Rahsan Ekedal is an artist who started gaining renown in the mortal and immortal realms as a primary illustrator for Boom Studios‘ Warhammer comics. His latest work is amazing-so-far Warhammer: Condemned by Fire*, of which below you will see a sneak as-yet-to-be-colored peek at a tasty page from Condemned by Fire #2! We talk about working on Warhammer, metal, and his upcoming project for Dark Horse Comics. Excited? I know I am. Read on…

(*read my thoughts on Comdemned by Fire #1 here)

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Lord Orcus: Thanks for joining us here today, Rahsan! You’re check is in the mail. First off, just how did you get started in the art business… and how many people did you have to kill to develop your skills and talent. I’m thinking at least 57… am I right??

Rahsan: Here’s the secret to breaking into the industry - don’t tell anyone, ok? Sacrifice sixty-six lesser artists on a stone altar under a harvest moon, bathe daily in fresh human blood, mix the powdered bones of your enemies into your ink, promise your first born to the lord Slaanesh. Or you can go to art school, show your portfolio at conventions, blah blah blah.

Lord Orcus: Currently, you are best known throughout at least 3,457 Spheres of Reality as an artist on Boom Studios’ Warhammer comics; specifically Forge of War and Condemned by Fire, as well as some Blood and Thunder. What dread gods did you have to appease in order to get this amazing gig? Is it something you fell into– or is it something you prayed to The Blood God for, set your sights on, and took without pity or remorse?

Rahsan: This was a case of right place, right time. The first artist on Forge of War had dropped out (why are you looking at me?), and I happened to catch Ross Richie the one moment out of his day when he wasn’t too busy. My portfolio was heavily weighted toward dark fantasy at the time, and Ross thought it would work great on their fledgling Warhammer line. Praying to Khorne and wearing my lucky Warhound’s Foot probably helped, too.

Lord Orcus: I read Condemned By Fire #1– it’s some of your best work, mortal.How did you go about capturing the perfect look of the grim and perilous world of Warhammer?

Rahsan: I wasn’t satisfied with the look of Forge of War, and I wanted to experiment with wet media somehow. I ended up working with water soluble graphite because it allows very fast rendering and I can drop bigger shadows on things without having to painfully shade with the side of my pencil for an hour. I think it works well for Condemned by Fire - creepy Nurgle zombies emerging from the mist and all that. I’ve been constantly improving this technique, so I hope you’ll be happier with the later issues. I already wish I could go back and redraw parts of issue #1…

Lord Orcus: Steve tells me you are doing a Dark Horse-bound project with rising super-scribe Josh Fialkov and Mark Wheaton (the screenwriter, yes?). It’s called The Cleaners, and I’m to understand it has trauma– oh, sweet trauma– tell me more!

Rahsan: Yes, I’m super excited about this one. People might know Josh from Elk’s Run and Punks, and Mark Wheaton is a fantastic screenwriter who has been very successful in Hollywood. Imagine someone gets shot in the head in your living room, and their brains are splattered all over your wall and carpet and nice flat screen TV - after the police finish their investigation, who do you think is responsible for cleaning up that mess? You. So if you’re smart and you don’t want to get infected with many awful diseases, you hire privately contracted trauma scene cleaners - they’re basically the highest paid janitors in the world. They sterilize and clean the most disgusting and brutal crime scenes you’ve ever heard of. The Cleaners follows one trauma scene cleaner all over Los Angeles cleaning up brains and gore, and along the way he starts to uncover some very strange and disturbing information. It comes out later this year, probably November.

Lord Orcus: Will the art style differ from what you have been murderously and brilliantly executing on the Warhammer titles?

Rahsan: Yeah, I’m inking my own pencils on this one, so it has a cleaner look. And it’s set in present day LA, so it’s gritty and realistic as opposed to the exaggerated fantasy of Warhammer. In fact, in some places I’ve purposely pushed the mundane aspects - oh, here’s two guys walking in a hallway, here’s the carpet, here’s a doorknob - so that when we stumble into the blood and guts it’s all the more shocking.

Lord Orcus: What other irons are you jamming into the fire? Wait, that sounds… wrong. Well, you know what I mean. I think.

Rahsan: I don’t have anything else to plug right now, but I’ll let you know as soon as I get my hands in something. Wait, that sounds wrong, too…

Lord Orcus: One question regarding you that’s brought up on Orcusville often is how many detailed decapitations you can draw in an hour. I say at least seventeen, while Vis believes it closer to twelve (and then goes on about the legality of marrying lemurs; but we’ll move on). Nergal has been betting you can do thirty-four. Could you help us out here?

Rahsan: Nergal is probably betting high, but I think I might be able to pass the 20 mark if I was really blazing… Oh, and please give Vis my best wishes - it’s hard to live an alternative lifestyle that isn’t widely accepted in our society. Keep fighting for your rights, Vis!

Lord Orcus: When you aren’t illustrating beautiful carnage and exciting scenes of action, what are you doing?

Rahsan: Drinking heavily and watching horror movies as research.

Lord Orcus: I like drinking. Alright, this is the part where Steve suggested I ask you who your influences are, your favorite color and other like claptrap. It’s fine if you want to get into it, but what I’m really curious about is: Do you listen to metal?

Rahsan: That’s all I listen to. I’m mainly into European metal - I’m sorry, but it’s just so far superior to American metal it’s not even funny. Amon Amarth is a perennial favorite. I’m very deep into folk metal right now - Ensiferum, Korpiklaani, Finntroll, Turisas, Eluveite, Tyr… I love this stuff.

Lord Orcus: You have excellent taste, gifted mortal. And you’ve have been a real champ answering my questions, Rahsan. You’re welcome back anytime (and with less torture, too). Any last words?

Rahsan: Thanks for having me. I’ll see you on the battlefield…

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Indeed! We’re hoping to have a nice battlefield picked out one day.

What?

It’s not like we kept him.

For TOO long.

Tags: artists, aweosme, orcusville interview, rahsan ekedal

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Blog, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.