Monthly Archives: July 2008

Over on the other side of the pond, The Guardian has an article by comics writer, editor, and historian Danny Fingeroth about his top ten graphic novels of all time. Here’s his list; visit the link for his reasoning…

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

The Quitter by Harvey Pekar and Dean Haspiel

A Contract with God by Will Eisner

It’s a Good Life, if You Don’t Weaken by Seth

Stop Forgetting to Remember by Peter Kuper

Kings in Disguise by James Vance and Dan Burr

Brooklyn Dreams by JM DeMatteis and Glenn Barr

Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot

Why I Hate Saturn by Kyle Baker

So…whaddaya think? What’s missing? I know, I know—Watchmen. But let’s look beyond the men in tights…what’s on your top graphic novels of all time list?

They say it’s an honor to be nominated for a major industry award like an Eisner, and it certainly is. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t seriously rooting for a few pals of HeavyInk in last Friday’s awards at SDCC—Fred Chao, for the fantastic Johnny Hiro; Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener, for the awesome Atomic Robo; and Gerard Duggan, writer on Infinite Horizon, one of my favorite miniseries currently on the stands.

Unfortunately, none of them won, nor did any of my other favorites, in most cases. I guess if you want an Eisner, it’s best to insure I hate your comic.

Anyway, Infinite Horizon is a gripping retelling of Homer’s Odyssey set in a fictional near-future where regional factions battle in our own country for water and soldiers still spend years on duty in the Middle East. Visually, it’s a treat, and it’s a treat for the mind as well—Duggan’s got a gift for laser-like focus on just the right moments that illustrate his characters and themes, without letting this legendary story carry them both away.

Gerard was good enough to answer a few interview questions, and send over some prizes, which is much appreciated. Read on for details of our giveaway, and for insights on this amazing miniseries…

How does it feel to be the writer of the “Eisner-nominated” Infinite Horizon? Congrats on the nomination…how did you find out?

It was a genuine shock to be nominated. Joe Keatinge from Image called with the news right before the press release went out. I asked him to give Phil the good news because I was sure Noto would not believe me. Both Phil and I are both very honored to be in a category that includes some of our favorite creators. Everyone hopes that your work will connect with an audience, but being recognized was beyond all expectation. Brian Posehn and I presented a couple of awards at last year’s ceremony, but I never thought I would be back again so soon.

Tell me about your “ah-ha” moment on Infinite Horizon. When did you first realize that there was a story to be told in drawing from the Odyssey for a modern story that would bring in some modern politics as well?

When I first have an idea, I stop and write down as much of the idea that can be captured at that moment. If it’s a decent idea, a lot of thoughts can pour out of you at once. The very next thing that I do is try to punch as many holes into the idea as possible. If I don’t, somebody else will.

With this particular story, I wasn’t able to really sink it. Breaking the tale was very exciting. Hours disappeared into a computer, but it felt as though minutes had passed. I knew right away I was going to write it as a comic book. Luckily, Phil said yes right away and we began immediately. I spent sleepless nights either getting out of bed to jot down ideas, or staring at the ceiling wondering if someone was further ahead that I was in telling this story. That was not a good feeling. Getting the first issue into comic shops relieved me of that stress.

How deeply are you drawing from the Odyssey for your story and characters? I see the big parallels, but are you sprinkling in story elements throughout the series, or is it more of a rough template?

We’re finding ways of re-imagining the journey with the Cyclops, the Sirens, the land of the dead, and we’re ripping some elements right from the poem, but leaving other ideas behind. We turned Penelope’s suitors into men that are after fresh water. Her struggle to protect her family and house are the same. Our soldier’s epic journey is more or less intact. Our story is very grounded, and even though the Gods are all over the original work, there’s no divine intervention in the comic. For better, or worse. There are maybe a couple of things in the upcoming fourth issue that hardcore Odyssey geeks will appreciate.

What kind of research was required to create this world? It’s clearly inspired by the landscape of today but with some very specific changes. Can you reveal more background on the politics of Infinite Horizon, and the world in which it takes place?

I believe in the idea that we’re experiencing (or have experienced) “peak oil.” For those not familiar with the premise, it’s basically the idea that we’ve already sucked the most oil that we’re ever going to pull from the Earth, and that ever year oil production will continually decline until it finally runs out.

We’ve not done enough to solve our worsening energy problems, but that’s because until recently, it was cheaper to do things the old way. I see a special opportunity that comes with high energy costs. More money will be spent on alternative energies. Investing in new technologies will finally make financial sense. That’s the good to come out of the current predicament.

However, the world of THE INFINITE HORIZON is full of breakdowns: Failures that have cascade atop one another. What if energy costs skyrocketed? What if banks failed? What if economies collapsed? What if global warming changed ecosystems? What if access to clean water grew more and more scarce? What if China becomes the world’s lone super-power? What if it all happened in a short time? It’s sort of a soft-apocalypse brought about by nature, economics, fate, and our own greed. The nice thing is, even if I’m wrong, and we’re swimming in oil for centuries to come – these ideas make a hell of a setting for a story. Despite all of those ideas the story is fairly simple: A man struggles to return home to his family after years away.

Phil Noto’s using some interesting techniques on the artwork—I noticed some of the red linework in the scenes back with Penelope, for example. From a writing perspective, what are these techniques adding to the story? How are you adapting your work to Phil’s style?

The truth is that I rewrite everything after Phil wraps the art. I print out the art and start a new draft for Ed Dukeshire to lettering. I don’t do this because I love rewrites either – I do it because if I didn’t the book would suck. I complete at least a couple of drafts before Phil sees the script, but even when Phil’s layouts arrive in my inbox exactly as written, there are always wonderful surprises: a color choice, an angle, or something I can’t put my finger on that makes me tweak my writing. I’ve come to find that Phil’s work has a temperature if that makes any sense. It’s damn great, and keeps me on my toes.

Have you heard from any active soldiers who’ve read the book? What were their responses to it?

We haven’t heard from any soldiers. I hope that changes when we get the trade out later this year. I gave some copies to a charity that was sending them to Iraq. Perhaps it’s not the distraction they need at the moment? They’ll be our toughest audience, but I look forward to their thoughts. Maybe I’ll meet some at this year’s Comic Con.

What do you think it is about the Odyssey that has made it such an enduring and adaptable story for many centuries?

War will always keep The Odyssey fresh. This story will resonate as long as men and women are sent away to fight and die. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will ever go out of style. Of course, the Coens crafted the brilliant O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? which was fantastic, and had nothing to do with a war. It still had an epic journey, a bastard cyclops, and at least one suitor. So there will always be surprise takes on the poem. Even though the tone of the book is serious, I hope it comes across how much fun we’re having making THE INFINITE HORIZON. Thanks to everyone that is reading it!

We have five signed sets of issues 1-3 of Infinite Horizon available for giveaway!

All those who place orders on the site (for Infinite Horizon or otherwise) between today and next Wednesday will be placed in a drawing to win a set. Thanks again to Gerard Duggan for his time and good comics.

New to the comics writing world, Jim Hardison launches his first title today from Dark Horse, a four-issue miniseries entitled The Helm with artist Bart Sears. At his “day job,” he’s a marketing expert whose specialty involves creating backstories for characters such as the Pillsbury Dough Boy and Kool-Aid Man. Maybe they can fight in his next project? One can only dream.

We also have a limited supply of Helm posters, signed by Jim, to give away to lucky HeavyInk customers! We’ll pick randomly from subscribers to The Helm sometime early next week, so read the interview, buy the book, and win a free poster! Simple enough.

First off, what’s the “elevator pitch” for The Helm?

I pitched the Helm with the question “What if you had a magical superpower and it hated your guts?” That line was what got Dark Horse interested enough to read a treatment of the entire story.

The “reluctant hero” is a pretty classic story device…it sounds more like this story features a “reluctant superpower.” What’s the dynamic between your lead character and his own destiny?

I wanted to create a superhero who had a conflict with the power that made him super. This idea has been done before—usually in the form of a character who can’t control his power and consequently sees it as a curse more than a blessing—so I wanted to try something different. My key thought was to build a character who didn’t appear worthy of his power or appropriate for his role—somebody “un-heroic” so that I could explore what it means to be a hero and mine that exploration for comedic purposes. In terms of “destiny,” I wound up with a character who believes he is destined for greatness, but whom destiny would much rather reject.

What brought you to comics, and what have you found most appealing about writing for this specific artform?

I’m a relative newcomer to comics—not really having read many since I was a kid—but then a friend of mine (Will Vinton) did a graphic novel with Dark Horse (Jack Hightower) and I went to a comic shop to buy it and I was overwhelmed by how much comics had changed since the last time I’d seen them. And really impressed. I’ve been a writer in all kinds of different media and I started thinking about doing a comic.

As to what I’ve found appealing about the art form, there are a couple of things. I love the speed with which stories can flow from idea to finished work. I come from a filmmaking and animation background and those storytelling forms crawl in comparison to comics. In addition, I love the flexibility and freedom I’ve encountered working with Dark Horse. My editor, Dave Land, has been completely open to everything I’ve wanted to try and hugely supportive of the story and the process. Finally, I’ve really enjoyed the collaborative element of bringing the story to life—from my interactions with my editor, to seeing the pencils turn my words into images, to watching them solidify with the inks, bloom with the colors and then seeing all the pieces come together with the text.

What made Bart Sears the ideal choice to pencil this title?

I was going for irony with this story and consequently started thinking about a classic superhero/Conan style of art to serve as a commentary on the poor condition my hero is in. My editor suggested Bart because of his talent and history in comics—he does the “Brutes and Babes” stuff so well. Bart has been tremendous to work with—I love seeing his interpretations as they come in and I’m continually impressed by the level of detail, humor and art that he works into every image.

Your “day job” involves creating stories and characters for marketing, right? Tell me more about that…are we talking the “secret origin” of Kool-Aid Man type stuff?

In my “day job” I have worked on the Kool-Aid man…and Tony the Tiger and the Trix Rabbit and the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Quaker Oats Quaker and the Maytag Repair Men and Mr. Clean and…well, pretty much all the major branded characters. My company is called Character. We also work on characters for entertainment—like Popeye the Sailor, a couple of characters for Discovery Network, PBS, etc.

My work in the marketing world is all about helping brands focus on the principles that underlie great stories and resonant characters. Many people in branding assume that the relevance of a character is dependent almost entirely on how the character looks—we remind them that all great stories and characters are built on conflict and connect to the audience by expressing some fundamental truth about the human condition—even if they’re just animated lumps of dough or anthropomorphic M&M’s.

Our vibrant, manly love for Red 5 Comics and its products is well-documented here.

Today, we have an exclusive interview with Scott Chitwood, one of the founding fathers of Red 5 and a writer for the publisher as well. His Afterburn (co-written with Paul Ens) has recently been optioned for a film by Tobey Maguire for what we understand is roughly seventy six bagazillion dollars.

In spite of his wealth and power, Scott was remarkably down to earth. Read on, effendi.

Afterburn is written by the two founders of Red 5 Comics. How did the title’s creation evolve? Was this a story you hoped to tell when you founded the imprint, or did it come later after Red 5 had begun?

When Paul and I started Red 5 Comics, we always had the intention of creating some of the titles ourselves. After all, if we were going to build the sandbox, we wanted to play in it. Paul and I brainstormed over a number of story ideas and Afterburn stood out as one of the ideas with a lot of potential. I came up with the initial concept and a first draft of the story, then Paul and I took stabs at revisions after that. It was during that revision process that we started identifying the appealing parts of the story (like the mutant sharks) and expanding on them.

Genre fans are very familiar with the “post-apocalyptic” environment from many movies and comics. How did you approach the idea of “post-apocalyptic” from a fresh direction?

It actually didn’t start as a “post-apocalyptic” story idea. It started as an Indiana Jones idea. Back when I was a kid, I saw a National Geographic painting in an archeology book that showed the U.S. Capitol overgrown by forest and vegetation. I thought it would be interesting if Indiana Jones were raiding modern locations and treasures rather than ancient ruins and temples. The question was how to go about doing that.

One day I was walking through my living room and my wife had a Discovery Channel show on TV about solar flares. They were talking about what could potentially happen if a solar superflare hit the earth. They talked about electronics being wiped out, vegetation dying off, humans being bombarded by radiation, and other fun stuff. As soon as I heard that, I knew we had out apocalypse event for the story. The rest fell into place pretty quickly after that.

What’s your take on this world you’re developing? Are you telling one-off action stories set in this larger universe, or is there an overall larger tapestry you’re creating as well?

We set the story up to be ongoing if we wanted it to be. The initial story arc was 4 issues so that if it tanked we didn’t sink too much money in it. But the story would be set up so the characters could have further adventures if we wanted to go there. That was the beauty in cooking half the world – there are so many places you can have stories and so many treasures Jake and his team can go after. Throw in international politics, rival treasure hunters, and other cool stuff and the story potential is endless.

Visually, what’s influencing the creation of Afterburn? Are there other artists or books that have provided inspiration for the way Afterburn looks?

Since we were telling a cinematic story with a potentially real world approach, we were looking for more realistic artwork over stylized penciling. That’s why Wayne Nichols’ art really stood out. He does beautiful, detailed backgrounds as can be seen in the opening scenes of issue #1. When we first talked to him, we told him we were looking for a “Mad Max” and “Terminator” look to the post-apocalyptic environment. Everything needed to be dirty, worn, and beaten. We wanted to see skeletons and dead bodies on the ground where they dropped when the flare hit. We wanted to see fires and destruction where planes fell out of the skies and wildfires raged. You know, the good stuff.

What was much more difficult to zero in on were the mutants. We wrote the full script without ever really thinking about what they looked like. So when the time came to draw them in concept art, it took quite a bit of time to choose a look. We didn’t want X-Men mutants with powers, but we didn’t want “Total Recall” freaks either. We settled on a look that was still distinctly human, but modified by the effects of radiation. As a reader, the process behind creating a look of a character was something I definitely took for granted. Never again!

What does Matt Busch bring to the table as the cover illustrator? How has he helped develop the book and its following?

Matt Busch has been a friend of ours for a very long time. We’ve known him since the earliest days of running TheForce.Net. So when we started this comic company, we knew we wanted to use him. Afterburn was a natural fit for his talents. As you can see from the covers, his art is stunning. I’ve had the cover art with the shark displayed at conventions and I’ve seen people stop dead in their tracks when they’ve seen it. Kids yell out, “Shark!” There’s no question his artwork has gotten our title a lot of attention. In fact, it’s what caught the eye of our agent that helped get us our movie deal.

Tell me about the process of Afterburn being optioned for a feature film. Was it being shopped around for a while, or did the production company approach you guys?

Several groups were interested in the movie rights to Afterburn after having seen it mentioned on ComingSoon.Net, but the writer’s strike slowed progress on many talks to a complete standstill. Then one day in an LA comic shop, our soon-to-be agent saw a copy of Afterburn #1 on the store counter and checked it out. He saw the potential in the story and contacted us about shopping around the movie rights. When the writers strike stopped, the interest started up again. Ultimately Tobey Maguire, Relativity Media, and Neal Moritz won the bidding war.

So getting it optioned was a combination of having a good story idea, having professional looking artwork, and dumb luck.

Where’s the film’s production at right now? Any status updates?

It’s in pre-production. From our conversations with the production company they’re very excited about the project and moving it forward. They have some great ideas for the movie, and I definitely think it’s in good hands.

HeavyInk is profiled in Mass High Tech:

http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2008/06/23/weekly3-Heavyink.com-hopes-to-digitize-comic-book-sales.html

Heavyink.com hopes to digitize comic book sales By Christopher Calnan

An Arlington company has launched an online store for comic book fans that includes a social networking feature and software for collectors.

Technical Video Rental Inc., which has offered rental arts-and-crafts DVDs and how-to DVDs since 2004, is expanding its business to comic book sales after an eight-month beta test of its HeavyInk.com website.

HeavyInk.com sells comic books and hosts a social networking feature that next week will include the ability for comic book enthusiasts to preview a digital version of the first four pages of new comics, founder Travis Corcoran said.

During the fourth quarter, HeavyInk plans to release a free, on-demand collection-management software product for users to track details such as author and artist names and comic asking prices, he said. More than 1,100 users have joined HeavyInk’s network since November 2007, Corcoran said.

Robert Scott, founder of the Comic Book Industry Alliance, a 10-year-old California-based organization with 800 members, said other Internet-based businesses have tried and failed to replace comic book stores. “It’s going to be difficult to supplant,” Scott said. “People want a place to browse their books — they also want them now.”

The self-funded Technical Video launched SmartFlix.com in 2004 and now stocks nearly 6,000 DVDs about topics such as metalworking, knitting and guitar making. The 13-person firm generates more than $1 million a year, Corcoran said.

He expects comics to boost HeavyInk.com’s top line because comics’ subscription model provides recurring revenue.

Comic subscriptions generate revenue of $500 million to $600 million annually in the United States and Canada, said Corcoran, citing figures from Maryland’s Diamond Comic Distributors Inc. He expects HeavyInk to generate $2 million to $3 million in sales in 2009.

“We want to be a one-stop shop for all sorts of thing,” Corcoran said. “We have everything in one place.”