State of Thunder is my 2021 amateur DIY comic which I drew and wrote.

This idea of making of my own comic inspired of my industry favorite heroes was on my mind for long time. First spark of inspiration for this project I got while listening to band Prodigy song Thunder from which I developed concept of story of lonely questionable antihero which is trapped in conflict of backwards totemistic nations which regress in the far future so much they came back to stone age level worshiping of basic nature forces such as thunder, fire and water. Our hero is used as weapon by this now primitive nation to push their militaristic agenda and on the way becomes more monster than a man and then tries to come back to rediscover his humanity. Main creative influence in development of my basic idea was my history of reading the comic book stories of my favorite dark antiheroes such as Punisher, Wolverine or now successfully adapted the Boys. These dark and gritty deconstructions of classical incorruptible heroes which never steps even meter behind of margins of acceptable behavior are opposites of those knights in shinning armor in every way. They are flipped dirty, scratched side of perfect coin of god side law abiding super heroes of twentieth century and goes in their stories where those good guys couldn’t. So this was basic inspiration of creating my own dark antihero. Also I wanted to have this story have a touch of WW2 and cold war paranoia and world separation in two or three different blocks. But this time world isn’t separated just by its politic but also by force of nature which they worship. I wanted to create my own little universe mapping sci-fi global conflict which not only consumes the population of this world population but transforms their very soul.

In aspect of visual culture I used this short comic as a satirical parody of world conflict past and present and tried to deconstruct fanatical devotion to individuals loyalty to grand inhuman and uncaring fascistic factions.

“Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike qualifies as a ‘real’ war? Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high alert with guns pointed at each other’s heads and fingers trembling on the trigger?”

Arundhati Roy

References: Arundhati Roy, God of Small Things (1997)