Mister Icol is the very first artist I contacted to draw Rage more than 20 years ago. At the time, I had sent the Rage Bane of Demons script to Soleil Productions, which was based in Toulon, and received a letter telling me it had been refused by their reading committee (not sure what they had a reading committee for, since they only published french graphic novels, but well…). So the idea was that I would try to send them the project again, but with pictures this time, to make it easier on the eyes of the reading committee… So, I contacted Mister Icol, he began working on the project, then told me he had begun to work on something else entirely, and left the project. We worked on a few other projects together afterwards with the same results, then lost contact for a while.
More than 20 years later, I met Jean-Erick, with whom I began to work on the Rage Statue, and he told me he had been in school with Mister Icol. Jean-Erick managed to find him, invited both of us, and we began talking about a new project. Mister Icol wanted it to be a Rage story, but the character he had in mind, even though violent, would have looked too heroic for Rage, who is supposed to be the bad guy of his own series. We ended up with a story that would happen during the Dark Times (10000 years before the first story of Rage), a chaotic period where gods tended to walk the earth more often, and well suited to Mister Icol’s character (and it also allowed for a crossover with Rage, since the character was here during the Dark Times too).
Mister Icol called his character Raijin, basically a Japanese version of Rage, created a backstory for all the characters, and asked me to write a draft of the first issue which I gladly did. “Make it 4 pages only” he told me. “This way, I’m sure I’ll finish it”. Which I did. I saw him a few months later at Jean-Erick’s workshop. He had taken my 4-page draft and made 10+ pages out of it. And it wasn’t finished, because he wasn’t totally satisfied yet. I said “OK, huh, tell me when you’re finished, and we’ll see how we can publish it.” To this day, I’m still waiting for some news. I’ll keep you posted!
In the meantime, here are a few pages of what he already did. These are only photos, but seeing the quality of what he does, you’ll understand why I’d like this to be published someday!
