Drawing Attention #5

This week I wanted to dredge up something from the past and talk about a comic that is effectively dead. Launched in June 2010, rightly featured in October 2010 and last updated with an actual page of content in August 2012. But still one of my favourite comics on the Duck, and one that I wish was finished. Holon.

As an all round package, this comic was and still is a beautiful piece of creative work. Abt_Nihil seemed to bring his absolute best to this comic and nailed it. The story is fantastical and intriguing, and at the same times a little chilling. There is mystery and humour. His artwork, which has always worked better in B&W for me, is at its absolute best. And I’ve said it somewhere before, but I love the simplicity of the covers.

It has that vibe of films such as Alien, Close Encounters and of course Space Odyssey, but with Abt’s unique manga inspired touch thrown in for good measure. Abt_Nihil is a solid talent, but Holon is him operating at his best. He stopped the comic (which is a crime!) because maybe he took on too much, and in a way I feel partly responsible. It seems to me that he has perhaps become to entrenched in the running of the community project Heroes Alliance. Don’t get me wrong, I take nothing away from that comic, and I take a small personal pride that from the fact that the HUniverse continues all this time on. It’s just that Abt is a good artist for superhero comics, but I just wish that Abt could return to what he does best.

It was 10 years ago I had the idea to create a shared universe for the heroes on the duck and launched “Heroes Unite”. This ran really well and was popular, and we started to craft this “HUniverse” as it is now known. But there came a time when organizing a community project became a chore, one which was killing my motivation to do anything else. So I decided I didn’t want to continue it. I came up with the name Heroes Alliance and gave it Abt_Nihil to continue to community project. He has done exactly what I knew I couldn’t which is give the time to expand it both creatively and in readership.

Now, I wish he could hand over to someone new. Step off and see if in new hands it will continue to thrive or is it time for it to fade. Then he would be free to turn his attention to other things, and perhaps then, he could return to Holon ;)


Thanks for reading
Nepath

Links:
Article by Nepath of www.theduckwebcomics.com/energize
Drawing Attention to www.theduckwebcomics.com/holon
Created by www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/abt_nihil