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Shadow Empires: Faith Conquers is an idea that Moeller has been developing
for a long time. Every nuance and detail has been given consideration, from vehicle technical design, planetary locations, politics between castes and worlds, all the way down to the names of every soldier within a division. Moeller’s intimate familiarity with the project made the prospects of bringing someone else on as a conceptual editor impossible, but he still wishes he was able to share the conceptual load with someone who knew the universe of Shadow Empires as well as he. “In this book, I could have used more input. I was just starting out and there are some elements that are clumsy and a good editor would have helped. The guy I am working with now from DC is All characters © Chris Moeller
a very good editor; we have a very good relationship and he sits down, reads the script and takes time to really think about a story. We’ve gotten on the phone to talk about what works, what doesn’t work, what would be a better way of bring up the certain points and things in a story. But on Shadow Empires, I felt like I was the editor. I did the whole thing. “On the other hand, the more you can do on your own, the better. You’re going to make some mistakes, but it also forces you to work hard… you can’t rely on anybody else, its just you out there. I think it’s important that you do the best work you’re capable of at the time.” In Shadow Empires: Faith Conquers, war and religion collide and society devolves into greed and chaos. Few people are strong enough to hold onto the older, nobler ways and those who do are rigid and unyielding. Cotar-Fomas Trevor Faith is one of those throwbacks, dedicated to doing what’s right instead of acting politically convenient. In Shadow Empires, Faith and his Grey Rats are assigned to the planet Hotok and find themselves amidst murder, intrigues and power struggles. In Shadow Empires #3, Faith confronts the cardinals of the church with irrefutable proof of a conspiracy that resulted in the deaths of his predecessor and his lover. In this page, there are clearly two panels, but they are drawn without frame or
Figure 10.2: Example of an unconventional layout. From Shadow Empires: Faith Conquers #3, by Chris Moeller.
gutters, creating an interesting layout (Figure 10.2). “I was very happy the way this page turned out—it was one of my favorites. It works on a couple of levels… it’s a transition from the very busy scene on the proceeding page and it functions as an establishing shot as the scene shifts. It’s a contrast from the standard storytelling page—you come over and have this kind of big splash page and a different color scheme, different people. On it’s most pedantic level, that’s what the page is doing: setting up a shift. “[It successfully] set up the confrontation between the cardinals and Faith. The figures have almost the same scale, these large Cardinals and Faith and that’s all there is on the page. They become key elements, so I’m setting up this conflict between the two elements visually. The Cardinals are talking and they are very verbose... they go on and on. Faith comes in shows the difference between them; 121