Fantasy stories are often about a tenuous alliance of cultures and races uniting to defeat a great evil. However, fantasy stories don't often explore the questions these alliances leave in their wake. What happens after peacetime? When these disparate groups live side by side in a city full of wealthy and powerful people, who investigates when clashes between factions lead to murder? How do these investigators find justice in a magical metropolis?
These are the questions that fuel writer Kelly Thompson and artist Meredith McClaren's hardboiled detective-fantasy series, Black Cloak. The new fantastical series launches on Jan. 31 on Thompson's subscriber-based Substack imprint, 1979 Semifinalist. CBR spoke with Thompson about the series' setting, what it means to be a police detective in the city of Kiros, and what kind of trouble will find the series protagonists, Detectives Essex and Pax, in the initial installments of Black Cloak. We also got a preview of the series' first several pages.
CBR: Black Cloak is a noir/detective story set against a fantasy backdrop, but it's a different type of detective story for you in that your characters who wear the titular garment are law enforcement officers instead of private detectives. What made you want to do Black Cloak as a police procedural? What's it been like telling that type of story against a fantastic backdrop?
Kelly Thompson: I'm very drawn to P.I. and detective stories -- and many stories can work in either arena since they share so many similarities -- but the big difference between P.I. and detective stories is that the P.I. is a wild card. They often don't have the support a detective does (on many levels) but they also have more freedom in how they do their job -- a P.I.'s "outsider" status is both a blessing and a curse. In our case, it was important to have our leads working inside the system -- in part, because we're trying to show a world built largely on magic and "old rules" which is struggling to adapt to more modern ideas. Our Black Cloaks are on the front lines of that war of ideas.
The Black Cloaks are law officers in the City of Kiros -- a metropolis where humans and a multitude of fantastic races live side by side. Since this is a noir story, I'm guessing there's not a lot of harmony between the diverse populations of Kiros?
Well, it may be a small distinction, but the Black Cloaks are less police officers and more homicide detectives. They only investigate murders and they're highly specialized. When I think of them, I think of them a little bit like the idea of Blade Runners more than traditional cops. They're a fairly new invention in this world, so beings that live in Kiros are highly skeptical of them. And yes, harmony is a problem here. The broad conceit is that this world full of disparate beings all came together to defeat the great evil. And they did, they vanquished the hell out of it. And now, without a common enemy, it's a lot harder to get along, which in turn created their need to develop more structural "Law & Order." But it's still a foreign concept to this fantasy world. Change is hard.
What can you tell us about the forces of technology and magic in Kiros? How do they work and interact?
Technology has been hugely suppressed in Kiros. After the big world-ending war that didn't end the world, some factions wanted magic to rule, others wanted technology. Magic won the day and so now even most of the technology that they've developed is in some way powered by magic. That's a concern. Just like any other kind of energy, magic is a resource, and it can be depleted.
What does it mean to be a Black Cloak in Kiros? How does the larger population see them?
They're largely feared and hated. The "Law & Order" of Kiros is a fairly new concept to the beings that live there -- only developed over the last few decades -- and for a society that revolves around magic, some of the concepts are strange and frightening. So a lot of rumors and mystique has been built up around Black Cloaks.
Your comics have tackled both the East Coast and West Coast styles of noir. From what I've seen of Meredith McClaren's art, it seems like Black Cloak will have more of a West Coast feel -- a lot of light and shadow. Kiros is a place of both whimsical fun and brutal violence. Is that the feeling you two were aiming for?
Yeah. Like any city, Kiros is filled with the have and have nots. Perhaps because of the way the city is built, tiered, and walled off, it's especially obvious that the people on the bottom have it very rough -- literally living in darkness. The people on the top have all the perks and advantages and protections -- literally living in the light.
Meredith did an incredible job building this world -- and by page 50 or so you've really seen both the highs and lows of this massive city -- and the contrasts are fantastic. We also didn't want it to look like your "traditional fantasy world," so we gave it a neo-noir, sci-fi vibe that hopefully feels a bit like a view of a traditional fantasy world, but in the future. Even though we are relying on some traditional expected favorites in this genre (humans, elves, fairies, etc.), we tried to do some different things with them and subvert expectations when possible. It's been really fun to build.
Finally, what can you tell us about Detectives Essex and Pax's initial case? What kind of trouble do they get into in these early installments of Black Cloak?
Obviously, I don't want to spoil too much, but right out of the gate we plunge readers directly into our murder case that involves a very famous face in the world of Kiros, as well as someone Detective Essex is connected to personally -- and he's not the only one that got murdered -- so it gets complicated fast.
