Nightmaster

51 years ago - Jim Rook is born in rural Pennsylvania.

44 years ago - 7-year-old Jim begins reading fantasy novels voraciously.

38 years ago - 13-year-old Jim takes up the guitar, writing his own songs.

33 years ago - 18-year-old Jim moves to Philadelphia to pursue his music career.

32 years ago - 19-year-old Jim's band, the Electrics becomes a popular local live act.

29 years ago - 22-year-old Jim's band the Electric release their first album, Karma. He meets Janet Jones.

25 years ago - 26-year-old Jim & Janet Jones enter an old abandoned bookstore, the Oblivion, not knowing that it is a nexus into the Paths Beyond. They are both drawn into the land of Myrra, a world of stories. Janet is taken in by the evil Warlock Overlords, who keep her as their prisoner-ward. Jim discovers the mythic Sword of Night and begins his adventures in Myrra, trying to free Janet.

20 years ago - 31-year-old Jim is met by Queen Maureen of the House of Nightshade, and is gifted his armor as a recognized hero of the House.

19 years ago - 32-year-old Jim is befriended by Bobo, a talking Chimpanzee that knows Myrra. They adventure together, leading a revolt against the Warlock Overlords and freeing Janet Jones. Jim chooses to remain behind in Myrra so that Janet can escape.

14 years ago - 37-year-old Jim and Bobo are summoned by Queen Maureen as she sacrifices herself to save her daughter Eve as the House of Nightshade is usurped by Karkull. Jim adopts her, and she joins them on their quest to free Myrra from the threat of Karkull.

13 years ago - 38-year-old Jim, Bobo, and Eve attempt to infiltrate Karkull's castle, but are captured. They discover that Eve’s brother Liam was taken as the host for a dark magic entity called Incubus. Eve is corrupted by Karkull's dark magic, and gains the ability to manipulate shadows, allowing them to escape.

11 years ago - 40-year-old Jim, Bobo, and Eve defeat Karkull, freeing Myrra. They follow Incubus through a portal to stop him from entering the real world. Returning to the Oblivion, Jim takes ownership of the building, opening the bookstore, exploring it's secrets.

8 years ago - 43-year-old Jim breaches the spells isolating the Oblivion from it's extra-dimensional anchor, unlocking it as a nexus between the Paths Beyond.

5 years ago - 46-year-old Jim ventures into hell with Zatanna with help from the lesser demon Scorch, to find Dan Cassidy and help enact a loophole to end his servitude to Nebiros. Dan joins him at the Oblivion.

3 years ago - 48-year-old Jim and a group of heroes stop Felix Faust from manipulating the spells binding Siobhan McDougal & Valerie Beaudry, using them to attempt to rewrite the rules of magic. They take the name the Shadowpact, but don't yet understand why. He summons Boston Brand.

1 year ago - 50-year-old Jim and the Shadowpact cast their spell, drawing Mageddon into our reality. Jim returns to Myrra, and Bobo agrees to watch over the Oblivion.

now - 51-year-old Jim Rook helps Eve Eden and the Outsiders finally defeat a returned Karkull, who has usurped the powers of Todd James Rice to bathe the Earth in shadows.

Nightmaster is a pretty old, classic character who managed to get a new lease on life much later on, but before we start to transpose any of his modern appearances we really want to sink our teeth into his vintage fantasy adventure. It's a classic, pure story concept, something that feels like it probably should have been a paperback novel from a guy smoking a pipe. In another world, Nightmaster would have gotten it's own ongoing series and run for decades while we explored the magical realms of Myrra. It anything, this might have just been a little too early. We get to unpack this classic comic and see what it takes to make it feel denser and more integrated into our project.

Nightmaster Comic History

Jim Rook, first appears in a three part story in Showcase by Denny O'Neal that ran from issues #82 to #84. It's a brief swords & sorcery adventures, in which a modern day (1969) rockstar and his girlfriend walk into Oblivion Inc, an abandoned storefront, only to be whisked away to the magical lands of Myrra, where Jim has to draw the Night Sword from a pillar, and quest across the land to save her from the Warlock Overlords. DC's drawn from this well a number of times, creating other fantasy stories running adjacent with the rest of their continuity, but this is the earliest one I've been able to find. It wasn't referenced again after its initial three-issue run (unless you count Showcase #100, which brought back EVERYBODY). I think it's probably best remembered because of the incredibly cool covers for these three issues, all done by Joe Kubert.

The next time we see Jim Rook is actually pretty interesting. In 1992, Post-Crisis, Grant Morrison had Animal Man venturing through Limbo, where he encountered all sorts of forgotten characters. Some of them actually have gone one to get really popular again (Mr. Freeze was in there). Jim was among the characters he met. Later, in 1995, Jim actually made two different appearances almost simultaneously. He showed up in the minor series Primal Force, where it's established that Jim is now the proprietor of Oblivion Inc and still heroically wielding the Night Sword, and then a few months later in Swamp Thing, where we see that actually Jim imagined his entire adventure in Myrra. The fact that these two takes on his story are so contradictory isn't so strange (Swamp Thing was completely a Vertigo series at that point and therefore not part of the main continuity), but it IS strange that they happened mere months from each other?

Now that it is understood that Jim does still exist in DC (Swamp Thing appearances aside), and we now know what his status quo is, his next major appearance is where we finally establish the character as modern readers will know him, and where the vast bulk of his appearances happen. In 2006, one of the Infinite Crisis tie-in miniseries was Day of Vengeance by Bill Williamson. In it he gathers a group of magic-themed heroes who band together in a desperate bid to save the world. They do so in the Oblivion, the shop Jim had taken ownership of, which had been converted into a Bar that also served as a magical nexus point. Jim was there, behind the bar, and was able to provide the team their headquarters. This is the series that introduced the Shadowpact before they got their own series, and Jim would appear in the bulk of the series, also getting his own single standalone self-titled issue, which is not bad for a forgotten three-issue story from 1969.

The Shadowpact stopped appearing after the New 52, but the Oblivion was still referenced occasionally, so Jim was still considered canon. He died in one of the endless Dark Metal stories in the late 2010s, leaving his bar to his buddy Detective Chimp.

Our Nightmaster Story

We've incorporated several magical realms in our project, often giving them a lot of focus and building whole casts of characters to occupy them. Myrra SHOULD get the same treatment, but truthfully there just isn't all that much content to draw from. Jim was really only ever in Myrra during his original story, and then again briefly in his one-shot, so there isn't much for us to build on... so we actually built most of this content using other characters.

First, we used the relationship that has built up over the years between Jim Rook and Bobo, the Dective Chimp, to really flesh out both characters. We decided that Bobo's story worked even better for us when he was actually another refugee in Myrra, and gave the two of them a long history adventuring together, creating a sort of Knight and Squire vibe.

Also, we made some changes to another character, Nightshade, and decided that her magical homeland could ALSO be Myrra. connecting these characters gives Eve a whole new set of connections to the world, but it also expands Jim's story so much, making him the adoptive father and caretaker of a young teenage magical princess. So much of the story we concocted for Jim in his years after his return are more or less comic accurate, but building up these two relationships really gave us a much more robust story for Jim, making Nightmaster a story that feels weighty and fun.

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