Rek Bell

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What is Hakum

Hakum is a free-form comic, drawn by hand and published online. In the early 1980's something in the Taiga(forest) has started affecting humans, changing their physique, hurting, killing or disabling others. A group of humans that have been touched physically by this phenomenon as kids now spend all their time in the Taiga, sabotaging projects that threaten it under the name "Solo Devs"(short for Solomon's Devils).

On worldbuilding

It is not easy to flesh out stories. It is a fun, and highly iterative process. Nothing is set in stone, drawing out bits of the comic does not mean the story will remain the same. It is a way of playing with the characters, to get to know them and to further develop the world. This is what this comic is for me, drawing them out in various non-sequential situations is a way to discover a workable story. Keep this in mind while browsing this page.

"Tolkien, for all his vaunted designs, only got to The Good Stuff when he was IN it, really working the text of the novels. He could not worldbuild his way into a workable story; he had to muddle and discover and revise, just like the rest of us." [Source].

Content

What is monkeywrenching?

"Monkeywrenching" is based on the US idiom "to throw a monkey wrench into..." which means to sabotage something. The term was coined by Edward Abbey (from the book The Monkeywrench Gang) and its come to mean, besides sabotage and damage to machines, any sabotage, activism, law-making, or law-breaking to preserve wilderness, wild spaces and ecosystems.

hakum

Hakum is a term for humans that have been physically changed by the, for now, unknown events in the Taiga. This corruption affects all humans differently, in young children it can alter their physique dramatically, while it may leave others with light or severe physical ailments. The corruption can affect adults, but it can cause immediate death in some, blindness in others, and like children, they can develop sudden physical ailments or uncommon abilities.

Hakum typically live twice as long and age twice as slowly (they age at a regular rate until their early teens, when it slows down). They can see UV light, they see well in the dark but lose detail when observing things up close. They smell and hear(higher frequencies) better than humans, but while it is an asset in the Taiga, it makes life in cities difficult.

Comic

I am still exploring what this comic is, who the characters are, and so the bits I illustrated below may not make much sense. The story has changed a lot since I started. I decided to share these explorations publicly, because it's no fun to constantly work in the dark.

NEWER

I'm currently working on a new sequence with the new story elements, it's taking a while but I'll publish it here soon.

OLDER

Comic sequences with the older concept, same characters. Was useful to help develop the main characters of the story, but my new stuff is now so different for this sequences to be canon: