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The Grasp Of Hate


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Sorry you clicked on me promoting my work. Rippa said this would be okay. 

July 23rd The Grasp Of Hate will be released. It has been a very long journey from me deciding to write a story about the Golden Age Daredevil to this book coming out.

Grasp Of Hate is not some catchy title. It represents what the book is about. I started wanting to do a martial arts story that became a Kaiju story. It morphed into this dark. moody story, I wrote when I was going thru some very bad times that I could not lighten up. The more I tried, the darker it got. But I kept going and going. I went back and fleshed out characters and completely changed others.

A year and a half ago I finally found the happy ending the story deserved and I needed.

I did more tinkering, having to go back to a bad place to give an origin to the main villain.

Then my friend and artist Neil began to help in the editing. He added some great things. He helped create the Inspectre. Doing a design I loved, far from what I envisioned as a fairly simple super hero design.
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July 23rd, please go and buy the book. It is the best work I can produce and I feel it is a good and unique story.

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Here is the link to the book I released last year. http://bit.do/CosmicForces-com

I think I botched that release badly. I am trying to do a better job this time. Being thoughtful with promotion.

 


 

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Is it okay if I open up here? 

I am doing my best to promote this. But I don't know what I am doing. I am looking for a new apartment and it is a load of stress. I just need a win right now. I know this book is good. But I have no idea how to express it. It is weird, violent and off putting. I wanted it to be about anger, hate and love. How they are entangled. I did it under the veil of super heroes, martial arts, demons and elder gods.

I have been writing it off and on since 2012. The first portion appeared on my old blog, if anybody was reading then. I could never trust the analytics on Blogger because of the damn bots. I started doing a follow up and would write it off and on. But as I was suffering from severe depression and the book went places. But I am happy and even proud of it. 

My main hold up was I could not let my darkness overwhelm it. I had to find a happy ending. I could not kill the protagonist wife as I had planned originally. When that happened I had to go back and give her a life, make her more than a person to provide a kid for the future. I needed a tragedy to move her in life. I had to think of something that was not a cliche. I hopefully found something. It was personal to me, but not in a way anybody would notice. 

I guess this is my way of saying, please support my work. 

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So let me go more into the actual story. 

I have loved the golden age Daredevil since the first time I saw him in a Wizard issue. He has two great costumes and the boomerang gimmick is cool but credible enough. I saw The Claw in the same issue. He had such a vile demonic look and aura. Having the better super villain trappings of Yellow Peril but without most of the racist elements. I say most because even early, his underlings were unfortunately colored yellow. 
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As time passed Claw himself became more and more yellow, both in personality and appearance. Erik Larsen tried to convince me he was always yellow, but I think he was meant to be green and coloring at the time made him look yellowish. In one appearance he was the Green Claw. In any case, I wanted no mistake to be made he was inhuman. 

But the idea of this tiny island ruled by an immortal demonic being who could grow giant and had access to various bizarre gadgets and sorcery was a cool concept to me. Also in the age of the justified villain, there is something to a villain who is evil for the sake of evil. Even in the golden age bad guys would have a revenge story, wanted cash or was a Nazi serving a higher cause in their mind. Claw just enjoyed the misery and suffering of others. Now I would not want every bad guy to be like that, but in this case I love it. 

So the base of this story is Duel-Devil vs Master Claw. 

So why did I rename Daredevil beyond the shadow of Marvel Comics? Initially I was just going to call him "Daredevil" like Erik Larsen did in Savage Dragon a few years back. But as I was writing this, the character was changing a bit from the Golden Age hero who inspired him. I also had a situation from when I was using the Green Lama, another public domain hero. A publisher had dug up a widow and now a child to claim ownership. They had just enough money to big league people. Now I can build a case for why Lama is public domain. From AC Comics using him for over twenty years with no copyright notices to Project Super Powers using him with no notices I can find. 

Again I was basing my version off of the radio drama and comics which are public domain. But like with Daredevil, I went in a very different direction that was more cosmic and religious in nature. So in a later story I renamed him the Gold Sama and went from there. The name Duel-Devil came to me and I thought it sounded cool. 

So I know I wanted to do Duel-Devil vs Claw. With that basic idea, I went and started thinking of how I would get to that point. One thing that bugged me with the original stories, which I really do think are great. Was how Claw did not kill this guy immediately? He is evil and has no need of him. So its a lot more stooging, which is entertaining, but can't work in what I am wanting to accomplish here. 

What I can promise you is quality action that is character driven. Every action has consequences and meaning. On July 23rd, please come and join me. It is only three dollars for your kindle and free if you have Amazon Prime. 

If you PM me here, you can get it earlier and cheaper. A few people here have seen it and Matt D is producing a foreword if his schedule permits. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

https://www.facebook.com/events/167477974118601/

This is the event for the release of Grasp Of Hate. I am thinking of doing a real life release party for it  But I am swamped with moving and packing to plan it.  But if you want to go to the page and click going or interested, it would be a big sign of support. 
 

Quote

 If you have read any of Victor's previous works, you know that they are driven by his own personal experience. I say it in the kindest, most positive way that the all-too literal demons his heroes face are often the demons of his own life and within his own heart, distilled into tales of oft tragic villainy. In Cosmic Forces: The Grasp of Hate, those demons come to life not necessarily as a specific character, but instead as a setting: the Nation of Ricca. What could have just been a cliched pastiche, the jungle setting of dozens of pulps and war tales, instead teems with dread, danger, and most of all corruption. An enemy can be punched, subdued, but when the seething air and the ground itself conspire to drag you down, whoever you are, whatever you belief, survival becomes an inner struggle, not just an external one. That manifestation of the personal is all the more important in this tale, even relative to Victor's other stories. This is instead of crafting brand new characters, his primarily protagonist and antagonist are drawn from stories of old. Bart Hill, the Daredevil of the Golden Age, is a good man who intends good deeds, but his tool to mend the world is violence and he must ever face the doom of becoming the very monster that he wages war with. That monster is the Claw, truly a creature of Ricca's dark, inescapable structure, one that Victor strained to flesh out and make, if not human, if not sympathetic, than at least understandable. Ultimately, this is a advemture story, one of action, but like all the best of these, it is about something as well. Here, it is about man's agency in the heart of a world he did not intend and a world he cannot simply bear. It is about the necessity of nurture in allowing us to be able to overcome the basest elements of our nature, about how the capriciousness of one's birth can make all the difference in the world. It is about the lengths we must go to preserve our hope, our spirit, our goodness, even as we ever push back against the darkness. So steel your resolve and delve into the Nation of Ricca, meet characters of the past reenvisoned for the present, and hope that when you emerge, if you emerge, you have not lost too much of yourself in the journey.

I was very happy with this and glad I have such great friends in this world. 

Bit.Do/EyesOfClaw-com is the link to preorder the book. 

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This sounds like a blast. I'll be checking it out (probably via Kindle) when it lands. 

 

Also, you may want to contact some comics related sites to promo it. I *know* Bleeding Cool allows for submissions to promote work as they're constantly posting comics Kickstarter hype written by the Kickstarter's owner. I feel like The Beat's readership might dig this too but I'm not sure whether they'd allow you a pitch. Maybe send a review copy to comics sites that aim more or less for that demo too. 

It definitely sounds like a concept that has legs and could easily find a audience.

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15 hours ago, The Unholy Dragon said:

This sounds like a blast. I'll be checking it out (probably via Kindle) when it lands. 

 

Also, you may want to contact some comics related sites to promo it. I *know* Bleeding Cool allows for submissions to promote work as they're constantly posting comics Kickstarter hype written by the Kickstarter's owner. I feel like The Beat's readership might dig this too but I'm not sure whether they'd allow you a pitch. Maybe send a review copy to comics sites that aim more or less for that demo too. 

It definitely sounds like a concept that has legs and could easily find a audience.

Thank You, this has really lifted my spirits. We put the final touches on the book today, adding art from various Lev Gleason books.

The book only has one female character. At the time I started I had been scared to write for women. To be honest I was scared I would look like a serial killer. There was also not a good place in this story beyond his wife. 

So I went ahead and did initially a mild romance. Which was for what is now the first section of the story. I later started doing a follow up and I knew I wanted Bart Hill and Tonia to have a daughter for an adult hero in 1986. 

When I knew Tonia was going to live, I struggled with a new problem, how do I not have the bad guy not kill her and the adult Wise Guys. I did not want to do the usual stupid villain. I also did not her to just be a pro hostage. This problem lingered and lingered. I wrote around and added stuff here and there. 

Finally I figured it out and I feel it is a unique concept. It solved the big problem and I was able to end the story. 

But I wanted to develop Tonia more as she was now far more important. I ended up basing Tonia on my baby sister. Who is physically and emotionally the toughest person I know. She has had such a tough life, I wanted to have a world where she could have happy ending. 

Now you might think I have given too much away. But I promise this goes places you would not expect. It also hits some dark places. 

Neil (my artist) asked if there was ever light at the end of the tunnel, I said "yeah but its a train." 

If anybody is interested, you can read every Golden Age Daredevil comic here https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?ACT=dosearch. Or a lot of other public domain comics. There are tons of other public domain comics there. Which is such an awesome thing to have. 

As an aside, the Lev Gleason Daredevil was far more popular than the Marvel version. Lev Gleason also paid royalties to writers and artist. Which made him a target during the witch hunts of the fifties. 

 

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I want to talk about the blog I was referencing in different post. 

I had a concept for a story blog. Where you come up with a pulp like serial and post a chapter a day. Ideally you post it around noon, so people could read it while eating lunch. I do believe in the concept, but I don't think I have the resources to make it work. At least not right now. 

My dream is to find other struggling creative people and band together. Like if a artist needs a writer, you help. Or if an artist and writer need music. Something where everyone pays it forward. 

in 2010 I did a short wrestling story. Which I later expanded and expanded upon. In the story the lead character had a cartoon in the eighties called "Horse Power". Which honestly started as a gag, with Sarge being too drug addled to remember what it was. 

We later figured out what it was and developed a series bible. Neil (my artist) asked me to write some Horse Power stories. 

So we started this blog. 

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There are a lot of typos, I was far from refined. But it was my best at the time, and I think it has a solid foundation. 

This will be the 2019 project and require a lot of work. But the focus now is on making Grasp Of Hate a success. Your support will mean the world to me. 

Grasp Of Hate

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So I wanted to show some higher end art of Claw done by Charles Biro in the Rocky X serial in Boy Comics. While Biro was the creator on Daredevil most of the characters life, Claw had moved on by the time he started. So the Rocky X serial is the only time he drew Claw and he looks great. Biro was a machine, even for the era he had a big output. 

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This like the second Daredevil origin, was an early example of what we call a retcon. As Claw was now an alien from the planet Zylmarx looking to conquer Earth. 

I made this video to promote the book.

Bit.do/EyesOfClaw-com.

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3 hours ago, OSJ said:

Very nicely done!

 

Thank You, it was surprisingly time consuming. Thank goodness for the Digital Comics Museum and its archive volumes. I could find the Claw vs Daredevil and vs Rocky X stories easily. After that it was selecting appropriate panels.

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The book comes out on Monday and I am very nervous. I don't really expect money, I write for me and publishing I feel gives me discipline. I decided to shutter the old Horse Power blog, Frankly I did a terrible job formatting and editing the entries, it being a blog. I also do not want to create confusion with the kindle books. 

Last year I released Necromantic At Heart. I was scared to talk about it on here, for fear it would be weaponized by a jack hole. Which typing it sounds silly now. I have gotten great support from people here. I think the internet gets dogged unfairly. Yes there are assholes online, but there are lots of good people too and it needs to be said more. 

I am going to talk about some fully original characters. They have no golden age analogs. 

Qron: He is the man who trains Bart Hill in martial arts. I wanted to do something different with the sensei trope. the wise, eccentric and all knowing master. I wanted Qron to be a cold hateful man, who trains the boy for his own ends. Qron is not in the book for long, but casts a long shadow until the end. 

Phalynx: We like pun names and like this. Lynx is a member of a strange feline race in Pan Guay. The large continent near the Island of Ricca. He is the personal assassin of Master Claw and the first pupil of Qron. That is all I can say at the moment. 

Tonia; Bart Hill in the Golden Age had a ladyfriend by this name, which is where I got it. But while that Tonia was a statuesque blond who occasionally had sex with wolves (look it up), my Tonia is an average person. She grew up in wealth and left home after suffering a traumatic event. I am actually going to reveal what this is. There is enough in the book, I can afford to do this. I absolutely refused to make the trauma anything sexual. I think that is such a cheap way to create drama. I did not want it to be religious either. Just anything that has been done often. 

What I decided upon was having her vice be anger. The kind of anger that makes you feel shame, which makes you more angry. As a little girl, she was taken hostage by a super villain at a public event. She saw her father get struck down easily by the villain. She was saved unharmed, but the helpless feeling never left. She was briefly a national celebrity. But her anger kept growing and eventually beat up a classmate. Her dad being a wealthy man covered it up. Which started a cycle of violence. While this is happening, her father is building a career in politics. I did not want the father to be a bad person. He is a good person trying to be a good father. But he doesn't know how to reach her.  Eventually something happens with Tonia, her father cannot cover up. It ends up ruining his career and causes a rift. She leaves her family to start over in a new city. 

Tsar Cophagus: A character Neil created based on a pun. Cophagus was the monster who took Tonia hostage. We gave him a background and thought this was a good place to introduce him. 

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The book is out on Monday and your support is appreciated.  Grasp Of Hate

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Three Dollars, Three Dollars, Three Dollars.
 
For three dollars you can enter a new world. A world made of new and original characters. Of the Original Daredevil and Claw: The Worlds Worst Villain. The Enigmatic Inspectre, a man who believes himself a ghost trapped in a human body. Of the deranged Fear Mancer, the one eyed man who hates our hero.
 
For three dollars you can read a new and unique take on the super hero and super villain. In an age of homogeneous heroes and villains, read a story that breaks the mold.
 
 
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21 hours ago, The Unholy Dragon said:

I'll be grabbing it on Thursday after I get paid. Excited to check it out!

Thank you, it means a lot to me for people to take a chance on me. 

I want to talk about a few more original characters. 

Inspectre: He started very loosely inspired by the Ghost who fought The Claw. http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Ghost_(Lev_Gleason) But and I hate to say this, Ghost is not a good character. He is a guy in a skull mask designed to keep Claw busy. I would feel worse, but knowing Bob Wood killed a woman (look it up), I don't care. 

I like pun names if they sound cool. So I had the name Inspectre rolling around inside my head. I also had this concept of a deluded hero, who is convinced he is a ghost trapped in a human body.  I was going to keep the same basic costume because I thought it had potential. I gave him some extra gimmicks, one conjuring various gasses and mist. The other being a weapon I called "The Ghast Light". My idea was it would come from his belt buckle. The light would burn whatever it shined upon without doing visible damage. 

Neil got a hold of it and really brought the Inspectre to life. 
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Inspectre exist as a hero to give Claw credibility and as a look of what Bart Hill could become. 


Fear Mancer was created in Necromantic At Heart, simply to be an enemy of Duel-Devil. Something I did as a joke, was give him a billy club as a weapon with a fanatical hatred of our hero. I can't say much more without spoilers. 

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Hopefully more of you will join us. Grasp Of Hate

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  • 5 weeks later...

I have not been back to this post in awhile. I am currently having some serious housing issues and it has divided my attention. 

The book has done relatively well. Meaning when I went into overdrive promoting and saw results. I feel like with some muscle, we could do well. 

My request for anyone reading is to please give the book a chance. I think in the current media landscape, it is important to support as many independent creators as possible. 

I am grateful for any support you can provide. 

http://bit.do/EyesOfClaw-com

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21 hours ago, mattdangerously said:

Just downloaded it to my phone/Kindle. You had me at "Golden Age Daredevil." It might be a while before I get to it, though, as I am currently in the middle of three other books.

Thank You so very much. I just saw this, I have not been online much lately. 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 5 months later...

I have been absent lately, working thru some serious issues. But I am making progress.

I am creating a comic in the new two years. I will be using crowdfunding, but if I have to I will put myself in debt. I have a name former Marvel artist that is tenatively interested. I rather not name him for now.

I hope I can count on the support of people here. 

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