Holy Cow presents "Aghori" : EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW!! (Part 2!)

Promo art - a character study (clickable!)

The Aghori is back!

Yes folks, welcome to our follow up to last weeks most-excellent preview pages from issue #0 of the exciting and much-talked-about series.

This week we are excited to bring you the second half of this tantalizing teaser chapter from this promising new series from creators Vivek Goel and Ram V. who have got the Indian comic community buzzing since the first images were released.

What is he? Demon fighter? Hero? Rogue? Mystic? Human? … and what is his mission?

We all have to wait a while still to know the answers to all this and more, but this short story has been a great glimpse into the kind of stories and art that we can expect to see from the series.

So without any further, here is the end of the beginning as this chapter wraps up just as the #1 issue is poised to hit the shelves! With special commentary from the creators themselves, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Page 5 (Click to enlarge!)

Ram V. - Writer for the series

So, things start getting interesting from Page 5 onwards. There is a minor reveal at the beginning of the page. The plot twists and the antagonist is revealed and the conflict becomes clear. Writing the change for the elder kid from good to bad was interesting and we tried to introduce an element of surprise.

Page 6 I think this page turned out really well both in terms of art and the storytelling. It went through a lot of changes before we arrived at the final version. The use of black wavy bubbles signified the change in Nikhil and it seems that Vira is cornered, but like all good heroes he has an ace up his sleeve.

Page 7 Brings back the dead kids. It show’s a bit of Vira’s power and speaks about the kind of powers he will use in the upcoming series as well. Vivek did a super job with the art involving the faces of the kids and Yogesh’s work on the colors here was great!.

Page 6 (Click to enlarge!)

Page 8 The tension is relieved and Vineet asks Vira who he is. This is a teasing page that leaves the reader asking more questions. Vira talks about his story being told one day and I liked writing that in. The last three panels were perhaps the ones that made me the happiest. There is no dialogue in it but I wrote it into the script and I feel Vivek and Yogesh picked it up brilliantly. The panels are melancholic and haunting – which is exactly the kind of Character Vira is.

We got a lot of positive comments on the preview and I hope people enjoy the glimpse into what the series will be like. We’ll hope to deliver better story and art with each issue. So we hope Aghori 1 knocks your socks off!

Vivek Goel – Series Artist and founder of HCE

Page 7 (Click to enlarge!)

Welcome back, scenario completely changes in the 2nd half - enter kids..dead kids. We now see the true face and intentions of the elder kid. This was the most challenging part for me as a storyteller and the real pictoral horror begins here. I needed to show how exactly the kids died and they were not dead at the same time, so, some of them needed to be reduced to complete bones while some still had rotting flesh on them and the elder kid finally shows his true colours by a massive power surge. Colouring played a very important part in the 2nd half as we needed it to complement the fresh horror.

Veera is taken back by the sudden rage of the evil boy and we needed to show him struggling against the wall where he gets pinned. Now the level of evil in the boy and how comfortable he actually was in that needed some work, we tried a couple of diff. angles/approaches what's finally drawn in the 1st panel of the 5th page seemed to work perfectly with his comfort zone of pure evil.

Page 7 (Click to enlarge!)

Veera get his hands on his mystic "damroo" and something happens, he calls in the spirits of the kids boy killed in years so that he can finally have his playmates back and they want revenge too. Again a play in contrasting colouring was much needed as the boy was evil but the kid's spirits were pure, thats when we decided to select and convert kids drawings in sutttle blue and then treat them with 2 tones of blue thus giving a sense of positive spirits. I personally enjoyed drawing each kid's close up in the horizontal line up of 6 square panels as a certain mix of innocence horror was needed.

Coming to the final page, vineet is not on the peek of his fear and finally gathers some courage to ask who veera actually is. The final 3 panels of this page are of utmost importance as Veera moves and starts converting into countless crows and vanishes. It was suggested by Ram and i feel it totally suited the teasing flavour/mood of the short story thus making the readers wanting more of Aghori.

Any short story is a failure if it does not intregues you or fails to exite readers for more if that's the true intend of the story, to give you the glimpse of what you can expect frm the main series. We recieved a lot of positive comments and we dont know how much we have suceeded but as a storyteller i totally enjoyed getting my hands into uncharted lands :)

Main course will be delivered to you all in the next 20 days. 56 pg of pure Aghori awesomness!!!!

And as a parting treat folks, here are some lovely high-res images (click to see full-sized!) of two of my favourite teasers for the series that were released in recent months! 
Enjoy!
(BUT! Be sure to come right back here soon for previews, reviews and all news Aghori!!)