Some big news for the Ned Kelly series!
Hello Angry Fred Friends,
At the end of July, I quietly shared that First Blood, the next instalment of my bushranger graphic novel series, received development funding from the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland. It was a last-minute application, and the successful application caught me completely off guard. It means I finally have dedicated time to give this book the focus it deserves, and right now I’m in full swing researching, writing and conjuring up ideas!!
What is First Blood?
It’s the prequel to Ned Kelly & The 5 Revolvers. Without giving too much away, you’ll find out how Ned entered an alternate Australia, how he met each of the other bushrangers, and how he ended up fractured and in shards the way you see him in the first book, Ned Kelly & The 5 Revolvers. There’s also a villain I’ve kept in my writing drawer for years, entering the story. He was originally going to appear in The 5 Revolvers, but he never quite fit. Now he’s found his home, and he’s a multi-layered piece of work, quite literally! I can’t wait to introduce him!
Why call it “First Blood”?
Yes, it’s a nod to Rambo, the original 1982 film about a Vietnam veteran hunted through the bush by police while carrying a trauma nobody helped him with. To me, that’s a bushranger story. Each of these men met a brutal end. Ben Hall was gunned down in an ambush. Thunderbolt was run to ground in a creek. Mad Dog Morgan’s body was treated like a trophy. And Ned took around 28 wounds at his final stand before he was hanged in Melbourne. I’m not saying what these men did was right. Some of it definitely wasn’t, and there were victims on the other side of their stories too. But they were still human beings, and First Blood is about them carrying those traumas into a brand new world.
“But Ned never rode with Ben Hall!”
I get this one a lot, along with “why does Ned have a metal arm?” That’s a fair point, but Ned Kelly also never rode with aliens... Ben Hall was a New South Wales bushranger who was shot dead near Forbes in 1865, when Ned was still just a boy in Victoria, so the two never met. But Hall’s raids were all over the newspapers back then, and it’s hard to imagine a young Ned Kelly didn’t hear those stories and feel a pull to them. Again, my stories are fiction built on real history. I’ve been researching each outlaw deeply, because the true details shape how I write them, how I stage the scenes, and how they talk to each other. The research gives the wild stuff that I conjure up in my head solid ground to stand on. When the history feels real, for me as a writer, the fiction hits harder.
Coming up
My family and I have been on the road visiting the places where Ned Kelly lived, fought and made his last stand, with a guide who knows this history better than almost anyone. That story is next.
Until next time, much love and respect!
Lucas Scheffel
Angry Fred Comics
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