Today I finally started mocking up the cover for Issue One of Bloodbath on Unholy Island, and let me tell you—it’s already doing that thing creative projects love to do: reshuffling themselves while I’m not looking.
Case in point: the title layout.
I ended up shifting the emphasis so “Unholy” takes the lead, because… well… spoiler alert… this whole thing does in fact descend gloriously into vampire horror. Even though it starts a bit off piste (and stays that way just long enough to keep you guessing), the story eventually bares its fangs—so “Unholy” deserved the spotlight.
The cover itself features Rom, staring right into the camera with full “you got to be shitting me” energy. Which honestly fits, because this first issue rockets straight into a rollercoaster of mayhem. Rom is one of the key characters in the graphic novel, and his appearance is based entirely on my friend, Gabriel R. Day—a genuinely amazing actor and an even more amazing human being.
He isn’t acting in it—this is a drawn world—but I’m using his likeness with his full permission. I keep joking that if I were David Lynch, Gabriel would be my Kyle MacLachlan—because when I see Rom in my mind, it’s him. When I draw Rom, it’s him. It’s just who the character decided to be.
This first cover is still very much a rough mock-up. Eventually it’ll become a full pen-and-ink illustration, but for now everything is staying fluid. The typefaces, the layout, the overall vibe—they’re all in that delicious, chaotic stage where anything could shift. This is the part where I get to play around, maybe whip up a few thumbnail variations, and explore exactly what my creative vision wants rather than what I initially expected it to do. It might end up being exactly how I envisioned it but I got to give it a chance to grow if it wants to.
The plan (a loose one, in true “me” fashion) is about six issues to make up Book One of Unholy. I’ll be drip-feeding them as I produce them—slowly, steadily, like a ritual unveiling.
For now, this early mock-up is the closest I’ve come to pulling the image out of my mind’s eye and onto the page. It’s messy, it’s exciting, and it’s finally becoming real. And honestly? That’s the fun part.
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