was thinking of writing a story using the Trump cards
of the Tarot as a structure, an idea I somehow got from
reading Foucault's Pendulum, which does the same thing
with the Qabalistic tree of life—something which,
at the time, I knew nothing about. These ideas came together
in a story in which an old man returns to face up to a
lifetime of misadventures and magical soulsearching. As
I started working on it, I decided I liked the main character,
Brandon Waite, too much, and should deal with him as a
younger man first. In fact, I should tell the story of
how he first left home. The first story to ever see publication
wound up, not surprisingly, at Dark Horse (Wormsong,
in Dark
Horse Presents # 142), and actually |
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William; I couldn't stop going further back in time.
Galen Showman drew that first story, and helped me through
the genesis of Devil's Footprints. Along the way I've
been inspired and encouraged by my wife Melinda, Mike
Mignola, Shawna Ervin-Gore, Randy Stradley, Davey Estrada,
Jamie S. Rich, Alan Moore, Jonell Napper, Susan Horton,
Gary Gianni, Gene Colan, and of course the illustrious
Jefferson Dragons. Now two of my favorite people in
comics, Paul Lee and Brian Horton, are drawing Brandon's
story. This page is really the reason for this whole
site—to show the development and backstory of a
character I really love. |
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| Erissa
Jonna |
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| Dark
Horse Presents #142 featured the debut of
The Devil's Footprints with "Wormsong,"
an 8-page story by Allie and Showman. The story
was reprinted for Lexy Press in Italy, and this
cover was created by Showman and Stewart for that
edition. |
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| The Call introduces
main character Brandon Waite, then age eleven, as
well as family friend Jim Fassbender. The Call
appears in Reveal,
the new anthology from Dark Horse. |
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| Various character
designs for The Devil's Footprints |
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| The first piece of color art done
for The Devil's Footprints, drawn by Galen
Showman (Renfield, Pagliacci) and
colored by Dave Stewart (Hellboy, Fray,
Dollz). The central character is Brandon
Waite. The demon is Idpa, an ancient Sumerian fever
god. The painting is Brandon's father, William.
All the characters have been redesigned by the new
artists, Paul and Brian. Idpa in particular looks
completely different. |
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| Original logo by Galen Showman |
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| The Devil's
Footprint of Ipswich, Massachusetts |
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| I first heard this story quite
a few years ago, and despite Ipswich's rich occult history,
I haven't been able to clarify the details. The First Church
of Ipswich, up on Town Hill's north green, is surrounded on
one side by a large deposit of igneous rock, on which a few
circles of white spray paint highlight a long mark in the rock
credited to the Devil himself. |
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| Behind
the pulpit was an enormous curved mirror, so that while
the congregation heard the puritannical sermons, they
would be looking into their own reflections—no
doubt distorted by the primitive looking glass of the
1700s. This was probably intended to make them take
the word of God more seriously, and consider whether
or not He would deem them worthy of salvation. I've
always thought that it was more likely that they'd be
looking at the reflected faces of their friends and
neighbors, judging them on God's behalf.
A travelling preacher stopped in Ipswich during a tour
of New England, and his sermon was so powerful that
the Devil jumped out of the mirror at him. But the preacher
was such a holy man that he scared the Devil, and chased
him all the way to the steeple of the church. Finally
the Devil leapt off the peak. One foot landed on that
patch of stone around the base of the church. He bounded,
and soared right over the horizon, never to be seen
in Ipswich again. |
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