About

There once was this little comic character. He was a man who died, went to Hell, and came back to life for love. He was a warrior for good with powers of darkness. They called him Spawn.

Surely by now you’ve heard of him.

My first experience with Spawn came when I was in middle school and purchased a box of old comics, which contained ten or so Spawn back-issues, including the first appearance of the terribly named “Anti-Spawn” (later deemed The Redeemer), a creature made by angels to kill Spawn. A great concept, but the character just sort of appeared every now and again throughout the series.

Being the easily influenced youngster I was, I decided I should take a crack at creating my own version of this character, a sort of reverse Spawn, and thus created “The Apostle”.

Through the years, the character has changed greatly. At first, the influence was fairly obvious: he existed in a like world with Spawn, the character that had indirectly influenced him, and existed among crooked cops and foul demons. Not too terribly unique. It evolved into a more energy based Dragon Ball Z-ish/Comic book hybrid and a gritty, realistic Batman take on the character. Eventually I even decided I didn’t want to get the character confused with the Rober Duvall movie of the same name, thus the re-naming to The Paladin.

All this occured between 6th and 8th grade, and not a person ever heard about it.

Flash forward to present day. I’ve been out of High School for over 3 years now, to give you an idea of the time that has passed, and the character has grown and matured considerably in my head. No longer is he perceived as righteous, perfect, and flawless. Now he is a human character in an impossible situation. What’s more, my obsessions with “Buffy” and “Angel” have led to my newest pride, my claim that I come from the “Joss Whedon School of Writing”: its always fun to destroy a character to watch them climb back to the top.

It wasn’t until watching “Look, Up In The Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman” that the reason Paladin could be huge clicked, and it was what made Superman so visually appealing: the imagery of a lone man with a swirling cape descending from the Heaven’s to save the world. It is this much, if anything, that connects our man (of God? Cloth? Never really put much thought into this one) to the Man of Steel himself.

Between this revelation and a few good words from some fellow writers who got the story bounced off them (and a huge thanks to them, for without their feedback and support, the character would probably still just exist in my head), I decided it was finally time to tell this epic tale of heroism, love, loss, and hope.

Its been a long ride, and there’s a lot to tell. Hopefully, you’ll all enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed creating it.

J. Christopher Baggett