I have recently entered into an agreement with Pickle Press to be the live model for their upcoming comic Kerry Connelly in Salem, AZ. Frankly, I am flattered because the character in my eyes resembles Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft format.
It's about a six-shooting witch in the old west and it combines different genres: spaghetti westerns, sorcery, sci-fi, horror, and a little cheesecake too. The main character is Kerry Connelly, who enjoys using her magic and Colt .45 revolver to protect the town her ancestors founded when they escaped from the Salem witch trials and fled to Arizona.
The first storyline is slated for two issues.The plot revolves around an abandoned coal mine full of vicious mole men who worship a giant gem that they use to hypnotize their captured human slaves and keep them in a zombie-like trance. The villains of the story are a sadistic doctor of psychology, Dr. Archak, and his band of escaped mental patients.
The first issue is 40 pages, and the second issue will be at least 24 interior pages. The plan is to have the first issue completed before August 2006 so it can be submitted to some key comic book companies at the Wizard World Chicago convention.
The author, Nik Havert from Nappanee, Indiana, has been writing some kind of fiction since he was about twelve years old. He started out with a story about talking animals at a zoo and has since gone on to self-publish comic books about women in love with superheroes, vampires running rampant in Chicago, vice-loving medieval mercenaries, and an EPA agent who is somehow still alive after being shot in the head and dumped into a lake.
Nik writes because, as he likes to say, "I have to get all these ideas out of my head so I can have room for more." He has three journals and a bulging folder full of story ideas, and he gets more every week. His future plans include publishing a horror comic book anthology entitled Mysterious Mansion, which will be a big salute to Bronze Age horror comics, self-publishing a novel of some of his short stories, and self-publishing this wild spaghetti western comic book, Salem, AZ.
Paul Schultz, the illustrator for "Salem, AZ," says, "I've been drawing since I could hold a crayon and I've been into comic books since before I could read, so sooner or later the two obsessions were bound to collide. Nik and I crossed paths about two years ago and have been working closely together ever since. "Salem, AZ," for instance, is what happens when two men take a five hour roadtrip through the no-man's-land between Nappanee, IN and Columbus, OH."
In the end, Paul says, "I'm also working on a few of my own projects as well as dabbling in painting thanks to the encouragement of my wife Barbi, a painter in her own right. I've dallied in short stories and played around with novel writing, but, sooner or later, come back to comic books. My wife and children, who are the reasons for everything I do."
