The concept of the creation of the tarot cards, how they were formed from a root of the World Tree and how they were used came to me much later in the creation of the comics. It was only natural that Wulff would have created them and Fritz would take advantage of them. We really needed a way for  Fritz to track (and manipulate) each character in the book if the German director was going to achieve his ultimate goal: safe passage into the roots of the World Tree.

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea that the Germans may have been actively searching for lost relics. Whether this was for a sense of identity or they thought these artifacts actually had Indiana-Jones-mythos power is unclear. I decided to use tarot cards because I loved how the graphics looked, skeletons and all, and of course they were a convenient way to show each character that was tied to the cards. A quick note that tarot cards, in general, are misunderstood. Yes, here I’m using them in an occult setting but in reality they were first introduced in the 14th century as a card game (and are still used in this capacity- mostly in Europe). It wasn’t until the 18th century that they were tied to some sort of divination. Well, there you go.

On this page, you can see of Jacopo’s cards and the character they represent. I’ll then give you a few interesting tidbits about each character.

Dave Marsh