Paul Gerrard’s The Wound Codex A Forbidden Artbook Bleeds Onto Kickstarter This October
When Paul Gerrard announces a new project, the imagination of the horror and fantasy art world tends to sit up straight, pour a stiff drink, and start taking notes. The man responsible for some of cinema’s most striking and nightmarish designs from Evil Dead Rise and Wrath of the Titans to Dungeons and Dragons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and even the latest Indiana Jones film has returned with something deeply personal and gloriously unsettling. Launching on 21 October 2025, Gerrard’s latest creation, The Wound Codex, is a 64 page hardback artbook that fuses myth making, storytelling and world building into one feverish vision of beauty and decay. You can back it right now on Kickstarter at this link.
“The Codex is not read… it is summoned.” That is how Gerrard himself describes it, and it is not hyperbole. Born from two years of sketchbooks, dream journals and late night notes, The Wound Codex emerged during one of the most harrowing and transformative periods of his life. Gerrard began the project while standing beside his partner during her battle with cancer, transforming pain into creation and grief into mythology. The book, he says, “carries characters forged with heart and soul. Out of that scar came wonder.” What makes The Wound Codex different from a typical artbook is that it is not just about displaying illustrations. Each page builds the world of the Tagora, a dark mythos populated by nature spirits, dream weavers and forgotten gods. Every entry in the Codex includes a biography, lore and symbolic statistics that make each creature feel alive, like a playable character in an ancient forbidden game that nobody was ever meant to win. It is being pitched as a perfect companion for fans of Hellboy, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Clive Barker, Brom and HP Lovecraft, but make no mistake, The Wound Codex is pure Gerrard, part sacred tome, part fever dream and part visual séance.
Much of the Codex was born in unexpected places. Gerrard has spoken about how the early sketches were drawn “in car parks and hospital corridors, beneath the low hum of waiting room lights.” The result is a project that feels lived in and raw, a testament to both creativity and resilience. The Dream Journals that inspired the Codex are 40 page A5 notebooks filled with ink sketches, sigils and half formed ideas. Each is crammed with the earliest versions of the Codex’s entities, what Gerrard calls “the first transmissions from the shadowed world between worlds.” These journals have the tactile handmade feel of something torn straight from an occult archive that you probably should not touch without gloves.
The Wound Codex features 25 original entries, each a fully realised Gerrardian creation of blood, bone and biomech beauty. The oversized presentation allows every intricate fracture and suture to shine, while the book itself is an artifact worthy of its subject, foil stamped, cloth bound and built to last centuries, like something rescued from a monastery that no longer exists. Higher tier backers will unlock additional exclusive entries and gain the honour or curse of having their names immortalised within the pages. Early supporters, known as the Witnesses of the Wound, will be forever listed in the Codex as the first to glimpse its forbidden contents. The highest tier Ambassadors of the Codex will have their likeness transformed into portraits within the book, their faces reborn as part of the manuscript’s living flesh. If you have ever wanted to be literally drawn into a dark fantasy world, this is your moment.
Paul Gerrard’s career has long been defined by his ability to merge art and myth, chaos and beauty. His design work in film and television from Hellboy and His Dark Materials to Battle Los Angeles showcases a mind that thrives on reimagining monsters and gods with religious intensity. But The Wound Codex feels different. It is not tied to any studio or franchise. It is a raw outpouring of one artist’s imagination, unfiltered, unrestrained and defiantly personal. This is Volume One of what Gerrard describes as an ongoing Codex series. Future instalments will expand the mythos of the Tagora, with new characters, lore and secrets to uncover. Early backers will not only receive a rare collector’s item but will also become part of a growing narrative universe that Gerrard intends to build piece by piece, wound by wound.
The Wound Codex goes live on Kickstarter, 21 October 2025, and you can secure your place among the Witnesses of the Wound by visiting the official campaign page. It is more than an artbook. It is an invocation.
