Lady Baltimore #1 is on shelves at your local comic shop and on your favorite digital platforms now and we were lucky enough to catch up with co-writer Christopher Golden for a deep dive into what this series hopes to offer both the Baltimore Universe and even the horror genre.
Check out the full interview below!
Comic Watch: Thank you all so much for taking the time to talk about the new Lady Baltimore comic with us here at Comic Watch. This is a miniseries that feels like it has been a long time coming for fans of Baltimore, with lead character Sofia Valk first appearing in 2014’s Baltimore: The Witch of Harju, so what do you feel made now the right time to tell this story?
Christopher Golden: Wow, it’s weird to think Sofia’s been around that long. When we first met her, she was on the run from the evil resurrected corpse of her abusive husband. She encountered Baltimore and his team almost as if she were the classic damsel in distress, but we figure out pretty much right away that she’s anything but. Sofia may have grown up in a simple rural life, but she’s formidable and determined, and not going to take shit from anyone ever again. Through her alliance with Baltimore, she learns not just about monsters and magic, but about the larger good-versus-evil that is constantly happening on a cosmic level, with our world as a playing field. She’s her own person. I often say she was the glue that held that team together, because she was the only person who could get Baltimore to remember his humanity from time to time. She became his confidante and staunchest ally. Childress may have known the young Baltimore the best, but the driven, doomed crusader Baltimore? Sofia knew him better than anyone. When we were wrapping up the run of Baltimore and beginning to sow the seeds for the Outerverse and what was to come when we got to World War II, we knew immediately that Sofia would be at the center of it. She’s still the glue, and now she takes center stage. This is her story, her battle to fight. She’s the driving force.
CW: Lady Baltimore picks up 13 years after the events of The Red Kingdom and finds Sofia continuing a fight against dark forces that she has chosen herself following Lord Baltimore’s death. What can you tell us about how this miniseries was shaped by the previous events in Baltimore and how you feel it will be different moving forward?
CG: At the end of Baltimore, the Red King is destroyed, and that ends the imminent threat of that time and drives evil back into the shadows for a while. But that doesn’t mean monsters and darkness cease to exist, in the same way that the end of the First World War didn’t prevent the Second World War. If anything, the First World War left Europe reeling in its aftermath in such a broken state of confusion that most nations weren’t prepared for another crisis so soon. We begin Lady Baltimore thirteen years after the defeat of the Red King and the end of that war. In Germany, nationalism is on the rise. The Nazi party is thriving and taking control and invading Poland, and they’re not alone. They’ve allied themselves with a vast network of witches calling themselves the Hexenkorps.
The biggest difference between Baltimore and Lady Baltimore is in character. Baltimore was damned, doomed, wanted to die, and was chosen by the powers that be to fight for them until he won. Only then would he be gifted with his own death. Sofia has zero interest in dying, but at the same time, she’s much more vulnerable than Baltimore. He became something supernatural, something more than human, but Sofia is just a person. She’s a hell of a fighter, fearless and ruthless and determined, and smarter than almost anyone. She’s surrounded herself with people who share her purpose. She looks around at what’s happening in the world and doesn’t think the big war—the one erupting all over Europe—can be won in a head-on battle, so that means she needs to take out the monsters and the magic that are aiding the Nazis. Strategy is going to be her path to victory…if she ever gets the chance to implement that strategy.
First, she has to deal with rumors of Baltimore’s ghost wandering Europe, and the reappearance of an old ally, and the battle to see who will be queen of the witches. There was a sense of found family in Baltimore, but we’re going to get more of that in Lady Baltimore. Loyalty is big, but so is betrayal. Love is a huge component of the story, but so are spite and resentment. And in a broader sense, what you’ll see is that we’ve created a playing field where we can explore all the characters and concepts of the Outerverse in one place. Readers loved Baltimore and Joe Golem, but found it hard to see how it all fit together. In Lady Baltimore, we get to play with all our toys.
CW: You recently stated that you don’t think of Sofia as Lord Baltimore’s widow, which gives her a sense of individuality and strength to build her own future. Can you talk a little about the significance of this approach to the character and how it helps to define her in the overall Baltimore world?
CG: Sofia is Baltimore’s widow in the legal sense, because they did get married, but their marriage was purely one of practical intent. They were friends, maybe the most intimate friends either of them had ever had, but that was completely platonic. They trusted one another. But Sofia came from nothing and had nothing, and Baltimore fully expected to die when he faced the Red King, so he married Sofia and made her his sole heir. That meant that if she survived, she would inherit the Baltimore estate and all that went with it, as well as carrying the title of Lady Baltimore. She’s a baroness now, which is something for a woman who grew up in the woods outside a little village in Estonia. She has resources, and she’s using them all to fight this fight against the darkness.
In a way, she’s continuing Baltimore’s fight, but she doesn’t see it that way. He never wanted that fight. His family was murdered by Haigus and all he cared about was vengeance. Once he killed Haigus, he would have preferred to die right then, but the powers that be chose him as their champion to rise and fight the darkness, and to prevent the Red King from destroying the human race. Sofia saw horrifying glimpses of darkness and black magic as a girl and as a young woman, and she experienced all kinds of horror thereafter. She’s seen evil up close and she knows that the only way to defeat it is if heroes rise up to fight it, to get strong, to educate themselves, to outsmart the horrors. She’s not going to wait for someone else to do it. Nobody has chosen Sofia for this role, no powers that be have ordained her…she’s choosing it. And unlike Baltimore in those last years of his life, she has something to lose. That’s heroism.
CW: While much of Baltimore thus far has taken place after the conclusion of WWI, with Lady Baltimore we are entering the era of WWII and the introduction of even more evil forces like Witches, Vampires and Nazis. How can readers expect this historical impact to influence the story unfolding in this new miniseries?
CG: Some readers still don’t realize that we introduced the young Adolf Hitler Baltimore: The Curse Bells, and then promptly killed him. But that isn’t preventing the Nazi party from coming to power or stopping World War II from coming. A vast network of witches called the Hexenkorps have teamed up with the Nazis and are in the process of overthrowing Europe, history repeating itself to a certain degree. But this is an alternate history. Anything can happen.
CW: Although this is a continuation for Sofia Valk, do you feel Lady Baltimore #1 is a good jumping on point for new readers interested in diving into the world of Baltimore?
CG: Absolutely! It’s designed to be incredibly rich and hopefully very exciting for all kinds of readers. If you’ve read Baltimore, you’ll get things on a level that other readers won’t. But if you haven’t, you should still be able to go on this crazy adventure with us.
CW: It’s easy to see in the first few pages of Lady Baltimore #1 that this is still very much a horror comic. What are some of your own most prominent influences in the horror genre and which do you feel most inspired Lady Baltimore?
CG: So, so many. I always name check Stephen King and Clive Barker, the TV series “The Twilight Zone” and “Kolchak the Night Stalker” from my childhood, comics like Tomb of Dracula. In some Baltimore stories, you saw the influence of Hammer films in a big way, but also of classic stories like Dracula and Moby Dick. War films like “Where Eagles Dare” and “The Guns of Navarone” come into play, too, though they’re not horror stories. I’ve always loved European history and folklore, especially the dark folklore. That stuff was core to my Peter Octavian novels, and comes into play hugely in Lady Baltimore.
CW: In the horror genre, there is a trope often described as the “final girl” which disproportionately impacts how women are perceived in horror stories. But with Lady Baltimore we have a woman lead in Sofia who is upending that notion, who has always been a fighter and takes on dark forces on her own terms. Can you talk about the importance of this distinction and what you feel Lady Baltimore has to offer for horror in general?
CG: I’ve written a lot of female protagonists in my career, particularly in my novels and short stories—not to mention LGBTQ+ protagonists, which we also find with Sofia. The Final Girl trope is a certain breed of horror film or story, and it’s never been something I’ve given much thought. This is Sofia’s story, centered on the person she has become and what forged her into this person, and what she’s going to do with the purpose she’s found for herself. The fact that she’s a woman absolutely informs her character and her story, as it should, but first and foremost it’s about taking this person and throwing her into the middle of this chaos and horror and watching her be the flawed, brutal, brilliant hero she is. Most of the important characters in this story are women, but more than anything, what I hope Lady Baltimore has to offer for horror is cool action, freaky horror, and women who can figure their shit out on their own. We’ve definitely got a mansplainer in our cast, and the urge to smack him is strong.
CW: Lady Baltimore is also introducing new illustrator Bridgit Connell along with colorist Michelle Madsen. What can you tell us about the collaboration process between everyone in the creative team including, of course, the iconic Mike Mignola as well as cover artist Abigail Larson and how it formed this exciting new miniseries?
CG: I’ve talked a lot about how brilliant Bridgit is. I joke that I don’t want to say too much because people will try to woo her away from us, but honestly, Bridgit and Mike and I—and editor Katii O’Brien and Associate Editor Jenny Blenk—have had an absolutely fantastic time developing this series and producing these issues. Katii and I put together a long preliminary list of potential artists and winnowed it down to two or three to show Mike. We had secretly already decided Bridgit was our number one pick, but when it comes to art, Mike always has the last word. So we were thrilled that he loved Bridgit’s stuff and chose her. He’d met her and was a fan of her, and a fan of her work, and I’ve been grateful ever since. Working with an artist as smart and creative and enthusiastic as Bridgit is such a treat. She comes to every conversation with questions and suggestions and pushes us to delve even further into our own mythology and to figure stuff out just for her satisfaction, even if we’re never going to explain it in the comics themselves.
Michelle Madsen has been coloring Outerverse books for a long time, and honestly she doesn’t get nearly enough credit for how well the stories read on the page. We’re spoiled, really. As for Abigail, that was a Katii and Mike choice, but I couldn’t be more thrilled. I hadn’t been familiar with her work before I saw the first cover for Lady Baltimore, and I loved it. She’s put her own spin and style into these covers, and they’re gorgeous and unique—they don’t look like everything else out there, and I love that.
CW: Without spoiling too much, what are you most excited for readers to uncover as Lady Baltimore begins on March 24th?
CG: This is a huge, sprawling story that brings back older characters, introduces new ones, reveals characters in brand new ways, and goes deeply into exploring the mythology of the Outerverse while simultaneously giving us a big story of war and witches. There are tons of twists along the way, but I hate spoilers, so that’s all for now!
And there you have it! Be sure to get Lady Baltimore on your pull list today and don’t forget to support your Local Comic Shop!
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