What is The Universe of ELZA?

There is nothing more intimidating than staring at a blank page…

A Brief Historical Detour

This project had very humble beginnings as a small hobby venture that snowballed into a vast Universe with over a millennium of lore and near-endless narrative potential. Below you can read a brief summary about how the Universe of ELZA have started and where it is going.

ELZA is a Passion Project that Went Too Far

The Universe of ELZA began with a daring fantasy to make a fully AI-illustrated adult comic. This fantasy was daring not only because consistent characters were a difficult task for Generative AI back in 2023, but also because the story for it was filled with tentacle-related weirdness and no censored online-only engine could illustrate it. This meant that using locally installed finetuned Stable Diffusion was the only solution for this (by that time) non-trivial problem. So, the character of Elza was born… At least her looks.

Unfortunately, a simple story about a woman falling for an alien plant felt like an achievement to produce, but simply not substantial enough to publish. It required some worldbuilding and simply more context to provide significant value for the reader! This narrative growth led to creation of the secondary protagonist – Nadia. Thereafter the High Curator and the Huntress became antagonists of this small story. So, an experimental side project became a trilogy of comics and could be published for the whole world wide internet to see!

ELZA is an Unexpected Hit

But just like with any endeavor, when the story was complete and the dust settled, a glaring question appeared: What’s next? As ELZA was a merely one-off experimental project, nothing aside from the first three issues was conceptualized by that time. There was only one unused illustration of Elza crawling over he snow – a glimpse from her shadowy past. This image alone inspired the creation of ELZA: Origins, a prequel to those first three comics. This graphic novel became a true beginning of the Universe of ELZA.

It is important to note that ELZA 1,2,3 were made as purely erotic comics. Story there was a mere excuse to move the narrative forward. ELZA: Origins on the other hand did not have much space for erotic content aside from some casual nudity. Instead, it was a fast-paced space adventure tale in the coming of age/survival genre. Creation of this graphic novel took long three months, but the time investment turned out to be extremely beneficial for the quality of the story and lore behind it.

ELZA: Origins was much better received by the readers then all previous issues of the comic – it showed that audience is interested in longer format narrative-heavy stories. It is also important to note that growing adaptation of Generative AI flooded channels with all possible erotica, so producing simpler stories like first three issues of ELZA seemed to be akin a race to the bottom. It meant that the only viable direction for this project to flourish became a race to the top of storytelling.

ELZA is an Overwhelming Ambition

This commitment turned out to be a tricky one. At first, there was an explosion of worldbuilding through Database articles and launch of a limited prequel series NADIA together with few stories branded TALES From the Universe of ELZA on the way… But the whole project screeched to a halt in mid-2024.

The reason was simple: consistently good writing requires time, and because all time was spent on production and marketing, subsequent stories were lacking in quality and meaning. Extrapolation of possible developments showed that production of comics with low quality storytelling will be a waste of time and resources. It was not the end though. It was just a beginning of something beautiful!

Months that followed were fully invested in overhaul of all story lines, further worldbuilding, outlining of future novels, art/writing courses, and adoption of new visualization tech, including integration of Blender for poses and handcrafted weapons/spaceships/environments. As this work progressed, old ELZA comics had to be scrapped with best work like ELZA: Origins remaining in the non-canonical Legacy Collection.

All this narrative heavy lifting, including creation of ENTIA.in was completed only in January 2025.

The Vision Behind the Universe of ELZA

The Universe of ELZA can be described as the ultimate escapist science fiction fantasy for adults. The latter term means that the core narrative of this comic series explores themes that may be either too complex or inappropriate for younger audiences.

Aesthetic language of this Universe is inspired by science fiction artwork and films from 80s and 90s, which makes it look familiar to the audience. This style of vintage-futurism is primarily dictated by the in-universe lore of the series.

The set up of the Universe of ELZA revolves around multiple human civilizations on different levels of advancement trying to survive an interstellar war and find their way in the Universe. Such setting allows futuristic technology like fast interstellar travel and artificial gravity to organically coexist with retro futuristic analogue technology, and exotic cultures that would belong more in a fantasy novel them a science fiction series.

Stories that Build the Universe

All stories for the Universe of ELZA are written in a format of a graphic novel (80-100+ pages). It means that smaller story ideas are either being expanded to become complete novels, or are integrated inside larger narratives. In order to maintain monthly release cadence each novel is usually published as a series of standalone issues.

Aside from different time periods, stories from the Universe of ELZA can be divided in two parallel cycles:

Imperial Cycle – These stories take place mostly in the Imperial Space and revolve around characters of Elza and Nadia. Imperial Cycle is designed to be experienced as a singular character driven story.
Federal Cycle – Most stories from the Federal Cycle are standalone and feature different cast for each novel. Still, all stories from the Federal Cycle share a common overarching mythology that is tightly intertwined with the Imperial Cycle.

Later down the line both Cycles will unite in one singular storyline that leads to the series finale. As of 2026, the plan is to maintain the narrative over a decade with two new graphic novels released each year. A comprehensive list of released and upcoming stories can be seen here.

Key Narrative Principles

Despite shared mythology each novel from the Universe of ELZA is written to be experienced as a solid standalone story, with little to no prior knowledge required to enjoy it. Idea behind this principle is to avoid confusion among new readers. Those who choose to read all entries will experience a deeper level of immersion, as each subsequent story builds up and expands the share mythology of the series.

Because of all stories from the Universe of ELZA are written by a single person (Not without help from few dedicated advisors of course!), outside the publishing system – no narrative compromises were ever needed to be made. It means that each published story is just as honest and raw as it was intended during the initial conception. No corners cut, nothing censored.

Three Levels of Storytelling

Each story released as a part of the Universe of ELZA features three levels of the narrative:

Micro – The superficial entertainment level that includes action, mystery, horror, a bit of humor and unapologetic erotica. This is how these stories will be seen from the first glance, and this is the most important level, because escapist entertainment should be fun and easily accessible for all readers.
Meta – Each story holds a social or philosophical commentary beyond the good old “Hero’s Journey”. It can be easily ignored, but those who like to read between the lines will be pleasantly surprised.
Macro – Every story contains a small set up for a larger narrative that will gradually unfold as the series progresses. Also, as most of the standalone novels are being outlined in parallel before the production, they all contain small unanswered questions and mysteries with answers held in past or future releases. So, avid lore collectors will be rewarded, as they will arrive to the endgame a step before everyone else.

The Road to the Endgame

Universe of ELZA was conceived with deep awareness about most traps that similar projects have fallen into. To keep things grounded each story revolves around ordinary people that are met with extraordinary circumstances. This way interpersonal drama plays out over a vibrant canvas of a civilization-shaping events like the interstellar war and subsequent contacts with multiple alien and seemingly alien species.

But… Who is Elza, Really?

Elza Gadar is an ordinary woman, born as a Second Class Citizen on an industrial Imperial world of Zirkon. Still, she will become empowered to change the Universe… But not in a way that anyone may expect.