Obscusion B-Side: The Surprisingly (If Fitting) Perpetual Life of Chakan: The Forever Man in Print

In the early 1980's, aspiring comic book artist Robert A. Kraus founded his own studio, RAK Graphics. His first published comic would be Thundermace No. 1, which he co-created with his friend Rick Sellers, the latter of which would go on to become a voice actor, best known for still voicing "The General" from those "1-800-General" commercials for The General Insurance Company; I am not kidding. Found in that comic was a back-up story starring someone named "Chakan: The Forever Man", a mysterious swordsman that "looked like a cross of a zombie & Clint Eastwood" (Kraus' own words) who took on all manner of supernatural creatures with a dark tone, a stark difference from Thundermace's more hopeful swords & sorcery motif. Chakan (technically pronounced "Shay-khan") would continue as back-up stories over the years, slowly finding itself a small fanbase, and Kraus himself started to get an itch to give the character his own comic. So in July of 1990, Chakan: The Forever Man No. 1 came out, a black-&-white comic telling of how Chakan became the undying warrior he is, as well as what he thought would be his final battle.

What came next, though, was pure serendipity.

This actually isn't RAK's artwork, though based on an image he drew,
but the game's cover is easily the most iconic art for Chakan out there.

While attending Gen Con in Milwaulkee sometime in the late 80s, Sega of America producer Ed Annunziata (Ecco the Dolphin, Tiny Tank, Mort the Chicken) came across Kraus' booth & saw artwork for Chakan: The Forever Man, catching his interest & sparking conversation between the two. Due to the comic's darker tone, Annunziata felt that it fit well with Sega's older audience direction that it was going with for its new console, the Genesis (Mega Drive, around the world), and eventually an agreement was made for a Chakan video game to be produced for the system, as well as a similar-but-separate game for the handheld Game Gear, making this one of the earliest independently-owned comics to ever receive a video game adaptation, if not the first. The game, released at the end of 1992, has since become notorious for its unforgiving difficulty & infamous "ending", but has since received a cult following due to its unique & dark visual aesthetic, appropriately harsh music, & unforgiving difficulty; beyond two aborted attempts on both the Dreamcast & iOS, no other games were made. To most, that's the long & short of Chakan: The Forever Man... But like the "The Gray Slayer" himself, the truth goes on for far, far longer than you'd expect.

This is a general overview of Chakan: The Forever Man in its original printed form, that of the original comics & later the graphic novellas that have long since told his tales.

Naturally, we start with Chakan: The Forever Man No. 1, a 46-page comic which sees Chakan head to the town of Hellshire, the residents of which worship a demon named Geldundrin. The issue establishes Chakan's entire M.O., which is that he was once a mighty & vain warrior-priest who was so powerful that Death himself was summoned to fight him. The two made an agreement that if Chakan was to win the fight then he would be given eternal life... And Chakan wins. However, Chakan's prize of immortality naturally came with concessions, namely that he'd lose most of his mystical powers & would constantly be inundated with images of demons & their victims' violent deaths while sleeping. However, should Chakan actually kill all of the demons, then Death would allow Chakan to finally die, and after centuries upon centuries of battle, Geldundrin is the last remaining demon in the entire world. However, after killing Geldundrin & then committing suicide, Chakan still remains immortal, with Death revealing that what he actually meant was all of the demons in the universe, and since the Earth at this point isn't capable of space travel, Chakan has no choice but to wait... forever.

Those who played the video game will be familiar with this concept, as it's literally the same exact idea, only with the game expanding things out with more demons for Chakan to kill, followed by a bonus boss fight at the end meant to indicate the kind of Geiger-esque abominations that might exist on other planets. Following this, Kraus would then release Chakan: The Forever Man: The Compendium in November of 1993, which is a collection of the original seven back-up shorts from the mid-to-late 80s that Chakan starred in prior to the No. 1 issue (where he takes on the likes of Dracula, a pair of werewolves, an undead sorcerer, & the minotaur) all of which are no more than 2-6 pages each, as well as a new 5-page short that's simply thematic on Chakan's inability to ever find peace; there are also a handful of single-page prose shorts to finish things off. The Compendium doesn't exactly move anything forward in terms of Chakan's story, but they're fun & do carry forward a shared theme, which I'll get to a little later. Finally, in August of 1994, Kraus would release a proper follow-up to No. 1, though it wouldn't simply be named "No. 2". Regardless, the 39-page comic Chakan: The Forever Man in The Nightmares Thrall, not to be confused with a prose short of the same subtitle seen in The Compendium, takes the next step forward, showing Chakan having to take on a "Dream Demon" (as it'd be called in later stories) in a "nightmare realm", who tortures Chakan with images of beloved people from his past dying horrible deaths, all while also repeatedly destroying & reforming Chakan's body.

In the end, Chakan manages to slay the Dream Demon, which results in Death appearing & offering Chakan a challenge: If he can make it through the "Journey of 100 Candles" spell, in which each Candle will take him to some sort of demon that needs slaying, then he can encounter Death one last time, so that his life can finally come to an end. In later stories, it's revealed that Chakan's old teachers were keeping the 100 Candles spell in check, as a "mysterious evil" is corrupting it, & as it's been around since the creation of the Earth itself, if not the universe, the entire fate of existence itself is at stake. The Nightmares Thrall is a good story in & of itself, but exists mainly to help set up this journey Death puts Chakan on, which becomes the focus on everything that comes next.

After the release of The Nightmares Thrall, it's honestly rather hard to really pinpoint when exactly Kraus returned to Chakan, with the closest mention I can find being from a March 20, 1998 article in the Akron Beacon Journal. That article specifically mentions three issues of Chakan being out, which I can only assume would be No. 1, The Compendium, & The Nightmares Thrall, with a fourth set to be released two months later, or roughly that May. However, what would come next would not be a comic book like previously, but rather what Kraus calls a "graphic novella", which is best described as a short prose story, but with images appearing every now & then; think of it as an "ultra-light novel". To be fair, this is really more an expansion on Kraus' general storytelling style, as each of the original Chakan comics were very heavy on prose, with the artwork simply being used to help back up what Kraus was writing. In fact, The Compendium even states that Kraus originally wrote the stories for his comics in prose form first, and then drew art based on what he wrote. Also, "novella" ("novelette" is also used here & there by Kraus) really is the right word here, as every single one of these only range between 11-24 pages. From this point on, I can't really determine when exactly most of these graphic novellas came out, or in what order, so I'll just be relying on the RAK Graphics webpage (watch out for the automatic video download, should you visit) for the latter. So allow me to give a quick rundown of each of the 22(!) Chakan novellas that currently exist; trust me, this is still going to take a while.

The Warriors' Genesis, which I'd guess is the one that came out in May of 1998, is a longer retelling of Chakan's origin story, detailing that he originally is from "The Before", around 100,000 years prior, and in reality is the son of a fisherman-turned-sole survivor of his village at the hands of the Empire of Usher. Chakan would then become a young killer of Usher soldiers before being taken in by an order of "Energy Masters", i.e. magicians, who would teach him in their ways in hopes to quell his thirst for vengeance; the rest of the novella is an expanded version of the backstory already told in No. 1, up through Chakan being cursed by Death. Demons of the Green Gem sees Chakan traverse a giant chasm via a dangerous (& seemingly never-ending) stairway, before having to deal with a giant glass gem that contains demons that torture Chakan's very senses; this novella is actually freely available to read on Kraus' website. The Dilemma of the Coffee Drinker takes place in modern day Akron, Ohio & focuses on Rob (a fictionalized version of Kraus), who happens to get involved with Chakan when he sees the Forever Man in battle, only for one of his swords to be knocked away. Rob takes the sword, which then gets him chased by the mysterious Dragon Sword Clan & its supernatural creatures, with Chakan getting his sword back at the end; Kraus uses photos of himself in various poses for this novella, instead of drawings. The Dead and the Undead drops Chakan off into a seemingly endless graveyard, with an unknown figure summoning a never-ending hoard of zombies to kill him; how ironic. The Dragon Sword Clan goes back to the plot of Dilemma of the Coffee Drinker, but this time from the perspective of the eponymous Clan's Leader, who wants the sword Chakan had used to kill a prior Leader from ages before, the one that Rob has gotten ahold of for that short time. The novella ends with the Leader managing to find Master Air, the last of Chakan's teachers still alive, & gains entrance to the 100 Candles spell, so as to hunt down Chakan & get vengeance.

For pure artistic quality,
Kevin Leen is the best.

The Day of the Dragon is the first novella to feature a guest artist (Kevin Leen, while Kraus still writes), and pits the Forever Man against a giant (& seemingly indestructible) fire-breathing dragon in the lava-filled cavern it calls home. Web of the Spider Queen returns to the Coffee Drinker/Dragon Sword Clan story by introducing "Spider Witch" Arachne Dame, a powerful mystic/crime lord who hunts for Chakan so that she can learn the secret to immortality, even entering the 100 Candles spell in chase; it was her hiring of Rob's archaeologist father that ties Rob into all of this. Enter the Devil Girl sees Chakan wracked with an extreme fever in between Candle destinations, and a mysterious feminine figure calling herself "Devil Girl" appears, stating that she comes from the 100 Candles spell itself & that she has become smitten with Chakan after all he's done so far. The Balancing Act (Book 1 of 3) features art by Dan Gorman & thrusts Chakan into a giant transparent cube in the middle of a region of space unfamiliar to him, and within the cube is another cube, one that shows Chakan all manner of images alien to him. To be perfectly honest, this novella is essentially a backdoor origin story for a superhero called Balance, who was housed within the cube-within-a-cube, and is owned by Gorman & co-creator J. Alan Miller; the whole "Book 1 of 3" thing likely only ties in to Gorman & Miller's works. The Wild Wild West is the only Chakan story to not be written by Kraus (though he still does the art here), with writing duties coming from Stuart Kerr (co-founder of the now-defunct Arrow Comics), which is told via flashback as a gunslinger-turned-barkeep tells a young gunslinger about how Chakan came in the previous night, stopped two wild ruffians & killed a demonic version of a woman the barkeep had worked with before; very similar in style to the pre-novella stories. Also included with this novella is The Ebon Void, a Kraus-penned 5-page short 100 Candles story that sees Chakan have to survive the onslaught of a lightless & soundless void that wishes to crush him into nothingness.

Remembering Theresa brings things back to Rob, who's now meeting up with a woman codenamed "Agent 9mm", with this novella telling her backstory as Theresa, whose family had been killed in front of her at age 5, while she became an abused servant for various horrible Arabians (all working for the Dragon Sword Clan), before she killed them all, eventually making her entire life about killing any & all "evil"; this is the only novella to not feature Chakan at all, even by name. The Unlikely Trio, oddly enough, is the proper introduction for 9mm & her computer whiz partner Gilbert "Gil" Morrison, telling how they met Rob & how the three of them wound up finding where Master Air is, shortly after Arachne & the Dragon Sword Clan entered the 100 Candles spell. It ends with the trio each having dreams where Air's old partners (Masters Earth, Water, & Fire, who all became trapped in the spell) ask for their help. The Planet Killer brings things back to Chakan, who now finds himself on an enormous spaceship that locates & destroys planets, which Chakan has to put a stop to. Doing so, though, results in an explosion so massive that it breaks time & space, sending Chakan back to Master Air's home, allowing Rob, Gil, & 9mm to (re-)encounter the Forever Man. After a trio of directly-related novellas, A Tale of Three Candles returns to episodic form, leaving Chakan in a room that only houses three candles, with Chakan needing to figure out which one must be extinguished to further advance into the 100 Candles spell... and dealing with the violent repercussions for getting it wrong. Lost in Time drops Chakan off onto a giant platform surrounded by mysterious doorways showing rapid advances & repeats in time, only for him to be attacked by a gigantic creature that seemingly can control time & leaves Chakan defeated... Until the Devil Girl arrives with a plan to kill the creature while Chakan is unconscious. This novella also includes the 5-page short The Skewed Perspective of Garak Alu Urkuum, in which the titular monster awaits the impending arrival of Chakan... Only to not fully understand the difference in "scale" between them.

The Beauty & the Beast, featuring art by Petey Atkinson, has Chakan deposited in the middle of a forested field covered in a blue-hued fog, only to have to take on an animalistic "Beast" that fights using nothing but pure instinct; the "Beauty" in this story is the flame of the candle transporting Chakan from one place to another. The Crimson Storm is a small collection of short stories & poems, with the main attraction being Against the Odds, a 7-page tale of how Chakan winds up protecting the hidden village of Amakarash from a gang of 100 bandits lead by... Borrak "Insane" Osama, Harry the Weed, Emmanuel the Ram, & Nasty of Pelosia; they are just surface level parodies in the end, & are never drawn, but I'm not going any further into that. The Bigfoot Brawl has the 100 Candles spell transport Chakan to the modern-day Rocky Mountains to fight the sasquatch itself... followed by its mate & two children afterwards; even Chakan wonders why such a "low-level" creature is part of the spell's requirements. Finally, this run of novellas ends with Spellbound, which actually does the one thing that had yet to be explained: How exactly Chakan found the entrance to the 100 Candles spell in modern times, and why his old Energy Masters were in charge of keeping it under control; almost all of this novella (literally only the very end is missing) is also available on Kraus' website, in text-only form. This is also a good summary of the modern-day, pre-spell events that happened simultaneously in some of the prior novellas. There is also The Art of Chakan: The Forever Man, which I didn't purchase, but is rather self-explanatory.

Aaron Archer, though, is arguably the best fit for Chakan.

This brings us up to somewhere in 2010, according to Kraus' very-short-lived blog. If you just go off of RAK Graphics' website, then Spellbound looks to be the final novella released, at what seems to be a pace of 1-2 books/year, but that actually isn't the case. Turns out Kraus eventually started teaming with artist Aaron Archer, an ~20-year veteran toy designer for Hasbro/Kenner who worked on franchises like Transformers, G.I. Joe, Beyblade, Medabots, Star Wars, & many others, before retiring in 2015 to go independent. According to Archer's own website, he says that he is "an active Chakan: The Forever Man illustrator", even creating & selling a Chakan action figure in 2019. If you look in Archer's own personal web store, though, you'll find three more Chakan novellas, all written by Kraus, drawn by Archer, & featuring black-framed covers in place of the (mostly) white covers that came before; I imagine these are the most recent stories to date. Now labeled "Tales Told in the Pulp Tradition", we start with The Gore Pit, in which Chakan finds himself inside a giant (seemingly living) pit that acts as the digestive home for an eldritch-like monster, but even after getting out of the pit he still has to deal with the giant lizardmen that treat the creature like a god. The Rat Bastard sends Chakan to the intergalactic underground prison of Hellorion to take on the giant rodent beast Ratakilla, a.k.a. "The Rat", who rules over the inmate-run asylum with an iron claw; Ratakilla hopes that Chakan's arrival will show him how to escape Hellorion, so that he can rule elsewhere. Finally, and I mean it this time, Circle of the Werewolf has Chakan take on an entire pack of werewolves (36, to be exact), while also saving the life of an adult Little Red Riding Hood; in true pulp fashion, she "repays" Chakan back "several times". Interestingly, this last story indicates that this isn't happening on Chakan's Earth, as he had eradicated all werewolves there, so one can only imagine that Chakan went to the world of the iconic fairy tale itself.

Petey Atkinson's art is simple,
but effective enough.

The one thing you pick up quickly when reading a Chakan story is that Chakan himself is meant to be seen as a tragic character. His childhood was ruined by an invading force, making him become consumed with deadly vengeance. When he was picked up by the Energy Masters, he was shown to be a prodigy that could master all of the elements, but in turn felt that having such power meant that he should use it in a manner he felt was necessary, first by helping people but eventually becoming consumed with ego because of it. Then Death himself was summoned to deal with Chakan, and while Chakan did eventually best Death, it's described that the battle was so massive & dangerous that the Earth itself was effectively left in ruin, with countless people dying due to the sheer power both of them had; Chakan himself said that he was now "damned". Finally, the immortality he won from Death results in him being tortured in his sleep while demons roam about, and his goal to regain mortality seems so insurmountable that even Death gives him an alternate option with the Journey of 100 Candles spell, which Chakan agrees to tackle, despite knowing nothing about what it entails. While the circumstances that led to his initial tragedy were beyond his control, everything else about his life comes from his own actions, and now he's been dealing with the repercussions of them for literally over 100,000 years. While he was created during the time when comics were transitioning from the Bronze Age to the Modern/Dark Age, and he does share some similarities with the latter, Kraus does keep Chakan's anger & dark nature as a reminder of his tragedy, rather than make them sound "cool" (though there is still a bit of "cool factor", at points), or dark just for the sake of being dark.

That's not to say that this isn't any less violent than comics were getting around this time (& even to this day), though for the most that that's reserved for the novellas' prose. The comics are actually rather tame in showing stuff like gore, but in comparison Kraus has no problem establishing how violent things can get via written word. He never goes to a ridiculously embellished extreme, but it's just enough that you can visualize it on a basic level; efficiency over exquisite detail. Another interesting aspect is that, when read in the order I used (which, again, looks to be the actual release order), the novellas don't really operate in any chronological order, which I feel does work in its favor, since the Journey of 100 Candles spell is meant to be wild & disorienting, and I think having a fun or exciting little one-&-done between each part of the whole thing involving Rob, 9mm, Gil, Arachne, & the Dragon Sword Clan helped stave off potential repetition between shared scenes, even if each one came with its own unique point of view & perspective. This does result in some slight oddities, though, like Remembering Theresa & The Unlikely Trio being read in what really feels like the wrong order (though the latter does reference the former, so they definitely were written in that exact order). Also, The Wild Wild West seemingly takes place prior to the more modern-era timeframe of when Chakan enters the 100 Candles spell, though it's tough to tell if it also predates the No. 1 comic, in that case. Also, despite there being nine novellas after it, The Planet Killer looks to be the last story told (so far) chronologically, since Chakan was sent back to Earth at the end of it, while all others after it (besides Spellbound) are of the "monster-of-the-week" variety that fit the 100 Candles spell's M.O.

And, of course, RAK himself knows Chakan best.

Still, color me surprised to see that there's actually a larger overarching story to Chakan: The Forever Man, as I was mainly expecting episodic battles against demons. While the majority of the stories are indeed that, there's also an underlying plot involving a good variety of third parties that are all hunting after Chakan for their own reasons, though once Arachne & the Dragon Sword Clan enter the spell they literally are never heard from again (yet, at least). Overall, it's not a major aspect of the overall plot told across both the comics & novellas, and I'd argue that the Chakan stories are at their best when it's simply the Forever Man himself fighting some sort of wild monster, but the multi-novella plot that does get told still acts as a nice change of pace. As for Kraus' abilities as a writer, I'd say that he's definitely talented & knows how to tell a good short story. As mentioned before, he doesn't fall into the writer's trap of getting caught up in overexplaining a situation or describing an environment, giving you just enough detail to be able to imagine it in your head, before moving on to the next beat of the story itself. He also leaves Chakan as a relatively quiet character, giving him very few moments of actual spoken dialogue (which makes sense, since most of the time he's by himself), though he does wind up having a single catchphrase whenever he gets annoyed, "Son...of...a...bitch!". Even when with other characters, though, Chakan still leaves the majority of the actual talking to everyone else; the Archer-drawn stories feature Chakan talking more, but not by much.

As for flaws, Kraus honestly manages to keep his writing rather solid all throughout, though there are two stories that I felt were him at his worst. Remembering Theresa is just way too dark, violent, & (for lack of a better word) "edgy" for its own good, so much so that it's honestly kind of hard to believe that Agent 9mm can even be as honestly polite & friendly as she comes off to Rob, Gil, & Master Air, while the usage of Arabians as vile people, though unfortunately fitting for the time in some ways (this was obviously written post-9/11), just feels really shallow & cheap; it's definitely the weakest novella of them all. Meanwhile, Against the Odds is honestly a perfectly fine story for what is told, but the blatant jabs at political figures is similarly shallow & cheap, not to mention highly dating it all; I mean, if you're going to parody these people, then at least do more with it than altering names slightly. In terms of the artwork, since Chakan: The Forever Man has been made over literal decades, you can see Kraus' artwork improve as you read, which is cool. When it comes to Chakan himself & the various demons & creatures he fights, Kraus is honestly rather good & detailed, but when it comes to other people it's a bit of a mixed bag. You see, Kraus does tend to be more of a caricaturist (which would likely explain the style of political parodies I mentioned just prior), so his normal humans tend to look a little goofier than his written descriptions sometimes indicate, and sometimes the art doesn't exactly match what's written, like Master Air's cloud-&-lightning tattoo on his forehead never being drawn as faded as it's always written as being. It's not "bad" artwork by any means, minus a couple of early drawings, but I can see it be divisive; in fact, it can feel as though Chakan himself comes from a completely different artist, at points. As for the guest artists, they're actually all good to great, with Kevin Leen & Aaron Archer easily delivering the best artwork across all of the stories.

If I really wanted to be pedantic, I could call out Kraus' occasional typographical or grammatical errors, or the fact that he seemingly uses photo paper to print his covers now (giving some an odd feel to touch), or the fact that two of Spellbound's pages printed out rather fuzzy (though still readable), but these are really more nitpicks that belie one simple fact: Chakan: The Forever Man is, & has always been, 100% self-published. This isn't simply a creator-owned work that Kraus puts out with the help of a publisher of some sort (ala Image Comics), but rather every single Chakan story, from No. 1 to the novellas drawn by Aaron Archer, comes from "RAK" himself, and are obviously a labor of love; if anything, those nitpicks almost have a sort of ironic endearment to them. That's not to say that those nitpicks have no merit, but they are rather small things that I personally can excuse, simply because these books cannot be readily found otherwise (especially all of the novellas), and that's also why I don't really make a fuss about the fact that these books are all priced at around $10 each. While Kraus claims that all novellas are limited to just 1,000 copies, which might have been true at some point (the photo paper covers makes me think they're now print-on-demand), the fact remains that they are not exactly readily available from any place other than him, and the guy's got to make money in some fashion.

However, I fully admit that the cover price for each of these books makes actually getting a hold of them a bit of a daring prospect, and I honestly was only able to justify doing so for this overview because I wound up getting much more money than expected when I sold a handful of Atari Jaguar games on eBay earlier this year; the retro gaming market is currently a bit absurd.

Now, to be fair, there is a little more to Chakan: The Forever Man than just the comics, novellas, & even video game. There's a (possibly zero-budget?) live-action movie from 2012 directed by Robin Morningstar that honestly looks rather poor, & is seemingly nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Chakan himself did make an appearance in the comic Platinum #1, an all-CG affair from Komodo Comics in 1998 (so it possibly predates any of the novellas) that I have read before & is absolutely terrible in all regards; also, Chakan literally only appears on the very last page, so it's a pointless read for him. Kraus even made a Chakan: The Forever Man board game, at some point! As for what the future holds, that's about as much of a mystery as where the 100 Candles spell will send Chakan himself next. Kraus keeps himself busy by making continual appearances at various comic conventions to sell his art (though the current pandemic has, naturally, complicated things), and just this past May Kraus did post covert art on his Facebook account regarding a possible new Chakan release, showing a cover price of $25; maybe a collection of some sort? Also, on the game side of things, Ed Annunziata has repeatedly expressed interest in doing another proper Chakan game, though who knows if that chance will ever come about again. Regardless, I'm sure that, as long as Robert A. Kraus has a story in mind to tell, then there will always be a future Chakan novella in the works.

Chakan is a trademark of RAK Graphics