Crowdfunding Spotlight: Our Friend Satan

By Antony Esmond on August 9, 2015

Our Friend Satan
Writer: Dominik L. Marzec
Inks and Pencils: Michael Murawski
Colour: Lukas Lalko
Format: 80 pages – full colour throughout

The Story: Our Friend Satan is a rip-roaring story about Satan in the middle of his midlife crisis. He spends his nights strolling around Hell in a bathrobe and drowns his sorrows in Cthulhu Vodka. He’d love to be evil like in the old days, but he has serious troubles meeting the expectations of modern people. He’s simply not bad enough for them.

When even his eager allies – Satanists – turn their backs on him, he decides to deal with this once and for all – he sues the Catholic Church for defamation and travels to Earth to clear his name in court. But quickly things get even more complicated when he meets The Pope and… well… let’s just say, The Pope offers him a diabolical deal, that cannot be refused….

The Preview: Come on, comic friends! If we’re going to read a comic about Satan versus the Pope, who are we going to be cheering on? Satan, of course!

This ‘funny as hell’ graphic novel – a Kickstarter “Staff Pick” – springs out from the small yet vibrant comics scene in Poland. The creators have now launched an appeal to fund it on Kickstarter with a wealth of Pledge levels and rewards that include Satanic beer mugs and coffee cups, T-shirts, art books and even a pair of Satan’s own slippers.

Due to post out in May next year a large chunk of the work has already been done and you can read the first chapter of the comic over at the website (there’s a translated version for us stupid English only speaking people to enjoy).

“The Polish comic book market is very small,” writer Dominik tells us, “so at the moment we’re trying to make international audience aware of the project… at the moment we have no media coverage outside Poland.”

Our Friend Satan started out (like many comics these days) as a movie pitch but the creators became so enthusiastic over the storyboards that a comic seemed the natural way to go. The art is absolutely spot on and worthy of any professional release amongst the bigger companies. It’s very funny and you can tell it’s jumped out of a Catholic country, offering all sorts of social and religious commentary (with biting sarcasm).

The Kickstarter has been launched to assist in getting the product over the finishing line but it looks like most of the work has already been done, if the preview pages are anything to go by.

So, when the door goes later and there are two suited god botherers at your door preaching about religion tell them ‘My friend is Satan’ and get over and pledge a few quid to this excellent comics venture.

• You can find full details of the project over at http://ourfriendsatan.com or the Polish language Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ourfriendsatan

• Check out the Kickstarter here

Many thanks for reading.