Dean opened the paper and began reading the contents aloud.  “Despair for I walk among you, and I am the right hand of vengeance.”

“I don’t buy it, one man couldn’t do all this,” said Dean.

Beauford looked around as the crime scene investigators began the grisly work of processing the scene. “If you want my advice, start stocking up on empty body bags and making space in the morgue, I get the feeling this guy is just getting started.” – Fallen Heroes

In this week’s Behind the Shadows we hand the reigns over to Gat Melvin, the colourist on Wrath of God. In the development of the project Gat’s use of colour was instrumental in telling the blood soaked tale of The Reverend. So without further ado…over to Gat.

Greetings, Shadow-Reader.

If you’re reading this, it means you’ve come out the other side of the psychedelic-violence and tortured roller-coaster, that is the Wrath of God.

The decision to use colour, as a visual narrator was an idea to help break up the separate timelines and eras in the Reverend’s life, dreams of a troubled childhood, hallucinations violent actions, the simplicity and truth of happiness and the concept of, ‘Reverend Vision’

There are four timelines portrayed in the story, which are:
1 – The present day

2 – The Reverend’s training

3 –  The Reverend as a boy

4 – ‘The Maria Chronicle’

The bright, white-washed dream effect for The Reverend as a boy. Childhood is suppose to be a time of happiness and innocence, but for the Reverend, life has dealt him a very different hand of cards. With the change of his face,The Reverend leaves his past life to his dreams and begins to see the world as ‘the monster’.

This is where the idea of ‘Reverend vision’ was born.  Remembering the film, Predator and how the alien saw in an infrared spectrum, I wanted to do something similar with the Reverend.  While he sees the
sky as blue and the grass as green, violence – death, brings life to him.

When we first meet the Reverend, he’s a man in his 50’s so his ‘Reverend Vision’ is strong, highly-saturated colours and strange mixes of tones, so it became a good tie-in.

However when we go back into his past and most importantly his  training, the tones are much less saturated and obscure, that he is still learning this way of violence, still learning the ‘way of the dark side’.

Why then, is his time with Maria in a mono-chrome you ask?

The Reverend knows violence, utter, bloody violence.  And what does one who knows only hate and brings destruction hope for?  My opinion…love. A simple word, a simple desire, the simplicity of black and white.

‘If a bird lives its whole life in a cage and all it knows, is the cage, does the bird even know the cage exists?’

His time with Maria are the best times of his life, he doesn’t need anything else, life is simple and shown through the monochromatic feel of this time.

I hope you guys have really enjoyed the story and that I’ve given you more insight into everything that is Wrath of God.

Now, ‘Go get your orange on’
– Gat Melvyn

Wrath of God is available now on Comixology