Sha – The French Connection

I remember the publisher, Mourad, did a double-take as Olivier showed him daring double page spreads of the night sky.

I’d begun working for France with Shadowslayer, illustrated by Eric Larnoy. It was drawing on the amazing character of Charles Fort, whom I always regarded as at least as fascinating as the phenomena he recorded in his Book of the Damned and other works. This led to an introduction to Olivier, who I met in Montpellier. I was blown away by his work, which included Les Chroniques de la Lune noire and Xoco, the latter inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. It’s beautiful art and well worth a look online. 

I then invited Olivier and his girlfriend to visit my place in Colchester. He was keen for us to do a story together, so I wrote up a new story of Witch, featuring Scatha, who travels in time to New York to avenge the death of Lara.

Olivier liked it and added his own SF details, in a style that very much appealed to 2000AD readers, as I’ve previously related.

So New York became New Eden and so on. Instead of Scatha, he suggested Sha – the Shadow One as her name, which worked for me. As a boy, I loved Rider Haggard’s She adventures and this title had the same vibe.

The first well known French publisher loved Olivier’s work and we soon reached the contract stage and were ready to sign. Then, surprisingly, they pulled out at the last moment, ostensibly because we wanted to withhold the movie rights as there was considerable film interest in this story of a police detective who may be hunting herself. Unofficially, I was told it was because the publishers were influenced by Catholic Knights who had some interest in the comic company. They had objected to the opening scene of the witch burning.

When you read the text you can see why they would feel that way. It seethes with Lara’s anger. How true this explanation was, I’ll never know. Such religious orders tend to be more shadowy than Sha – the Shadow One – and always deny everything. This I know from my experiences with neo-masonic British Catholic Knights, a formidable force to be reckoned with (and whom I have had a successful reckoning with, but that’s another story).

We then went to Soleil (later taken over by Delcourt) and they loved the book. I remember the publisher, Mourad, did a double-take as Olivier showed him daring double page spreads of the night sky as Lara’s spirit ascends from the burning stake and heads across time and space, descending into New Eden.

The pages were movingly accompanied by a wonderful poem I had found: 

Death has no power the immortal soul to slay
That when its present body turns to clay,
Seeks a fresh home; and with unlessened might
Inspires another frame with light and life 
Ovid

It was also accompanied by a dedication ‘For Eric’, because sadly Eric Larnoy had died.

So the whole story had a very emotive tone, which continues through the three volumes. It’s subsequently been reprinted by Delcourt 

Olivier and I moved on to do Requiem and other projects, but we always retained the English language rights because we knew it had tremendous appeal to a British and US audience. Sha appeared in Heavy Metal US and also as a Heavy Metal graphic novel, but it is largely unseen and unknown in the UK and the USA today.

So we hope with our Kickstarter plans to change all that, publish a prestige, hard cover collection of Sha, followed by regular editions, and thus complete a magical journey that began all those years ago with my visit to Najac .

The ‘dreams’ were a powerful, deeply emotional experience. My feeling then and now is that we simply don’t have the vocabulary to express and explain what such phenomena mean, because we are actively discouraged by ‘science’. So most people internalise similar events, which happen to many of us – when we open our hearts to them. The cold, all-knowing God of science rules us today, as the raging, all-knowing God of the Bible ruled in Lara’s time, driving out the loving Goddess of the old religion and happier times.

Spoiler alert: don’t read on if you don’t want any clues as to the final outcome of volume three. 

My ending of the three volumes was powerful, but I also wrote an emotional three-page, never-drawn epilogue, for which there was no space. We always intended for it to appear as an extra in a de-luxe edition and perhaps it will one day.

In my undrawn script, some months after the strange and demonic events in New Eden, Duffy visits the village of Najac. She wanders down a narrow mediaeval street and looks up at one of the ancient houses. She bites her lip and we realise she recognizes it is Lara’s house. She buys a bouquet of flowers then heads through the town down towards the river Aveyron.

There’s an identical view of the river to the view in Volume 2. The river has not altered much in five hundred years. But kids, wearing life jackets and in canoes, are now paddling down the river, having a lot of fun. Duffy stands where Lara’s ethereal spirits once flew through the air beside her, accompanying her to her execution. 

Then Duffy throws the flowers in the river and watches as they float away on the current to out of sight.

Just as I bought a bouquet of flowers when I visited Najac and threw them in the river and watched as they floated away on the current to out of sight.

We see the inscription on the flowers which reads:

IN LOVING MEMORY OF
LARA DE VOI
1574 – 1589
AND ALL THOSE MURDERED
IN THE BURNING TIMES

It’s followed by a final quote:

If you don’t believe in karma or reincarnation, don’t worry. You probably will in your next life. 
Bruce Goldberg

Come back tomorrow, as I’ll be sharing some pages from Sha Volume 3!

As you know, we’re planning a Sha Kickstarter. At the moment we’re leaning towards starting with Volume 1, and seeing how that goes. If the campaign is a success, we’d then do Volume 2, and finally Volume 3. Is that a good idea? Alternatively, we could release all three volumes as one omnibus.

Drop a comment below and let me know what you think.