We have been working on a big cross over event for all of the Tribe Universe. This event not only celebrates our characters, but our creators as well. Breaking the 4th wall, introducing some interesting new characters, and most importantly celebrating our friend. This is a big task to accomplish with this new series, but we wanted to dive in on what The Weaver of Worlds is all about.
The Story
Cypress, an illusion-powered hero already fraying at the edges from a recurring nightmare of self doubt, is pulled into a citywide crisis when Nightmare creatures begin swarming the city, controlled by a mysterious entity called The Dealer.
As Cypress reunites with cross universe heroes (Tiger Barb, Comic Bug, and the Armadillo Bros) to fight back, a strange, powerful figure called The Creator arrives, seemingly acquainted with every member of the team. As The Dealer reveals she’s merely a “gatekeeper” for something even larger — a being called the Omni — the team commits to a fight but something even bigger approaches, and he calls himself The Gardener. He controls the decision to replace heroes as their time comes to an end.
The Theme: Issue one opens inside Cypress’s fear of being forgotten/erased, in her own books her stories revolve around mental issues, and thus it’s a good opening point for this series.
As we move forward we can see certain heroes are comfortable in their roles, others not so much, a lot of them share a similar fear of being important enough to matter.
The theme for the characters we are shooting for is somewhat breaking the 4th wall. As creators we often look for new creations, while putting old ones on a backburner, or even forgetting we created them. This is how the Gardener approaches as well. If a character isn’t telling a story, or impacting their world, they get erased so that another one can take their place. As a writer this was interesting as well as I want to make impactful stories, and not be forgotten.
The Roster: Comic Bug’s dry cynicism, Tiger Barb’s deflecting humor, and Doc’s corporate loyalty create distinct voices fast. Cypress was an easy choice to carry the story as she discovers her role, and is a character I hold close to my heart already.
The Creator: The main idea behind the series was to honor our friend Scott, so we worked together (Joe and Dustin) to create a character we felt emphasised his love for all his creations. We feel that we created a perfect embodiment of him, as he loved everything he worked on, he loved finding old characters and digging through Tribe history, but he also loved working on certain books more than others. Overall we thought if Scott got into his own universe, how would he react to seeing them, and we think the first few pages of that happening captures that perfectly. He was a loving good friend, and the way The Creator simply is just lovable in every page captures that perfectly.
The Villains: Of course with a grand story, we needed a grand villain. The Dealer has been our favorite (Joe, Dustin, and Scott) since we first created her years ago. We’ve constantly looked for ways to bring her back, and we felt this was a good opportunity.
The Dealer is a massive villain in the Tribe Universe, but being the scope of this story was even bigger we thought how do we top that? Make The Dealer scary, and then have someone that scares The Dealer?
The Gardener: The Gardener is essentially erasing older forgotten heroes in the Tribe Universe, and some of our core heroes are at risk of falling to the same fate. So he has to be powerful, and the first panel of him appearing shows this amazingly well. His horror is quiet, personal, and character-driven, a deliberate contrast to Issue 1’s action-heavy Dealer reveal. He hardly speaks, he doesn’t take a swing, and yet is wrecking absolute havoc.
He not only scares the heroes, he scares The Dealer, and at some point even Omni is powerless. And all this fear is created before he even takes a swing.
The Gardener and The Creator also know each other very well, almost as if….they are the same person. But ultimately, The Gardener truly believes what he is doing is helping, and it helps explore the darker motivations of a creator. We looked at some of our favorite villains in comic book history and took inspirations to create him, and we are super excited to finally introduce a villain in the Tribe Universe that is this powerful.
Omni: A quick brief of Omni is that it’s an ongoing cross universe being. It can read minds, is more powerful than all characters, but can be captured and used in a manner that makes a character like The Gardener even more frightening. Omni can also take control of characters, both for good and evil.
We are so excited to finally see these pages coming to life thanks to the creative talent of Michael C. Spell on line art, Joe Flores on Colors, and Dustin Spino writing. We hope you join us in celebrating our universe, our friends, and Scott Shehi as the series carries on.
