Novels, Comics and Webcomics

Discover more from Novels, Comics and Webcomics

Sometimes I write essays, but I'm mainly here to share my urban fantasy comics and novels. Check out my original works, 1000 Years of War and Shatterrealm.

Behind the Scenes of 1000 Years of War: Midnight Host

In which I alienate most of my audience

Hannah Rose Williams
Feb 20, 2026

The first issue of Midnight Host is printing right now! I have 25 copies to give away to backers. Your donations are deeply appreciated!

I produced the original 1000 Years of War as a retelling of Joan of Arc’s crusade against the English. Briefly, it references a planned crusade St. Joan never carried out, a crusade against the Hussites.

Some of you were curious to know more about the “Protties out west,” and I realized I could combine this story with another idea I’d been kicking around, a Make Vampires Monsters Again idea. If you haven’t read the Midnight Host arc, spoilers lie ahead!

I regret to inform my Roman Catholic readers that the main character of 1000 Years of War: Midnight Host is based on Jan Hus, the Bohemian reformer. I do not consider the comic an anti-Catholic work. I hope it’s clear that I have a deep respect for church history and for the sacrament. I do, however, admire Jan Hus as a courageous figure misunderstood by the “we’ve never done anything wrong ever” apologists.

Iron King is based on King Philip IV of France who, I personally hypothesize, may have had developed some sociopathic traits after losing his entire family at a very young age. On the other hand, he really loved his wife, so I’m probably wrong about that. He was just known as an emotionally cold person.

The “Mormonnedans” in the comic are a reference to “Mohammedans,” as they were once called — Muslims. Mormons are the American version. Joseph Smith is said to have referred to himself as “the second Mohammed,” and the religion he founded bears many similarities to Islam, polytheism aside.

The Knights Templar had been founded in the 12th century to oppose Muslim violence against Christians in Jerusalem but, as grateful pilgrims donated money, they rapidly became a massive European “bank” of sorts. In the 13th century, King Philip IV had two problems: first, he did not have control or jurisdiction over Jews, the Church, or the Knights Templar; and second, he was in debt (to the Templars). He solved these problems by expelling the Jews, trying to elect a Pope that would view the Church as submissive to the state’s authority, and falsely accusing all the Knights Templar of capital crimes so as to seize their assets.

This Grand Master Jack character is based on the Knights’ Grand Master Jacques de Molay, although Molay’s supposed final words were less of a curse and more of a prophecy. The legend goes that the Knights Templar died in assurance that God would avenge them. Within a year, King Philip IV and his new Pope had died. Disputes over the legitimacy of Philip’s heirs upended his entire legacy and caused the Hundred Years’ War (setting the stage for Joan of Arc). Killing the Knights Templar also made Europe more vulnerable to Muslim (or “Mohammedan”) invasions.

Jan Hus was born between 1369 and 1373 in a town called Husinecz, meaning “Goose Town.” Hence his surname, Hus. My character, Ion, is from a town called Wauna, which means, “Singing Snow Goose” in Miwok. I love that “Ion” can mean both “John” and “fire” (fire being a big theme in this story). That worked out well for me! Many other characters’ names in this story also mean “fire.”

A more obvious example is the character, “Safara.”

Hus seems to have had a close relationship with his mother, who taught her children what she knew of the Bible and encouraged her sons to become priests.

I believe it was Martin Luther who referred to Jan Hus as “Dr. Consolatorius.” I just thought the name sounded cool, so I slapped it onto a random character. Same with the name “Vaclav,” which I found in a book about the Hussites. I have no idea who the real Vaclav was or what his name means, but it sounded like the perfect vampire name to me.

A few of my friends over at Minds.com helped me brainstorm ideas for what sort of book an illiterate cult leader would claim prophesied him. The God Delusion was the funniest answer. Someone else suggested the copyright page being misunderstood as the book title. I tweaked that idea a little.

In Latin school, Hus took part in the Feast of Fools, which was far less innocuous than Disney portrayed it. A “Boy Bishop” was appointed to march around town, speaking mock Latin and mocking sacramental rites. A 1445 letter to Theological Faculty of Paris decried the Feast of Fools this way:

Priests and clerks may be seen wearing masks and monstrous visages at the hours of office. They dance in the choir dressed as women, panders or minstrels. They sing wanton songs. They eat black puddings at the horn of the altar while the celebrant is saying Mass. They play dice there. They cense with stinking smoke from the soles of old shoes. They run and leap through the church, without a blush of shame. Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby traps and carts; and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances with indecent gestures and verses scurrilous and unchaste.

This was clearly a mockery of Christianity, and worse, Christ, yet priests were participating in it during Mass; Christianity was the basis of Europe; and Europe was essential to keeping enough monarchies united that Islamic invaders could be held at bay. It’s no wonder the Feast of Fools was taken seriously and condemned.

Hus always found the Feast of Fools disgusting, but he went along with it, which he deeply regretted later on. He wrote: “What manifest outrage they perpetrate in the church by wearing masks. In my youthfulness, I also was once to my shame a masquerader! …But when the Lord God helped me understand the Scriptures, I eliminated such notions and the statutes of delusions from my weak intellect.” Though a brilliant student, Hus had enjoyed carousing with his friends, dirty jokes, gambling, “elegant clothes,” and other “roistering escapades.” Hus wrote in his diary, “I confess my wicked desire that when I was a schoolboy, I thought about soon becoming a priest in order to have a good livelihood, and robes and [sic] to have the respect of the people.”

It was just a few months before receiving his bachelor’s degree that Hus heard a sermon on sin, condemnation, and indulgences. In fear of eternal punishment, he gave his last four coins in exchange for being temporarily cleansed of his sins. So many impoverished peasants did the same that priests were literally “raking it [the money] in,” which is where we get that expression.

In 1402, Hus’ friend Jerome of Prague introduced him to the writings of John Wycliffe, who railed against the clergy’s corruption and decadence, the sale of indulgences, and the doctrine that tradition should be as authoritative as the Bible. Hus did not agree with all of Wycliffe’s positions, but he eventually came to believe that no one did more damage to the Church than someone who claimed to be holy while acting perversely.

Almost every dissident on social and religious issues in Bohemia was Czech. The masters occupying most high positions at Prague and opposing reform were German, and Germans made up 70% of the student body. Bohemians felt they were being occupied and oppressed by foreign nationals. The issue upsetting the academics was one of philosophical realism (and the writings of Wycliffe were useful in that they opposed nominalism); the issue upsetting the peasants was the fact that the church owned almost half the land in Bohemia and taxed them heavily for living on it.

Jan Hus eventually began writing in the common language instead of Latin, simplifying grammatical rules and heavily influencing the modern Czech language. I have a lot of simplistic “misspellings” in this comic because I’m fantasizing about “fixing” English spelling. (This is what I would do with my spare time in a post-apocalypse.)

When one of Hus’ old friends became Archbishop of Prague, he asked Hus to report the violations of other priests, which he did. This made Hus incredibly unpopular with corrupt priests. In 1405, the archbishop was ordered to stop protecting Hus. Hus carried on preaching despite the betrayal, so the furious Pope involved King Wenceslaus IV. When it came out that Hus was a Wycliffe fan (despite disagreeing with some of Wycliffe’s theology), Hus was fired from his position and replaced with a nominalist German master. Hus responded by translating Wycliffe’s (realist) Trialogus into Bohemian and passing it around the congregation.

Mojave’s speech here is stolen from the 8th-century Umayyad invasion of Spain. Because this is post-apocalyptic America, I made Mojave sound more Mormon.

During the later Hussite Wars, a general named Jan Žižka pioneered a combination of firearms and war wagons as proto-tanks manned by male and female peasants. He never lost a single battle.

This is an obvious reference to the Western Schism, a period during which no one in Europe was exactly sure who the legitimate Pope was. Because the authority of the Pope was under question, the time was ripe for some sort of reform, which even King Charles IV took a stab at. The Bohemian Reformation had been underway since 1380, when Hus was only a child.

Hus never called any particular Pope the Antichrist, but he stated that anyone who lives contrary to Christ is a sort of antichrist.

These three guys are a tribute to some real menschen! From Frank Welsh’s The Battle for Christendom: The Council of Constance, 1415, and the Struggle to Unite against Islam:

On 10 July, in what must have been a concerted effort, three young men protested against the indulgences at three principal churches; they were promptly arrested and imprisoned in the Old Town Hall. Hus attempted to intervene, and led a mass protest, offering to take responsibility and punishment on himself; the magistrates promised that no harm would be done, but as soon as the crowd had dispersed, the young men were taken out and beheaded in the Town Square. The bodies were taken in state to the Bethlehem Chapel, proclaimed as martyrs.

After Hus’ death, Czech reformers were dubbed Hussites so they could be dismissed as heretics offhand. Some of them were heretics, and they split into warring camps as soon as Sigismund’s crusade against them ended. Utraquists were popular with intellectuals who did not completely reject all Christian tradition and ultimately, they would be recognized as true Christians. There were two less consequential groups that aren’t worth getting into today. The more radical, Sacramentarian Taborites were mostly peasants who had a dubious approach to Scripture. Rejecting all authority, they wanted property to be communal (which meant seizing and redistributing it; this is also known as stealing).

Everyone got real sick of Taborite armies besieging castles and destroying churches. In exchange for religious freedom, the Utraquists teamed up with Catholic loyalists and the Taborites were defeated. I find it interesting that, a century later, the illiterate shepherd girl Joan of Arc was absolutely undefeated in battle until she started planning a crusade against the Hussites, at which point her career abruptly ended.

Dr. Alister McGrath of Oxford, in his book, Heresy, argues that true heresy is a model for understanding Christianity which ultimately breaks Christianity as a worldview, but unlike these heresies condemned by the early church, late Medieval “heresies” often had a heavy political undertone:

Although the term ‘heresy’ was applied to many movements in the Middle Ages, it was clearly used in a legal or juridical sense to stigmatize a movement that was seen as a challenge to the authority of the pope… Hussites… were seen as threats to the church not so much on account of their ideas as on account of their popular appeal. They had the potential to become alternative centers of power and influence, bypassing or challenging the centralized structures... It has been realized for some time that it is not appropriate to use the term ‘heresy’ to refer to such movements. This point was first made in 1935 by Herbert Grundmann, who argued that the notion of heresy was here being defined from an inquisitional rather than a theological perspective.

While Hus’ movement did seem essentially religious, what united the Bohemians was a sense of national pride and the social and political issues they were suffering, and what rallied authorities against them was the fear of losing wealth and control. The Hussite Church did not break away from the Roman Catholic Church until 1920, dissenting over the extent of papal authority. The Catholic Church formally apologized for Hus’ murder in 1999 and 2009. Pope John Paul II expressed “our deep regret for the cruel death inflicted on him.” I would go so far as to allege that the so-called Catholics who executed Hus were false believers.

In one of his letters (I have unfortunately lost track of which!) exiled Hus mentioned dreaming of terrifying snakes that never seemed capable of actually catching him. Snakes wound up becoming a big theme in the story, which I set in Devil’s Lake, ND in order to make a “slake” pun (and because I love dragons, and because the Great Plains are easy to draw!). There is a cryptid in Devil’s Lake whom the indigenous people tell me is definitely evil and imprisoned there as punishment. (The cryptid community, of course, has a totally benevolent view of the thing.)

Thanks to everyone, from Roman Catholics to Sacramentarians, for reading my silly comics. Your readership and encouraging comments really helped me keep going.
Floppy issues for Midnight Host can be purchased here. In the meantime, I still have a few second editions of the original, Realm Award nominated 1000 Years of War. You can purchase it by using this fundraiser as a storefront. The entirety is also available here for paid subscribers.