Fiction truly is the world’s single best salve.
A few years back, when COVID and Trump-ian ineptitude tag-teamed the whole wide world, it seemed like horror comics were all the rage. And rightfully so: Seeing snarling demons and axe murderers get their comeuppance made the world feel less terrifying.
Only things have clearly gotten worse, and it seems like there’s a surge in fantasy comics as of late. Again, it all makes sense: If we can’t actually face the future in any sort of meaningful way, it’s nice to have a respite to the glory days of magic, monsters, and epic heroes.
Curt Pires has embraced this turn toward the fantasy, but he’s doing it very much his own way.
“For me, fantasy can be very hard to get into because it’s just super esoteric and the most nerdy thing imaginable,” Pires said. “I like nerdy stuff, but when it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m the f**king high elf of whatever,’ I zone out. Except the Lord of the Rings movies are actually excellent because they really ground everything right in character.”
Grounded is exactly what we can expect from the forthcoming Lost Fantasy. Here, Pires reunites with artist Luca Casalanguida (the excellent Money from ComiXology) for an alt history where a government-backed outfit (The Great Hunters) has spent 100 years keeping the world safe from monsters. Until “something (breaks) through” and “it’s up to rookie monster hunter Henry Blackheart to stop it.”
In some ways the book’s familiar enough — Henry wields a giant sword (more on the later, though) in a move ripped from “Writing Dope Heroes 101.” But Pires really sees Lost Fantasy not just as an interesting story, but a kind of salvo in the ongoing war against mediocre comics.
“With Lost Fantasy issues, they take a while to write because that book they’re oversized issues and also very dense,” Pires said. “We do more in our first two issues than like other books do in six. And that’s by design because the comics market is nebulous right now. In this moment, we have to be batting 1000 and really pull out all of the stops.”
It’s not just other creators that Pires is “targeting,” either. He’s just as guilty of quality issues at times, and he absolutely wants to set a different standard and corresponding expectations.
“I would say there’s a couple things I’ve done and I read over it and said, ‘Oh, it’s not as good as the other stuff,’” Pires said. “Everyone has to be doing their best work. And delivering really great product to the stores to sell.”
Pires added, “With Lost Fantasy, we wanted to create something that has a lot of value and is sellable for the stores as well as story-wise being really satisfying for readers and every issue is a good cliffhanger and hook and it feels like a full meal and not a snack.”
Main cover by Luca Casalanguida. Courtesy of Image Comics.
So, how do you truly set apart a book that’s so familiar in some rather important ways? It begins, of course, with the book’s unique influences, which includes a very specific series from the World’s Greatest Detective.
“The book that probably most influenced my approach to this is not a book that you would even really consider: Grant Morrison’s Batman and Robin from 15 years ago,” Pires said. “Their three-issue arcs really cover lot of ground, and each issue had a really good hook. It’s the first time I remember reading a comic where it was so compressed, but the storytelling was still really satisfying. At that time, books were doing six- or 12-issue arcs.”
Pires added, “Batman and Robin is really edge-of-your-seat, pulpy, fun storytelling. Lost Fantasy is a very different book than that, but I wanted to mine the pacing of it and evoke the way I enjoyed reading (Batman and Robin).”
The influences extend beyond comics, and it’s clear that Lost Fantasy is reflective of how we all consume and synthesize media.
“I grew up reading the Harry Potter books, and the coolest part was that there’s this train at this platform or whatever and it takes you to this hidden world underneath ours that we don’t see,” Pires said. “That’s a super specific element I was always intrigued by. It felt grounded and accessible and realistic. I also played The Witcher 3 and I was really interested in that he’s a monster hunter and there’s all these different types of monster. It’s almost a science to them.”
And, of course, there’s another great albeit slightly more apparent influence.
“My personal favorite is Final Fantasy VII,” Pires said. “That game’s the biggest one, and it’s so popular because it has this amazing world, but the story’s told in a very grounded way. That was something I really pulled from. And, I mean, in Final Fantasy, everyone always looks cool as shit. Henry is almost a remix of Cloud. He’s got the big sword; that’s 100% an homage.”
To a certain extent, these inspirations (a mainstream superhero title, the world’s biggest children’s book, and two beloved video game franchises) only inform so much of Lost Fantasy. When we’re looking at the book’s true spirit, we have to look even deeper still — to East of West.
“Another thing (artist) Nick Dragotta does is repeatedly cool comic shit,” Pires said. “In Lost Fantasy, there’s the guy with the sniper rifle that assembles itself. I want the maximum amount of cool shit per issue. I hate comics where it’s just overly intellectual and boring. Yeah, comics can and should be intellectual and communicative of good ideas, but remember it’s still a comic book. There’s nothing worse than some writer who forgets to put any fun in a book. So my thing was, ‘Let’s make the book action packed and fun, but also weird and intellectual’ — pretty much what I try to do with all my work, because it’s like having your cake and eat it too, right?”
That’s the precise spot where it becomes clear that Pires’ inspirations are simply the groundwork, and he’s remixing and reworking artifacts and ideas to tell a bigger story. Yes, Henry smashes monsters with a massive sword, but Lost Fantasy is meant to be both celebratory of and subversive of popular fiction. It’s Pires and company leaning into and bucking certain elements to tell a story that matters — if only because it’s how they want to pen a fantasy story.
Variant cover by Darick Robertson. Courtesy of Image Comics.
The team’s “rebellion,” if you were inclined to put it that way, begins with the visuals. Casalanguida truly is the perfect partner for Pires, as the Italian artist has a unique approach and emphasis tailor-made for this book.
“Luca can really nail some of the more high panel stuff,” Pires said. “He’s also good at pacing, which is one of the hardest things. What I look for in an artistic partner is can they do the higher panel count stuff as well as the splash page stuff. For my scripts, I like to have a mix of widescreen action as well as higher density pages. Because I want every story to be satisfying. Personally, I don’t think just doing four panels per page for an entire issue is that interesting or satisfying to read.”
Pires added, “Luca also has a real command over black and white. And there’s just some stuff he does with color and with negative space and ink work that is breathtaking.”
Pires went on to add that Casalanguida’s skill and confidence allows him to take measured risks. That includes a daring enough ending for issue #1, which sees Henry experience a specific mishap in his efforts to crack the case of the suddenly-appearing monsters.
“I thought the way he drew it was beautiful and so interesting in the composition of it,” Pires said of issue #1’s finale. “There’s a level of comfort you get when you work with someone over a sustained period of time. I have that confidence with Luca drawing it to push things.”
But it’s not just the visuals that set Lost Fantasy apart. In any other version of this story from many other creative teams, you’d expect Henry to be some surly anti-hero. Instead, he has some struggles that inform his recent-ish turn as a monster hunter, and which complicate the mystery and the world at-large.
“I try to create characters that are three-dimensional,” Pires said. “Because it just gets really boring and hard to invest in characters if they feel like stock or cardboard. And so a lot of that is, alongside figuring out what the story is and what the high concept is…what makes me interested in working on one idea over another is if I have an idea of what that character’s journey is. Or, what’s their struggle? So for Henry, it’s beyond the immediate plot stuff, he’s dealing with a lot of questions about his family and his history. And so that to me is what makes the character interesting rather than just being a stock anti-hero.”
Henry isn’t the only one that gets to be multifaceted and extra layered. Lost Fantasy‘s second issue adds a novel wrinkle that ought to male for extra juicy interpersonal drama.
“The character who gets introduced in #2 is our second lead (Nihlas),” Pires said. “They have a history (with Henry), and I’m purposefully leaving it vague about what the characters have butted heads about because a future issue is already set aside and dedicated to go back and show what created that whole situation.”
Pires added, “It creates a mystery around a character relationship that in turn becomes a plot mystery because you’re like, ‘Well, why don’t these guys like each other?’ So it puts character back in the front of the book and merges the two, the plot and immediate action with the character work.”
There’s even more, including Henry’s relationship with his dad, the OG hunter Cyrus Blackheart, which Pires said is “laying the breadcrumbs. It gives people just enough to move on.”
Still, perhaps the best moments in Lost Fantasy aren’t just about great visuals or profound character work. It’s when they do what all great comics should, and there’s this subtle but undeniable chemistry between story and art. For this book, it’s these often the small but mighty moments that feel massively important.
“Henry has this power that he can touch people and get inside their heads and their memories,” Pires said. “So the way we show that is the book goes into a nine-panel grid in first person, colored in various shades of amber. It’s a case where the storytelling is functioning on multiple levels. And I really like that and the way we use it throughout the first arc to pull people in.”
Pires added, “It’s like what I was talking about earlier regarding the interplay. Where, yeah, we have this cool nine-panel thing where it’s like, ‘Look, we’re smart guys. We can do the Alan Moore comic book stuff.’ And then at the end of the issue, it’s got the giant sword just f**king stabbing things. It’s something that you could really only do in comics (while) using the entire team to make it special.”
Courtesy of Image Comics.
Admittedly, messy monster hunters in a fantasy setting aren’t entirely new (even as Lost Fantasy positions everything to feel deeply human over inherently badass). But to that point, Pires raises an interesting point: It’s about adding to a patchwork, if you will, and extending a lineage of stories that feel familiar and still hum with new ideas and energies.
“The only thing I can think that’s like it is James Bond, where each one is called James Bond, but you’re getting a different movie each time,” Pires said. “It’s a canvas. I’m just pulling from the sense of wonder of Final Fantasy at its best, but also Japanese roleplaying games and manga like Berserk.”
Sure, Berserk is yet another reference. (Pires said that in issue #4 there are “some panels that are absolutely crazy and just Berserk-level. I’m going to have to raise their age rating on it to Mature.”) However, that inclination toward extreme violence is just another way that Lost Fantasy tries to be novel and refreshing in all the ways possible.
“I don’t really want to shy away from it because that’s what grounds this book in my opinion — it’s the consequence of what these monsters do when they break through and stuff,” Pires said. “It makes you more invested in Henry trying to solve this thing. Whether it’s Lost Fantasy, or really across all of my work, I want to make the action brutal and violent. Anything can happen because people need to be engaged and not have that experience of just checking out. But I feel like it always has some kind of ramification and it’s not empty.”
Pires added, “Superhero comics are bad for this — there’s fights with no stakes, right? Where you just don’t even care. Or, it’s actually worse in movies. I find it where it’s these two characters are having an action scene and I just glaze over.”
That’s once again where the visual aspect is huge for Lost Fantasy. It’s not just about monsters shedding blood and bodies being devastated by giant claws. Rather, there’s a kind of elegance and authorial intent involved that elevates the violence and makes it another tool for the creative team to build the larger story.
“I was thinking of Frank Miller. There’s a rhythmic high panel count,” Pires said. “And that’s by design, to keep moving and feeling really dynamic. I love splash pages, but I like these high density fights. It’s something that’s a bit atypical in American comics. When I do more work for hire, they’re always trying to push the panel count down. And then I’m always having to go back and be like, ‘Well, no, I mapped this shit out.’”
Pires added, “In my head when I wrote it, I knew it would go, ‘I take half the page and make it the half of a 16-panel grid, right? So it’s four up top and then four, and then we do two widescreen at the bottom so you can breathe again. It’s absolutely rhythmic.”
Of course, none of these even touches on perhaps the most interesting aspect of Lost Fantasy (again, aside from the massive sword): the book’s political discussions and dissection.
As he investigates the monsters, Henry’s journey takes him to rural America, where he has to contend not just with scaly monsters, but those equally gross ideologies that have crawled their way up from the underworld and taken over segments of the U.S.
No, Pires didn’t exactly intend to make Lost Fantasy a kind of allegory for Trump’s America (especially since the book started development in late 2023, long before his second term). But even Pires can’t deny the connections.
“I guess it’s hard for that not to feel political because that’s every day now,” Pires said. “I wasn’t setting out to make it (political). That’s just more an element of telling a compelling mystery or thriller. Where the institutions are working against (people), trying to cover it up.”
Courtesy of Image Comics.
A lot of those political undertones, then, are born out of the book’s setting, which is novel enough for its given genre.
“I wanted to set the book somewhere where there’s not a lot of stuff,” Pires said. “Obviously there’s Yellowstone, but genre storytelling typically doesn’t happen in Montana or Wyoming. So I thought that’d be really interesting and also help ground things. Because it’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m the L.A. top cop solving the monster case.’”
Pires went on to add that that focus away from these major “hubs” is about delving into some larger shared experience.
“I also just wanted to explore the different political feelings of people,” Pires said. “I think in that first issue what I’m exploring is the gray area, where it’s like, no matter who wanders into power, we’re always f**ked. Then, of course, there’s characters in the book who are more shit-heels, and they’ve pre-judged Henry based on his appearances.”
However you may fall on these issues, though, Pires isn’t afraid to tackle more controversial topics. He wants to give his characters real challenges, and make them figure out where they really stand once their old life’s started to dissolve.
“I’m not going to not put something in my book because I feel like it’s used politically, but I don’t think it’s a book that’s super political at its core,” Pires said. “Because at the end of the day, well, it’s also just a monster-killing book if you want it to be. But there’s politics in it because…one of the big threads is that Henry is a part of this big institution that he’s quickly discovering is corrupt. That’s a pretty universal feeling. I personally feel like every institution is unimaginably corrupt. And so him brushing up against that in the course of his job is something that I just find interesting.”
It’s not about avoiding politics per se. Nor is it about a kind of political whataboutism. Instead, Pires treats this division in a novel way. Case in point: Upon arriving to town, Henry meets with local police who have some stereotypically regressive ideas about the state of the world. In response, a couple different characters offer the response of “Let’s not do that” to rants about, say, gender and conspiracy theories.
“That’s a moment where (Nihlas) hows up and that’s things are getting a bit ugly and he just high-roads the person,” Pires said. “To not waste his time ’cause they have actual stuff to deal with.”
Ultimately, we’re all generally under attack — not just by shitty politicians but larger, more terrifying threats. Fantasy, then, is just one way to process these larger-than-life feelings.
“I saw a video on Instagram of people at the (L.A. outdoor mall) the Grove, and a giant sinkhole had opened up,” Pires said. “You don’t even know what’s really anymore. I feel the same way with the news — it’s impossible to figure out what’s true unless you really research and take 20 minutes and cross-check a number of different things. That’s something that’s in the book, too, which is just honestly, probably in (there) subconsciously because I’m stressed out about this stuff.”
Courtesy of Image Comics.
Pires and company are continuing work on Lost Fantasy as an ongoing series, even as he admits that “it’s always market-dependent.” He also called this book the “biggest idea I’ve ever worked on,” which speaks to the book’s depth and lofty objectives. (Fun fact: The crux of the book, Pires added, is revealed in just one panel within issue #1.)
So, sure, he has high hopes for the book, going so far as to say that “it seems like something that taps into something that people seem to want right now.” But he also recognizes that Lost Fantasy isn’t going to be an easy book to jump into (swords and carnage once again aside). That’s alright, though, because Pires is willing to put in the time and effort to tell an important story about living in a world that’s ready to eat you apart at any moment. Even if you don’t get it entirely, there’s one person who still needs Lost Fantasy: Pires himself.
“Will people be patient enough to wait and see that or will it frustrate them? At the end of the day, it’s not really my job to think about,” Pires said. “It’s not a reason to not do it. I want people to have a good time reading my stuff and enjoy it. But it’s also where if you’re impatient, where you won’t wait and let me pay things off, I have to just let myself do my job.”
