I’m not familiar with the man’s work, but if these preview pages are any indication, I’m gonna be a fan opf Peter Bergting. The Swedish illustrator has a new comic coming out of Image in a few months, and they do seem to come correct. The interior pages especially have a nice Mike Mignola feel to them without seeming at all derivative. Here’s hoping that the writing is up to the obvious quality of the art. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.

“I began work for real on the Portent in 2001,” says Bergting. “I was still working on other comics for a Swedish publisher as well as my own comic strip (also called the Portent, unfortunately) that runs in Dungeon Magazine. THE PORTENT has been in production for well over 10 years, going from a novel to a movie script and back to comic book form where it first started. My original idea was to sort of bring a visual story to all the great rock ‘n’ roll classics that I loved, like a rock opera but on paper. In the beginning, it was pretty shallow and more a roller coaster of visuals and mayhem, but the more I wrote, the more I realized that I wanted to create something deeper, more meaningful with the story. And that’s when everything sort of clicked into place. Ultimately it’s a story about redemption but it goes further than that.”

Bergting himself has been an illustrator for over 16 years, working on a wide variety of projects for both European and American companies, with his experience and influences lending a completely fresh feel to THE PORTENT.

“The story, and the way it’s told, is a bit different from most comics. It’s a sweeping story and I have quite few surprises planned. I believe it doesn’t look or read quite like any other comic, it’s certainly more verbal and brainy, I see it more like an opera played out on the printed page. It has all the action of an action film and all the melodrama and tragedy of a great stageplay as well. Some would describe it as Shakespeare with Kung Fu I guess. I’m very into Tsui Hark and you can certainly pick up on a few things that have inspired me from his films. I would best call it melancholic but there is a lot of humor in there as well.”

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