Golgothika

The city is always dark. 

It is a hive of sin and corruption where junkies, data thieves, gangs, and genetically engineered monsters rule the streets.

You have a vice or a sickness, you'll find it here.

Helmut Muckenstich is a young man who once crossed paths with the world's most powerful leader, Werner Herzog, ruler of the city. Helmut married Herzog’s daughter...without permission. He uncovered sensitive information about Herzog that was best left buried...and for this he is punished.

His brain is downloaded onto a computer chip and placed into a new, vat-grown body, a green four-foot-tall gargoyle. Then he is banished to the most violent decadent part of the city.

Now, as Herzog's evil plans come to fruitition, Helmut must climb out of Hell to save the woman he loves and exact revenge upon the man who ripped his life to shreds.

But it's a long crawl...

And in the future, it’s not easy being green.

Golgothika; an impossible collision between The Wizard of Oz, BladeRunner, and Frankenstein. 

Written and created by John Bergin who with his perpetually dark artwork, devastating nightmare visions, apocalyptic intensity, and seemingly limitless imagination, has been compared to both Franz Kafka and Heironymus Bosch.


INTERVIEW WITH JOHN BERGIN ABOUT GOLGOTHIKA.

WHAT IS GOLGOTHIKA ABOUT?
JOHN BERGIN: The story takes place in the future. In a bleak, Bladerunner-esque metropolis...a perpetually dark city. There are elements of science fiction, but I've also worked in a lot of gothic things...the book has a very dark, gothic atmosphere. Bladerunner meets Frankenstein. The events center around a character named L Dopa. L Dopa is a four-foot-tall gargoyle. He used to be a man, but his mind was downloaded onto a computer chip and stuck into a vat-grown, biologically engineered gargoyle body. The series is about his struggle to regain his body, save the woman he loves, and exact revenge upon the man who put him in such a miserable situation... and, of course, save the world in the process.

CAN YOU GIVE US MORE DETAILS?
JB: L Dopa's real name is Helmut Muckenstich. That was his name before he was downloaded. He now calls himself L Dopa because that is his drug of choice. He takes this drug because it dulls the visions in his head that are a part of the computer chip that is his brain. Werner Herzog is the ruler of the city. Helmut married Herzog's daughter, Wyoming, without permission. Helmut and Wyoming discover an evil scheme of Herzog's. They try to stop him. They fail. The girl is turned into a Marilyn (that's a mute prostitute surgically altered to look like Marilyn Monroe). Helmut is downloaded and banished to the most violent, decedent part of the city. He must fight his way back to the woman he loves, exact revenge upon Herzog, and try - again - to keep HerzogÕs plans from coming to fruition. That's pretty much where the story STARTS. All of this sounds like straight-forward science fiction, but along the way, I'll be injecting a lot of my twisted visions. Nightmare imagery. There's a lot of material about dreams and perceptions of reality....exploring dark, frightening places...

THIS BOOK HAS AN INTERESTING HISTORY. CAN YOU GIVE US A LITTLE BACKGROUND ABOUT THAT?
JB: I started writing and drawing Golgothika about a year or so ago. It was originally intended to be a back-up feature for James O'Barr's "new" book, Gothik. But last year, Gothik was cancelled with no plans to reschedule. Originally, James and I had planned to feature some of the same characters in our stories and we were going to overlap events and such... Golgothika and Gothik take place in the same time period, same setting. I'm excited about bringing the book to Caliber and continuing it as a series. This opens up possiblities that were unavailable when the story was just a back-up feature. I've always wanted to expand the story, get into more detail and atmosphere. Now I will.

WHAT MAKES GOLGOTHIKA DIFFERENT FROM YOUR OTHER BOOKS?
JB: Golgothika, compared to my previous work, is more like a...well....like a comic book. Golgothika is just as dark and depressing as everything else I've ever done, but it's more like a comic book. Something that characterizes all of the comic books I've done is that they do not look like comic books. I have always tried to go against the conventional, work within extremes, and try to push the limits of the medium. With Golgothika, I'm making a conscious effort to work with traditional comic book story-telling conventions. I've never really done that before. I've always avoided traditional comic book story-telling techniques and methods. I mean simple things like sound effects, extreme panel lay-outs, action sequences, word balloons, and things like that. IÕve never felt comfortable using that language. I've never really needed to speak it to tell a story. From Inside, for example, is very particular and serious - no sound effects, few word balloons, and every panel is rectangular. Like I said, it doesn't really look like a comic book other than the fact that it's a series of images. I've always worked this way for a reason. When I'm telling a story, standard comic book story telling conventions feel like affectations to me - distractions from the story I'm trying to tell. I've never felt I could draw something serious or important with speed lines and sound effects all over the page. With Golgothika, I thought I'd play around with some of that stuff. Just a little.

Comic Series breakdown Golgothika
Treatment on Golgothika