Deadlock, Hellboy, Skullgirls, Spawn, Jazz & the 1920's

A strange and rather unexpected coalescence of interests have fallen upon me all at the same time.

I've been listening to Classic Jazz for over 2 years now, but only in the past month have I sought out literary resources about it's very interesting history! As I'm also incredibly fascinated with New Orleans it simply made sense to want to know more about how this very important genre came to be.

But what I didn't expect out of all this was the coalescence of media that I had been partially into to come screaming back all at once!

I have come to understand that while the classic aesthetic of prohibition era America can often rub me the wrong way, that changes significantly when introduced alongside a supernatural element.

Skullgirls and especially Deadlock with it's 1920's New York streets have both been rattling around my brain for the past few weeks. Both of these games do so little with their worlds in terms of exploring them physically. Skullgirls by nature of it being a fighting game doesn't really grant it the opportunity to have your character walk around and get a better picture of things, Deadlock similarly as a multiplayer only game requires it to do its worldbuilding through its character design and backstories. Both games do such a good job and implying a greater setting it gets my mind racing with all the possibilities (much like how I feel about good TTRPG writing hehe, leaving things a little vague is always exciting).

They both pull from a variety of influences, skullgirls being art deco, jazz and classic cartoons and Deadlock being prohibition New York, classic gangster noir and noir supernatural elements. These are all fairly timeless influences that come together to create a really cohesive aesthetic for each games setting, it's fantastic stuff.

Looking at Deadlock in particular I saw the character Abrams and was reminded just how much I enjoyed Hellboy, another very aesthetically and thematically cohesive work (even if I haven't read too much of it yet). It has the noir heavy shadows, spooky supernatural mosnter of the week structure, it's very charming and hellboy himself is such a killer design, I genuinely believe if he had a bit more mainstream success he would go down as an archetypical character in future generations.

Then thinking about Hellboy led me to Spawn (and thinking about Keith David both because of my Jazz & New Orleans interests). I don't know why it took me so long to realise the Spawn cartoon was aimed at adults!! It's good as hell! Gothic visuals, a light horror tone, noir and gangster aesthetics, oh how I adore it.

I often feel I have periods in my life where the media I am engaging with is all just exceptionally relevant, and this seems to be another one, it gives me a strange sense of satisfaction these periods.

All this to say, I think Hellboy, Spawn, Abrams and Bigband would get along really well and I would pay good money to see them drinking at a bar together.

Until next time ;).