For years philosophers had debated questions about god, their existence and our relationship. Questions like “What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus, tryna make his way home?” posed by the philosopher Joan Osborne. Now the team of Christopher Sebela and Ben Hennessy set out to answer a new question. What if the body of a god fell from the sky and landed on earth?
“One sunny day in the land of Kerethim, God falls dead from the sky. The impact sends out shockwaves that draw in royal families at war, shadowy creatures of the dark, and armies of the dispossessed, all coming to lay claim to parts of God’s body. Into this power struggle wanders Zanzi Vuiline, a soldier and berserker trying to get home from a years-long war. Forced to fight her way through the strange landscapes in and on God’s corpse, from the soles of its feet through the top of its head, Zanzi will acquire a mysterious traveling companion on her own pilgrimage.”
We were able to speak to creators Chris and Ben to learn more about “Godfell” and its unique concept. You can find our discussion below and if they answer Joan’s other question, “If God had a face, what would it look like?” A huge thanks to Ben and Chris for answering our questions and if you want to learn even more about the series you can pick up the first issue from Vault Comics this week in stores and online.
Chris, you have mentioned in solicitations when it came to fantasy you decided to write your “own as a way to find out what kind of fantasy does work for me.” What did you find in creating “Godfell” works for you and what has “Godfell” taught you about fantasy?
To build on that, what do you both think makes for a good fantasy story?
Ben Hennessy: Well I’m a big fantasy fan, I love a lot of things about the fantasy genre. Things like clever magic systems, the flora and fauna of the fantastical land they exist in, schools of thieves and schools of the sword. I really enjoy all of it, but My favourite take on the genre has always been a heroic warrior on a journey and “Godfell” really ticked that box for me.
Christopher Sebela: Probably my favorite aspect of fantasy is how big it is. You can build a whole new world and all the flora and fauna that populate it and write all the rules that govern it from scratch without being as tied to reality as you are with other genres. Anything’s on the table. But I tend to lean towards writing stories that are smaller in scope, so “Godfell”was an exercise in creating this huge world and a giant dead god but focusing on these two characters within all the chaos and seeing what they do with each other and the weirdness of what lies inside this huge corpse, one bit of the body at a time.
Even more than exploring the genre of fantasy, I think the idea of a fallen god and how people react to that opens up a lot of ideas to examine. What do you think are the most interesting ideas you both explore in the series?
BH: One interesting thing to me is the response of the people of Kerethim. They’re not all immobilized by thoughts of what it means that a dead God has crash landed into the earth. A lot of them see an opportunity to make coin. They carve parts of the God’s body and sell them, they excavate, drill and mine the body for resources. Some see it as a holy relic worthy of pilgrimage, others see it as a powerful item that they should own. The response is wide across the board and has led to us creating some interesting characters.
CS: For me, the weirder the better is a good rule. I get bored with fantasy stories about dynasties and royal families and things that more directly mirror our own world. Same with dragons and orcs and stuff that are considered staples. The best kind of fantasy is unrecognizable. Like being dumped in the middle of a place you’ve never seen and feeling your way around and Ben got that right away and started designing creatures out of nowhere and populating the world with stuff neither of us has seen before. But ultimately, for me, it has to be about characters that you care about or are intrigued by. Without them, it’s like reading a recipe compared to actually eating the result.
Continued belowOur story takes place after god has been lying in the earth for a little bit now and the awe and majesty have faded a little. So we start to see what people would do with this divine corpse when it’s become almost commonplace to them, how they’d try to control it or exploit it — either to fill their pockets or some hole inside them with power and importance. And we’re also dealing a bit with trauma. Not just the trauma of a dead god and what that means to our existence and our place in the world but the trauma our characters have been dealing with that’s brought them to this place.
What goes into designing the look of a dead god? Not only is the death of the god an event in the story, the corpse acts as a setting as well?
BH: Well it turns out, a lot goes into it. Chris and I have regular zoom calls where we discuss the story, the designs and how the world should look and feel. From the first set of calls we had, we knew the God had to serve a purpose of being our setting, it had to be absolutely huge and Chris said he wanted the God to look different to other versions of Gods that we’ve seen before, not a beardy guy in robes, something different.
The character design went through a number of drafts until we got it to where we wanted. From the initial concept I sketched the God’s design just got more and more streamlined until it became what you see in the comic. When we landed on the final design I then wanted the God to also have a unique pose, something iconic. After having looked at some religious idols I eventually settled on the pose we have as it gave us a good silhouette and I thought the crossing of the legs gave us an opportunity to move our duo from one side of the God body to the other if we needed it.
Then there’s the interior of the God to think about. Every issue required some kind of concept work for backgrounds, the flora and fauna that now reside in the God shouldn’t just be the same throughout the body. And we felt like this for lots of reasons, body parts serve different purposes and those purposes felt like they gave us an opportunity to create a different kind of environment and identity to that part of the God. The people and animals that now inhabit those parts of the body would bring about a change to that environment as well. The flesh hotels in the leg are not something the Sensates of the pelvis use. The spacious lungs are going to look and feel different to the dark cavernous guts that have a river of blood and intestinal gasses flowing through them.
CS: I deferred to Ben on this for the most part, just coming in to give a few notes. Probably my biggest contribution was I had some specific limb placement for the corpse. Since god’s body is basically the whole setting of the story, it’s like mapping out a dungeon.
Fantasy can be seen as a lore heavy genre. With comics it’s so important to grab readers with that first issue so they preorder issue two. How do you balance the lore and world building aspects of the fantasy genre with bringing new readers in right away?
BH: Well it’s no surprise to anyone that Chris is really good at putting a story together and part of why he’s so good is how he paces a script. Telling a story in comics is such a tricky game of real estate that we don’t really have a lore drop until we’re a good few issues in. We used most of that real estate in the first 3 and a half issues to give the readers a chance to get to know Zanzi and Neth. And as we tell their story you get to see glimpses of the world of Kerethim and the possibilities that exist in it. The world building part shouldn’t take over the story, it should consolidate it. All the action, the interesting relationship that unfolds between our main characters and their villains is pretty engaging and fun happens early on. Hopefully that’s enough of a hook to catch and hold the reader’s attention before we get to the lore drop and when we do get there, I think it’s something the reader is more than ready for and will enjoy it instead of feeling like it’s something they have to get through just to get back to what’s presently happening to Zanzi & Neth.
Continued belowCS: I just focus on Zanzi and Neth, our main characters. They’re what carries us through this entire story and their experiences in the world of Kerethim kind of naturally give us a look at the lore and the bigger world in these smaller slices. One of the most exciting parts of this book is getting to use an omniscient narrator, which, besides being fun, definitely helps to quickly shade in the important things right away so we can get into the heart of the book — the Zanzi and Neth stuff. I’m always trying to write something that I would like to read and I know when something is too infodump-y for me, so I just try to stick to my instincts and cross my fingers.
Ben, what was your approach to the look and style of the world and characters of this series?
BH: Well it’s a team effort. Initially with all things like this the artist and the writer sit down and talk about the story, the characters and the world they live in. As I said earlier Chris and I had a lot of zoom calls where we’d talk about all things “Godfell.” After I had digested what we had discussed, I’d try to put our ideas into some kind of form. Chris had been working with Raven on this before I came on board so they had a good idea of who the characters were. One of the things Chris said to me before I started designing Zanzi was that she was a “Force of Nature”, so I put that idea front and centre of the model sheet and made sure that while I was working on her character design that I was always trying to make her that force of nature. Everything came from that goal, once we had a design for Zanzi locked I was trying to shape the world around her. Zanzi’s taller and thicker muscled than almost everyone so I thought it would be visually interesting if Neth became the opposite of this.
So Neth became this small, thin, quiet person who can almost fade into a crowd. Then Zanzi needed a steed, I looked up all kinds of horses to see what would be the horse that was worthy enough to be the steed of a Force of Nature. I couldn’t find one, or at least I couldn’t find one that didn’t look like something I had seen before. Then something clicked with me, we’re working on a fantasy book, I can create the steed. After I had that realisation I started working on all kinds of chimera’s that populate the world of Kerethim, horibulls, rat-pigeons, cat-monkeys and I didn’t stop at Kerethim. There’s a very different kind of ecosystem inside the God’s body. All manner of, pun intended, “Gods creatures” thriving in this colossal carcass, I can’t wait to see what everyone thinks of the tapeworm-maggots that live in the God’s body. The God and the world around Zanzi and Neth was something I could really push in terms of what we know as the fantasy genre so it seemed right to not push it so hard on the characters.
Next to a dead god, Zanzi Vuiline seems to be the driving force of the series. What can you both tell readers about them and bringing her to life?
BH: Bringing her to life has been a blast. She’s the most action hero that’s ever ‘action heroed.’ You’re going to see her do things that you’ve seen the likes of Lagertha, The Mountain and Michonne do, but she makes it look a little easier, a little bloodier. Fighting is part of who Zanzi is, she won’t make excuses for fighting and she won’t shy away from it either. She’s used to engaging with armies carving her way to victory on her own if she has to, so taking on the factions that reside in the God’s body is just another day in the office for her.
CS: Zanzi is a warrior who’s been at the front lines of a war that’s swept across the land of Kerethim for years now. She’s a force of nature, larger than life, has killed so many people on the battlefield, and seems to be unkillable herself. Fighting, warring, it’s where she excels, it makes up so much of who she is. But when her side is victorious, she figures she’s done fighting. Only, the war is just changing locations and Zanzi has had enough. She goes AWOL and takes her life back into her own hands. Now all she wants to do is just go home. She’s exhausted. All her fighting seems to have been for nothing. And the one huge obstacle between her and getting back home is this giant, divine corpse. And Zanzi, instead of going around it, decides to go straight through it. She’s kind of intentionally a mystery, she hasn’t had cause to open herself up to anyone and she’s certainly not going around offering to. So when she teams up with Neth and they head inside the body, it sparks a lot of different things for Zanzi that should be fun to watch.
Continued belowFor readers on the fence about picking up this new series, what can you tease as your favorite aspect of the series and your work on it so far?
BH: It’s hard to pick a favourite part. Obviously I’m biased but I personally like a lot about “Godfell,” if I wasn’t working on this and then I saw it on the shelves, I think I’d wish I’d have gotten to work on this. It’s been a real change of pace for me too. There’s a really strong animation industry here in Ireland and it’s where I’ve spent almost all of my career and I’ve gotten to work with some incredibly talented people on shows I’m incredibly proud of. Most of the time I’ve spent in the industry here has been in pre-school animation, so to go from that to “Godfell” has been a bit of a culture shock in a way because “Godfell” has EVERYTHING that a pre-school show should NEVER have in it, haha!
As for teasing an aspect. There’s a character in issue 2 who we see Zanzi maim so badly he basically becomes a walking ghoul in the issues that follow. So that’s fun.
CS: My favorite aspect is how we juggle a lot of different things. We have this adventure buddy dynamic going, journeys through this huge dead body that people have been carving their way into and claiming parts of it as their own, a sense of humor, some deeply dark night of the soul moments and weaved all around it is a ton of crazy, buckets of blood moments with Zanzi’s axe and anyone dumb or crazy enough to step in front of them. It really feels untethered in a way a lot of my other stuff doesn’t and that makes it a blast to sit down and write one of these issues and see what Ben turns it all into. I imagine whoever is picking it up and seeing it fresh is going to be having at least as much fun as we’re having.
What are your plans for the series? Is this limited or ongoing? Do you have larger ideas outside of this initial story?
BH: We have a lot in mind, but I guess it depends on how the readers respond to “Godfell,” if they respond well to it I think Chris and I could spend a lot more time in Kerethim.
CS: It’s a limited series, but there’s definitely more to explore in this world. I’ve been really excited to get to the ending of this book for a long time now, so I think this journey will feel satisfying and complete as is, but while the finale does feel final, it opens up an even bigger door that’s fun to daydream about.
What do you hope readers take away from their time with the first issue of “Godfell?“
BH: Would it be really silly if I said I hoped they realized that they HAD to get issue 2? Haha! I have a lot of hopes for this book. I’m really proud of it. So I hope readers discover characters and a world that they want to explore further.
CS: An irresistible impulse to go back and buy all the variant covers, and then to buy copies for their friends, family and pastor, and then bug everyone they know by constantly asking “Wow, have you read this book, “Godfell?”” I know it’s asking a lot, but that’s why they call it hope.
