The Apocalypse is nigh, demons are running loose on Earth, and our best hope for survival is a young woman chosen by a higher power to fight evil.







No, not Buffy. Over the past decade, Josh Howard has told the story of Nara Kilday, a girl who has died and been resurrected more than once to combat evil, often with an ax, in his creator-owned series, “Dead@17.”







As the saga draws to a close with “Dead@17: The Blasphemy Throne,” Howard reflects on the road his creation has traveled.







“I had been submitting stuff to DC and Marvel and everyone else for a while, and was getting rejected. So I just said, I'm going to try my own thing and see where it goes,” he said. “Basically, as far as inspiration goes, it was sort of like 'Twin Peaks' mixed with 'Evil Dead,' that's kind of where my head was at the time. That kind of gave birth to the initial idea, but it's obviously grown to be much more than that, and become its own thing.”







Attracting fans with his animated art and strong female leads, what began as a fairly straightforward action genre mash-up evolved into a much richer tale chronicling the lives of Nara, her best friend Hazy, their allies and enemies in a larger-than-life adventure spanning multiple planes of existence.







“When I first started, I had ideas of things that I could do and places where it could go, but I never thought it would go that long. I had just some ideas and sketches back then, and thought 'I could do this or maybe do this,' but when I got the actual deal to do the series, I thought, 'I'll do four issues, then I'll move onto something else.' I didn't really think of it as long-term.







“Then when it did well, and kind of took off a little bit, the publisher said, 'I think we should do more of these.' I wasn't sure, I wasn't prepared for it. I started going back to my notebooks and thought, 'I guess I could take it here and I could develop this and see what happens.' I sort of had an end-game for way down the road, if I ever got there, so it was a matter of 'How do I get there?' and building it brick by brick.”







With subsequent mini-series, the story took on more spiritual themes. Going beyond the Bible, Howard drew from other texts such as the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees to build a rich background for his action-fantasy end-of-the-world saga.







“I looked at as much stuff as I could. Revelations is obviously a starting point, but I didn't want to tell the typical cookie cutter Revelations story. There's so much going on there, and some of it is so open to interpretation, and I wanted to take a slice of that and was looking at it as a big picture, but then focusing on one area where stuff was happening. I read a lot of mythology, and Jewish texts and took from everywhere and making things fit into one interpretation without changing what was there.







“You see a lot of stories about the end of the world, and it's all about, 'We have to prevent this from happening' and change mankind's future. I didn't want to do something like where I'm avoiding or changing what the outcome is. I want to play within the rules that are set there to tell as different a story and as creative a story as I could.”







After three mini-series starring Nara and Hazy, “The 13th Brother,” shifted focus to new protagonist Asia Black. To go with the new heroine, the writing had a different feel, the result of Howard's own doubts about how to progress the story.







“I would say the middle was probably the biggest part where I did not know what it was going to be. As far as where I'm at now, I'm doing a lot of the things thematically that I wanted to do from the beginning. I wanted to end up where I'm at. The middle was the biggest surprise because I hit a point around the fourth series where I didn't know where it was going or how I was going to get to where I wanted. I had to almost start from the ground up, and rethink a lot of things, and it almost felt like a new beginning. There's the first part of the series, which would be volumes 1-3, and second part, which I consider 5-7, and then the middle is the turning point where a lot of things got changed and I did a lot of rethinking and re-envisioning.”







th Brother,” Howard found himself moving from Viper Comics to a new home at Image Comics with “Afterbirth.”

Following, “The 13Brother,” Howard found himself moving from Viper Comics to a new home at Image Comics with “Afterbirth.”





“One of the biggest decisions I faced was when I went to Image, was asking should I reboot from zero for the new audience or should I keep going. Not rebooting probably hurt me in the short term because people jumped in and had no idea what was going on. I don't like doing recaps within the story, re-explaining the plot because it doesn't feel natural if you're reading the whole thing in one sitting.







“If every chapter you're getting a recap by the characters, it's going to feel jarring. I think it hurt me short-term, but I think once it's all done, it will be better for it. Fingers crossed, I made the right decision. I didn't want to just abandon four stories just because I moved to a new publisher because I was invested in where I was at.”







In recent chapters, Howard has brought an obscure, mysterious figure with ancient origins to the forefront. Melchizedek is a figure mentioned only briefly in Old and New Testaments, but who also appears in a wide variety of other religious texts. While scholars debate his true identity, as texts give differing, conflicting origins, his role is always important. Howard has his own interpretation.







“Obviously he showed first in 'Lost Books of Eve,' and I've always been fascinated by the idea of Melchizedek because he's mentioned maybe twice in the Bible, and he has kind of a unique origin. And in Jewish texts he's got an even weirder origin where he was born fully grown, and had clothes upon him. I cast him in 'Eve' as sort of a back up to Adam, that he was God's back-up plan that if Adam screwed up then he has this other guy to rely on.







“When it came to throw Nara into Purgatory in 'Dead@17,' I wanted it to be like a dumping ground from throughout history, a place for the leftovers and the weird things that did not have a place on Earth anymore, and I thought it would be perfect to put him there. I always wanted him to be the architect of The Zodiac along with Eve, and I never got to that within the Eve series like I wanted to, so I just moved him over and told the rest of the story there.







“My goal is to actually get back and do a new version of Eve. It was never finished the way I wanted it to be. The publisher was going through some problems at the time and had to cut back on books, and eventually stopped publishing altogether. I had to end it in four issues when it was intended to go much longer, so I had to give it an artificial ending that was never meant to be the ending. It's just been a matter of me not having time to get back to it, and it's my intention to get back to it, redo it, finish it properly. Most likely it's one graphic novel or something to that. That story needs to be out there because it's such an important part of the Dead@17 story now.”







Another title by Howard that has tied into the greater saga is “Black Harvest,” the tale of a mysterious woman named Zaya whose appearance is tied into purported alien activity. Hints to “Dead@17” were present in the story, but became more evident when the ending was tweaked for the collected edition.







“I was happy with the original ending. I had another notion of another story, but I never wanted to do a sequel. The person who I run all my stories by, my best friend, has always said he hated it, the one thing that I've done that he hated. He thought it was too light, that it took the punch away from the ending. I didn't agree 100% with him, but I could see where he was coming from after a while. I always wanted the notion that Zaya lived on somehow to be part of the story without having to do that story. Once I realized that I could leave that hint, but still have it end, I went for it.”







Zaya ties into the main story as Libra of The Zodiac, a covert ops force made up of a blend of Howard's characters, biblical and historical figures.









“(Assembling The Zodiac) was a long process. Part of it was trying to make them fit in some degree with the actual zodiac; they don't all line up, but I tried that first. Then I picked out who I thought would be cool and made sense, and some are just for fun. Zaya always connected with the universe, and was important, and I thought she would be a good fix. And they are all grouped with what they represent with the greens, the pinks and all that.”





The sixth Dead@17 volume, “The Witch Queen” wrapped in 2010, and fans have waited patiently for the story to conclude.







“I actually started on the finale pretty close to the end of 'Witch Queen,' but then my father-in-law passed away unexpectedly, so that really upset the balance of a lot of things, and I put it on hold and it was hard to get back to once I had stopped. I probably had done almost half of the book, and I had to take care of some things and started taking commissions and freelance work, and once you're doing that, it's hard to find a stopping point to get back to your own book. At some point, I got the job for 'Monster High,' and that took about a year. So it was just a series of events that took me longer to get it out than I had intended. But the delay gave me more time to think about the story and to make it the way I wanted it to be, so I think it is going to be better for the wait.”







As he approaches the series' end, Howard is reflective of storytelling choices he's made, but is looking forward to readers finally getting to see the story completed.







“There's a lot of things that I wish I could have done differently. I see a lot of mistakes and a lot of missed opportunities. Things that I could have done differently, turning left when I should have gone right. But I try not to focus too much on that, and just focus on where I'm at and keep making the best book I possibly can with where I'm at. My end goal has always been to tell one story, and when it's done, that it would be one narrative.”

