The inaugural edition from Death Ingloria, a seven-track album The Wolf Onboard, has just been released today. A multi-media project I got wind of earlier this year, at the 2000AD 40th Anniversary event. It’s a great looking – and sounding project… Especially the animated videos, and the comic written by Galina Rin (creator of the Death Ingloria project), scripted by Hilary Robinson with art by Nigel Dobbyn, co-creators of “Medivac 318” for 2000AD.
The Wolf Onboard, which is getting a special launch in London with Nigel Dobbyn on hand drawing for fans (details below), is a science fiction story told across seven songs, a seven-page comic book, seven still photographs and a seven part animated series. The comic is the narration of the story, the songs the voices of the characters.
During the creation of The Wolf Onboard, Death Ingloria collaborated with seven independent artists to create seven separate music videos to promote the project, some already live on YouTube.
Galina Rin, an almost real human and Okami, “an A.I. unit”, came together as Death Ingloria for this project to explore Humanity’s depths, its heights, and its inevitable conclusions through music, video and illustrated comics.
The music offers soaring vocal hooks combine with sharpened riffs that journey through towering rock anthems to tender moments of sonic intricacies. Twisting with emotional punk fury on the way, these seven scenes of Humanity’s fate are seamlessly blended with the stunning artwork and visuals resulting in one of this year’s biggest feasts for the senses.
And what’s Death Ingloria about? Simply put, it’s an epic space odyssey that catalogues and cherishes the death throes of the Human Race, crossing artistic formats and genres “to take you by the throat and shake your immortal soul”.
Got to be worth a look with that kind of build up, right?
“Humanity escapes Planet Earth in an attempt to save what’s left of its crippled hobbling existence.
“Humanity fails. The Universe continues blissfully unaware and unaffected.”
The sort of cheery stuff many 2000AD readers enjoy every week then.
“I’m not going to lie,” says Galina Rin. “Everybody dies. You probably already suspected that anyway…”
From the conception of Death Ingloria’s first album, The Wolf Onboard, Galina Rin intended this multi-media project to include a comic telling part of the story, but how to convert songs into visuals? Ask a writer who once worked for leading British comic, 2000AD.
In the late 1980s, Hilary Robinson was writing comic strips, of which her best known is “Medivac 318”, launched in Prog 619, a future-war tale featuring not soldiers but the medical services, and drawn by Nigel Dobbyn. (There’s a quick guide to the story here from 2000AD here on Facebook). Hilary and Nigel remained friends and still meet up from time to time, so he was the obvious choice to collaborate on the Wolf Onboard comic strip.
Although Nigel has continued to work in comics, this is the first Robinson/Dobbyn strip in more than 20 years, and the old magic is still there.
Hilary Robinson‘s first published Science Fiction were text stories in Imagine Magazine in the early 1980s. After a fair number of Future Shocks for 2000AD, she wrote “Medivac 318”, drawn by Nigel Dobbyn in Progs 619-640/ 683- 694 in 1989, considered ground-breaking at the time for its setting and concept, followed by “Zippy Couriers” drawn by Graham Higgins, “The Chronos Carnival” and “Survivor”, both drawn by Ron Smith. She also contributed to the “Tales of the Doghouse” with “Maeve The Many Armed” and “Sting Ray the trawlerman”, drawn by Simon Jacobs.
She contributed to the anthologies ‘Oribble Murders, The Worm, the longest comic strip in the world, and Melisande for Mindbenders, also drawn by Nigel Dobbyn, and wrote for Rainbow comic (in which Galina Rin appeared as a Brownie).
Her final work for comics (until now) was with Donald Rooum on his Anarchist book Health Service Wildcat.
After comics, she became an artist herself on Redbubble, a Historical Re-enactor and British Longbow Champion. Nowadays, she is a Viking storyteller and leads two art groups for the U3A.
Having first worked for 2000AD on strips such as “Medivac 318”, “Red Razors” and “Strontium Dogs”, Nigel Dobbyn went on to work on a diverse range of titles such as Sonic the Comic, Thunderbirds, Spider-Man and Friends, Digimon, Mr Bean’s Amazing A-Z and Gogo’s Crazy Bones. In addition to illustration work through Beehive Illustration, he’s also worked on Nightrise, a Graphic Novel for Walker Books, Macbeth and The Tempest for Classical Comics and the Cthulhu Colouring Book and H P Lovecraft Activity Book, as well as drawing Goblin Princess for Redan’s Sparkle World – and most recently, knocking it out of the park on “Ace Trucking Company” for 2000AD.
Galina Rin and Nigel Dobbyn at the 2000AD 40th Anniversary event earlier this year. Photo: James Bacon
Death Ingloria – the Wolf Onboard launched today (Thursday 16th November) at New Cross Inn, London. Nigel has been chatting, sketching, signing and selling prints and the evening features a live performance of the EP.
The event includes a free exhibition showcasing artworks from the contributing artists, the comic book and showing the first six music videos created during the projects build up. The gallery exhibition will also host the first public showing of two original A3 pages from the “Medivac 318” comic strip, published in 2000AD Prog 639, August 1989 (from Hilary Robinson’s private collection).
Then, as night descends, Alix Fox takes over to host the proceedings which will see performance artist Cynth Icorn film a live music video for Death Ingloria’s song “The Anomic Life”, completing the first series of seven music videos.
Death Ingloria will then take the stage to perform, for the first time, The Wolf Onboard in its entirety, as it is meant to be seen. More details on Facebook if you’re in the area – unfortunately, we only got word of this earlier today!
• There will be more shows of The Wolf Onboard soon, at the The Brooke, Wellington on 25th November, The Phoenix, High Wycombe, Bucks on 16th December and The Islington, London on 21st December
Death Ingloria Web Links:
• Official Website
• Facebook
• Twitter @death_ingloria
• Spotify
• Soundcloud
• Instagram
• ITunes
• YouTube
• Bands In Town
• Find Nigel Dobbyn on DeviantArt | Facebook | Instagram
- About the Author
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The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: 2000AD, Animation, Creating Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, Other Worlds