The Bionic Woman

Paul Tobin is the writer of such books as Marvel’s Spider-Girl, Models, Inc., and The Age of Sentry. This month he comes to Dynamite with The Bionic Woman. Westfield’s Roger Ash contacted Tobin to learn more about the book.

Westfield: What attracted you to the project?

Paul Tobin: First off, I love Dynamite Comics. I’m a huge fan of pulp characters, and Dynamite has a wealth of them under their mighty control, so it was inevitable that we would begin to team up in some capacity. The first opening was this Bionic Woman project, which isn’t pulp-related, but I LOVE the character. I used to watch reruns of the old show, and I even had one of those Bionic Man dolls (ahem… action figures) where you could look through the back of his head and “see” with his bionic eye. So… yeah… when Nick Barrucci asked if I wanted to work on the character, it was a no-brainer. Plus, I don’t think it’s any secret throughout my career that I love working with strong female characters. I love bringing them to life, exploring character, etc. All in all, it was a natural fit.

Westfield: Is this connected with Dynamite’s Bionic Man title?

Tobin: Loosely. It’s inevitable that paths will cross, but at the same time we didn’t want to get caught up in some huge crossover, because that can have the effect of diluting the strength of the individual stories. Good ol’ Steve Austin certainly makes an appearance… but we’re focused on Jaime, here.

Westfield: What can readers look forward to in the series? Any story tidbits you can share?

Tobin: At heart it’s a mystery tale, where Jaime needs to uncover a group of DECIDEDLY illegal organ transplant doctors, ones who have begun to look at Jaime, and other “bionics” as THE best organ donors, whether these “donors” like it or not. Along the way, there are quite a few explosions, some new friends, some betrayals, a man with amazing hunting skills and no morals at all, a pretty French girl, a boat that sinks, some afternoon tea, a romantic hopeful, exactly 12,456 bullets (barring script revisions) and a partridge in a pear tree. Said partridge may or may not explode. Have I mentioned the explosions?

Westfield: You’re working with artist Leno Carvalho on The Bionic Woman. What can you say about his work?

Tobin: Leno’s fantastic, because he has the skills to bring everything I needed to the page. First… he’s good with drawing women, real women, as opposed to vacant-eyed pinups. That’s an ENORMOUS help to me in establishing Jaime’s personality and character. And Leno’s good with backgrounds and locales, which change quite a bit, and are part of the story’s character.

Westfield: Any closing comments?

Tobin: I’ve really appreciated how supportive Joe and Nick have been on this project. This is one of the clearest “story I want to tell” experiences I’ve ever had, and it’s fantastic to have editors who trust the creators. I think THAT is what can lead to some really great comics, not only on my own projects, but across the industry as a whole.

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The Bionic Woman

Ragemoor #1

The team of writer Jan Strnad and artist Richard Corben have collaborated on many popular stories including Mutant World, New Tales of the Arabian Nights, and Jeremy Brood, just to name a few. Now, they are back together on Ragemoor, a new horror miniseries from Dark Horse. Strnad and Corben spoke with Westfield’s Roger Ash about their new project.

Westfield: You’ve done some memorable stories with each other. What is there about your collaboration that you think makes it work so well and that you enjoy?

Jan Strnad: We go way back to the early 1970s and my fanzine Anomaly. He kindly contributed and we hit it off. We’re generally of the same era and share a lot of influences, such as the heroic fiction of the time (ERB, Robert E. Howard), the classic Universal horror movies, Poe and Lovecraft, and so forth. It helps that Richard has a great sense of humor that often doesn’t get to come out in his other collaborations. I can’t help putting a dark, wryly humorous twist on most of the stories I write, and Richard is able to capture that sick sense of humor admirably.

Richard really excels at drawing human expressions, and that means a lot to me. Working with Richard’s characters is like working with the greatest assembly of character actors you can imagine. Richard hires models, makes maquettes, renders characters in 3D modeling programs… he does whatever it takes to get the faces and lighting and such right. He’s a true original.

For my part, I try to write stuff he’ll enjoy illustrating. Of course, I can’t guarantee that every panel is going to be exciting to him, but I definitely try to keep his preferences in mind when I plot a story. He likes to draw full-figured women, for instance, so I’m not going to write him a story about a ballerina. She’d blacken her eyes with the first jump! I’m not going to require a Roy Krenkel-like cityscape or a fleet of a thousand spaceships. Some artists relish mechanical or architectural subjects, but with Richard, it’s about the people. I try to give him intriguing characters with strong emotions, knowing that the characters he draws will rise to the occasion.

In short, Richard makes me look good.

Richard Corben: Jan and I go back quite a while. I think our first collaboration was Encounter At War for Jan’s fanzine Anomaly back in the 60s. I was impressed that he was so dedicated to the possibility of comics that he published his own. Plus he could spell and knew grammar. All I could do is draw. With our series Mutant World I had done the first chapter on my own, and when I had trouble developing a coherent storyline, I went to Jan. Luckily he felt sympathetic to what I had done and it was consistent with his own goals, so he wrote the series. It went on to be syndicated in several European magazines as well as Warren’s 1984. What I like about his stories is the originality, although his characters sometimes don’t make it through all the troubles he sets up for them. Our collaborations usually go something like this: I have a great idea for a character or a set up and I pitch it to Jan. Then he sends me his story ideas that have virtually nothing to do with my original idea. But they are much better than mine and I can’t pass them up. Ragemoor worked out true to form. I wanted him to help me write a series of short Poe-esque horror stories. And as usual his counter offer was a longer horror story that had a very tenuous link with Poe. The master of the house of Usher believed in the sentience of the stones of the house. But Jan took the concept in a completely original direction, so of course I couldn’t pass it up.

Westfield: Where did the idea for Ragemoor come from?

Strnad: I don’t know. Edgar Allan Poe, certainly. H. P. Lovecraft, absolutely. Throw in some 1950s science fiction movies, a dash of 1960s Marvel monster comics, the Hammer horror films, Roger Corman, and a little Woody Allen (a man’s obsession with an unattainable woman), and you’ve got Ragemoor.

Some months before, Joey Cavalieri at DC had asked Richard to do a Spirit feature, and Richard had suggested me as a writer. Now, it had been awhile since I’d written a comic book story. I’d moved from Kansas to Los Angeles and gotten into writing TV animation, but that career imploded after fifteen years thanks to the Canadian government’s successful efforts to woo production from L.A. to Vancouver. I’d written a horror novel (Risen) that was published briefly and that I’d re-released on Kindle once the rights reverted to me, and I’d started working in theater operations for the Santa Monica-Malibu school district. I was definitely up for a fun writing project and dang, it was The Spirit! I don’t know any comics writer who wouldn’t jump at the chance to do a Spirit story. So we did it, and I had a great time, and then I wrote a Ray Bradbury-esque Weird War story for Joey called Private Parker Sees Thunder Lizards that was supposed to be illustrated by Richard. In a rare lapse of judgment, Richard passed on my story and it went to Gabriel Hardeman, who did such a fantastic job that now I’m glad… glad do you hear me, Richard, GLAD… that Richard passed on it. (Well, I’d still like to have seen Richard’s rendition of dinosaurs munching Nazis, but you can’t have everything.)

Anyway, now I had the comics-writing bug again. Writing comics is like being addicted to a drug. There really isn’t anything quite like it because it’s both visual and verbal and there’s literally nothing you can’t do in comics. So Richard asked if I’d like to write a gothic, Poe-esque, Lovecraftian story for him and I said sure. But I had one requirement: It had to be book-length. The problem with writing 7- and 8-page stories is, you have to think up the story, and then you have to cram it into a very few pages. I wanted to have some space for the story and art to breathe. So Richard agreed to a one-shot comic book, Ragemoor, and I wrote it and he illustrated it and he sent it to Scott Allie at Dark Horse as a one-shot.

Then Scott said, “I love it, but I want four issues!” Because Scott knows that if you do a one-shot comic book, it comes and goes in a week, but if you do a four-issue series, you can collect it later into a graphic album and sell it forever. This is why Scott gets the big bucks.

A writer does a lot of “writing” that never makes it to the final page. You write back story for the characters, and come up with a lot of ideas (most of which you throw out), and in this case, I came up with a whole cosmology for Ragemoor that might or might not actually appear in the final book. With all of this material in mind, which was pages and pages of scribbling on a legal pad, I knew that I could come up with four issues, so the mini-series idea was fine with me. Richard agreed and we were off and running.

Westfield: How much design work did you do on the settings and characters in Ragemoor?

Corben: Jan sent me some links to castles on the internet, particularly one that had a remote lookout station that he wanted to use. I designed Ragemoor the castle as a model in a 3d program and included the lookout station. I also assembled the dining room, and the girls bedroom similarly. I used these for visual reference of different angles and lighting set ups. The characters heads were also built in 3d, but these were less successful than the sets. Occasionally, I’ll hire models to act the parts of the characters while I make photographic reference. Because of scheduling difficulties, I was only able to get a few poses for this series.

Westfield: What can readers look forward to in the series?

Strnad: A very strange, very twisted, very black Poe-esque, Lovecraftian story, illustrated by a master of the genre. Some laughs. Some gross-outs. Some sex. Obsession, brooding, revenge, madness. Monsters. Baboons.

Westfield: Aside from Ragemoor itself, who are some of the other characters readers will meet in the book?

Strnad: Herbert Ragemoor is the “Master” of Ragemoor. His father, Machlan Ragemoor, is totally insane, runs around naked with the baboons. Herbert is ably served by his manservant, Bodrick, and they are visited by Herbert’s industrialist uncle, J. P. Ragemoor and his alleged daughter, Anoria. Later in the story a poacher named Tristano enters the picture.

Westfield: Why did you decide to do the book in black and white?

Corben: When I was conceiving this project as a whole, I wasn’t sure about its reception at Dark Horse or other publishers. I thought I might have to pitch it to some smaller publishers who couldn’t afford a color book. Also, since I would be doing all the production work myself, I didn’t want to overload myself with coloring on a book done on speculation. Probably more important to me is that I feel a black and white (and gray tones) book has a beauty and mood that seems well suited to horror stories.

Westfield: What challenges did having a living castle as a central character present to you?

Strnad: The castle can’t speak, only act, so its emotional range is limited. It can’t articulate its desires or its history or its goals, so the story revolves around the human characters’ attempts to understand it and survive within it. Ragemoor seems to lack a soul, which makes its actions amoral at best, evil at worst, but by the end of the series, understandable.

Everything we learn about Ragemoor has to come through the human characters. Ultimately, of course, it’s about Herbert and Bodrick and Anoria, etc. finding their true roles in the Ragemoor universe.

Corben: Actually I faced this challenge with some trepidation. I wanted to stay clear of any anthropomorphic personification of the Ragemoor entity because I was afraid it would make the concept silly and childish. But when it was proposed to use just such a humanized rendition on the first cover, I had to do it. Fortunately, Jan and Scott liked the finished art, so I guess my fears were groundless.

Westfield: After Ragemoor what other projects can readers look forward to from you?

Corben: At my age, it’s about time I learned what I’m good at and what I want to do. There are two Corben projects that will be coming out in due time. The first is Murky World, a sword adventure done in gray tones. The protagonist is not the average pathological brute found in this type of story. I tried to make him more friendly and human than, say Conan. He’s not so hung up on his own manhood that he feels he has to kill any potential competitor. And he has a sense of humor about it.

I still want to do Poe. So I will be adapting some of Poe’s stories and poems to comics. Poe’s stories have been done a zillion times in various media, some good, most horrible. I hope to make my version true to the spirit of his work, if not the word. The intent is to use the original stories as a springboard to my version. For instance, what if Berenice survived her ordeal at the hands of Egaeus, and she wants to have it out with him, and she’s mad as hell? Actually Poe hinted at such a possibility but he ended the story at the revelation of the teeth.

Strnad: Actually, I need to concentrate on the novel I started about ten years ago. Risen has been doing well on Kindle and I want to get more novels out there.

Westfield: Any closing comments?

Strnad: It’s a great pleasure to have the chance to write something as twisted as Ragemoor and especially to work with Richard again!

Corben: I’ve had a long career in comics, doing it the way I wanted, mostly. I’m grateful for what success I’ve had. I still love the possibility of comics, as a medium to tell the stories I want to, not just the ones that sell big. I still have some goals to achieve and skills to develop so I don’t intend to retire ever. I’m going to continue doing comics until I drop.

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Ragemoor #1

Cartoon Monarch: Otto Soglow and The Little King

Cartoon Monarch: Otto Soglow and the Little King is the latest volume from The Library of American Comics and IDW and is available for pre-order now. The Library of American Comics’ Creative Director and the book’s editor Dean Mullaney and Ohio State University Professor and Contributing Editor Jared Gardner, who provides the book’s introduction, recently spoke about the book with Westfield’s Roger Ash.

Westfield: For those who aren’t familiar with him, who was Otto Soglow?

Jared Gardner: Whenever I tell folks I am working on Otto Soglow, nine times out of ten I get a blank look in response. But when I follow up by mentioning The Little King or the hundreds of drawings that continue to illustrate every Talk of the Town article in The New Yorker decades after his death, there is always that look of recognition — one that extends beyond the specifics even of the King himself or any one of those drawings to the unique style of cartooning that Soglow perfected and passed on to countless descendants within the world of comics and illustration.

The Little King on parade.

I think Soglow would not be unhappy with being infinitely less recognizable than his most famous creation. Throughout his career, after The Little King became a sensation and eventually the official logo of the most powerful comics syndicate in the world, Soglow enjoyed dressing up as his cartoon monarch for press junkets, charity events, and even parties with his friends. Like the Little King, Soglow was short, plump, and always up for a good party or a good joke. But the most important similarity between character and creator lay in their shared sense of wonder (at times bordering on horror) as to how on earth they found themselves in their respective roles. Even as Soglow would spend the rest of his life making the Little King perhaps the most immediately recognizable comic strip in America, he would retain the ambivalence about his remarkable career — an ambivalence that lay at the heart of his work’s power.

The Little King shows his flair for decorating.

Westfield: From the subtitle of the book, Otto Soglow and The Little King, it sounds like Cartoon Monarch is part biography and part comic strip collection. Is that correct?

Dean Mullaney: The book is primarily a strip collection because The Little King is undoubtedly Soglow’s main life’s work and we want to show as many examples as possible by such a master cartoonist. In order for us to fully appreciate the strip’s overall motif and the specific sub-themes Soglow keeps coming back to, however, it’s useful to understand his social, political, and artistic background. His earliest work was in the radical and socialist magazines that were published in the years following the Russian Revolution. What’s interesting is that a decade after being on the artistic barricades, as it were, he was drawing for the biggest capitalist of them all — William Randolph Hearst, who owned King Features, and drawing ads for Standard Oil. But it’s not as if he sold out…

Gardner: Not at all. Like his most famous creation, Soglow was a man whose origins and political sensibilities were always with the working man on the street — and even the angry mob. He began his career as a young, idealistic student of John Sloan at the Arts Student League in New York City. As Dean said, much of his art was for magazines like the Liberator and New Masses, committed, like Sloan himself, to the idea that art should always be put in the service of political change. Over time, internal fights within the Marxist community at the New Masses would lead Soglow to The New Yorker, which became a somewhat surprising refuge for many exiles from New Masses. And it was here the Little King — that reluctant monarch who, like Soglow himself, would rather be partying or rioting with the people than sitting stiffly upon his throne — first appeared.

The Little King is born out of the tension between Soglow’s political idealism and his professional ambitions.

It's the Law ran in The American Magazine.

Mullaney: And those ambitions served him well — The Little King ran for forty-plus years. But Soglow’s place in the cartoonist firmament runs deeper than a Sunday strip, no matter how popular it was. He was also instrumental in defining the “New Yorker-style” of modern, streamlined cartooning. He became one of the magazine’s regular cartoonists during in its formative years, and may be the only cartoonist still being published weekly more than thirty-five years after his death. His influence can also be seen among such avant garde cartoonists as Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Ivan Brunetti, and others.

A King Features model sheet used for licensing.

Westfield: What can you tell us about the comic strip, The Little King? Are there other recurring characters aside from the King?

Gardner: There are very few recurring characters in The Little King, aside from our cartoon monarch himself. The queen appears fairly often, and there are some recurring rivals from neighboring states alternately looking to invade or to play poker. But aside from one regular, Ookle the Dictator, in the early 1940s, this is a strip without a defined supporting cast. Everyone here is interchangeable (Ookle himself will show up later in minor roles as far from Dictator as can be imagined). And even the King himself seems to have stumbled into his post somewhat by accident, as we discover at the end of The Ambassador.

Westfield: Cartoon Monarch also collects all of Soglow’s The Ambassador comic. What can you tell us about that?

Gardner: When Hearst swiped The Little King from The New Yorker, there were still some months left on Soglow’s contract to produce the strip for the magazine. So while waiting for the King’s release, Soglow created another strip for Hearst called The Ambassador. With the exception of a couple of minor details (title, clothes), the Ambassador was in every way identical to the King, and on the last day of The Ambassador before beginning The Little King in the papers Soglow had a giant windstorm blow up during a public event that resulted in the King’s crown finding its way onto the Ambassador’s head. Since we had already seen the Ambassador mooning over the Queen, is there any reason why we might not believe that he simply kept the crown in place and moved into the palace (and the Queen’s bed)? If so, no one seems to have noticed or cared — after all, he is a king even Americans could embrace: fat, feckless, and big-hearted beyond measure. Long may he reign!

The Little King keeps up appearances.

Westfield: If this book does well, would you like to do more Little King books?

Mullaney: In researching Cartoon Monarch, we read around 2,000 Sunday pages. Let’s be honest, over forty years there’s going to be a certain amount of repetition, so we chose what we felt are the best strips from all periods of his career, and that cover each of his major themes. I’m particularly partial to his ’50s and ’60s Sundays. You’d think that by then he would have been bored and perhaps phoned it in, but his gags are fantastic, and he had so perfected that confident, simple linework… I like them better than his earlier pages!

Cartoon Monarch is designed to be a definitive, single volume compendium of Soglow’s best work. By devoting 432 pages to Soglow’s career, I believe readers will get a well-rounded, extensive look at his cartoons and will learn a great deal from Jared’s biographical introduction.

Westfield: Any closing comments?

Mullaney: I’m convinced that when younger cartoonists see the hundreds of examples of Soglow’s brilliant cartooning in this book, we’re going to see an entirely new round of Soglow influence. I’m looking forward to it!

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Cartoon Monarch: Otto Soglow and the Little King

Steve Canyon Vol. 1

Bruce Canwell is the Associate Editor of The Library of American Comics that publishes collections of such classic comic strips as Bloom County, Little Orphan Annie, Li’l Abner, and more through IDW. Available for pre-order now is the first volume of Milton Caniff’s classic strip, Steve Canyon. Westfield’s Roger Ash contacted Canwell to learn more about this collection.

The second week of Steve Canyon begins, featuring Steve, Feeta-Feeta, "Copper" Calhoun, and Mr. Dayzee.

Westfield: For people who aren’t familiar with Steve Canyon, what can you tell us about the strip?

Bruce Canwell: This is sort of a two-fer, Roger – let’s talk about Steve Canyon, the strip, and Steve Canyon, the title character.

Steve Canyon, the comic strip, launched in January, 1947 and ended in 1988, shortly after the death of its creator and guiding light, Milton Caniff. Caniff’s name was and continues to be spoken with respect that sometimes borders on awe – he was known as “The Rembrandt of the Comic Strips,” and no one ever contested his right to that title!

Canyon‘s creation came about because, in a way, Caniff was the prototype for Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, and the other original Image creators. He had been phenomenally successful as a “well-paid slave” for one newspaper syndicate while producing the fabulous Terry And The Pirates comic strip, but he jumped ship, the way the Image guys abandoned Marvel, after getting an opportunity to create something new over which he had full ownership and complete creative control. The slam-bang action (and sexy women) of Steve Canyon are the result.

Steve Canyon week 2, strip 2

When we first meet Steve Canyon, the character, he’s a post-war pilot operating his own charter air service. Steve is rangy and smart, as quick with a quip as he is with his fists. He’s a solid patriot and lives life by the Golden Rule, but when he’s pushed he doesn’t hesitate to shove back. Steve returns to military service when the Korean War gets hot, which means there are combat missions and espionage work in his future, but in this first volume he’s strictly a small businessman with an exotic job, trying to do the right thing and make ends meet.

Caniff is justly praised for the fabulous first week of Canyon strips that introduce his rangy, hard-hitting hero – would-be comics artists and writers should study this sequence to learn valuable lessons in storytelling and suspense-building!

Steve Canyon week 2, day 3

Westfield: Aside from Steve, who are some of the other characters readers will encounter in the strips?

Canwell: Manoman, that’s a loooooong list! Caniff was at the top of his game when he launched Canyon, and he was determined to present a broad cast that would seem “Caniffesque,” but wouldn’t closely duplicate the beloved Terry And The Pirates characters he had recently left behind.

Steve starts out with a five-man flight crew in his charter business, but eventually they’re replaced by a single sidekick: first Steve partners with eccentric old-timer Happy Easter, then with youthful Reed Kimberly. In my introductory text feature I have a really interesting quote from Caniff discussing how his thinking evolved regarding the supporting cast, and how Happy and Reed fulfill different but complementary needs.

Terry And The Pirates fans are well aware that Caniff was known for his villains and for his women — he brings to bear all his formidable talents in both those areas in Steve Canyon. Steve matches wits and trades punches with conniving plantation owners – heavy-handed oil wildcatters – Communist espionage agents – fugitive Nazis – and lots more! Every villain has a look, personality, and speech pattern that’s all his (or her) own.

Steve Canyon week 2, day 4

Caniff makes his women as varied and distinctive as his baddies. Steve’s business manager is a Samoan sweetie nicknamed Feeta-Feeta, and the first client we see him doing business with is that slinky business tycoon, “Copper” Calhoun. Madame Lynx and Captain Akoola are blonde-haired vixens; Fancy is the classic attractive thirty-something who hasn’t recovered from the curve-balls life has thrown her; Convoy and Cheetah are both young and cute, but their completely different outlooks on life produce polar opposites.

Sometimes creators who are good with plot allow their characterization to suffer, and sometimes a person who finds it easy to whip up memorable characters doesn’t give them interesting things to do. Caniff has both sides of the equation in near-perfect balance – his stories are a joy to read, and his artwork is often a visual delight.

Steve Canyon week 2, day 5

Westfield: Why did you decide that Steve Canyon should get The Library of American Comics treatment?

Canwell: As if you couldn’t tell, everyone at The Library of American Comics is a major Milton Caniff fan. In fact, this summer we released Caniff, a big, beautiful artbook that serves as a “visual biography” and an overview of this remarkable career. We’ve always wanted to do Steve Canyon, but until recently another publisher had the reprint rights. Circumstances changed, we were eager to pick up the rights to the strip, and Harry Guyton – Caniff’s nephew and the executor of his estate – agreed LOAC was the right place for his uncle’s masterwork.

It’s a tremendous pleasure to be reprinting Steve Canyon, because in terms of size and shape, we’ll do this in the same format as our strong-selling, Eisner Award-winning Terry And The Pirates books. We’re essentially creating a uniform Milton Caniff Bookshelf within The Library of American Comics.

Steve Canyon week 2, day 6

More than that, Roger, we’re able to offer readers Canyon like they’ve never seen it before, because we’re reprinting the strips from Caniff’s own personal set of printer’s proofs. That means we can give the series the best-quality reproduction it’s ever enjoyed, but in addition, for the first time Canyon will be reprinted with full-color Sunday pages – and Caniff’s color work often has to be seen to be believed! – plus full-size, uncropped dailies! I’ve been a Canyon fan since the series was reprinted by the now-defunct Kitchen Sink Press back in the early 1980s, but I’ll gladly replace those old KSP magazines with our shiny new hardcovers.

A Steve Canyon color Sunday featuring Steve, Happy, and the slinky Madame Lynx, here posing as "Madame Jones."

Westfield: How many volumes will this run?

Canwell: I expect we’ll do about twenty volumes – Steve Canyon essentially ran forty years and as with our Terry volumes, we’re collecting two years in each book. Given that our Dick Tracy series is up to Volume 12 and the phenomenal response to Rip Kirby convinced us to continue that series into its John Prentice years, I like to think readers will support Canyon and allow us to reprint the entire series.

Westfield: What other projects are on the way from The Library of American Comics that you can tell us about?

Canwell: There’s no shortage of nifty LOAC books in the pipeline! Our first jumbo-sized Alex Raymond Flash Gordon/Jungle Jim volume is available just in time for the holidays, with the third Secret Agent Corrigan and the second Blondie hot on its heels.

February will see the release of Cartoon Monarch: Otto Soglow & The Little King, which we’re VERY excited about. Soglow is one of those fantastic talents who has unfortunately been allowed to slide off too many radar screens, and we’re delighted to bring him front-and-center once again. Cartoon Monarch will not only reprint hundreds of pages of The Little King, it will also include the complete run of The Ambassador, the strip Soglow produced prior to launching King. And just how good is The Little King? He was so popular the Fleischer Studios once licensed him to guest-star in a Betty Boop cartoon – it doesn’t get much cooler than that!

In the months following Cartoon Monarch we’ll have Genius, Illustrated, the second volume in our comprehensive Alex Toth biography. A lot of loving care is going into that book, believe me. I’m also mighty pleased to announce that we’ve decided to do another Bringing Up Father volume! Our first BUF release snagged an Eisner nomination, and sales were so strong we had to go to a second printing. So if you liked BUF: From Sea To Shining Sea, you’ll want to see what happens when Jiggs loses all his money in our follow-up, Bringing Up Father: Of Cabbages And Kings. And here’s an exclusive for you — a sneak-peek at the second Bringing Up Father cover!

Bringing Up Father: Of Cabbages and Kings

We have lots of other stuff percolating, as well. Folks are always welcome to visit us at www.libraryofamericancomics.com for the latest and greatest!

Westfield: Any closing comments?

Canwell: I got two of ‘em for you. First, a sincere thank-you from all of us at LOAC to everyone who buys and supports our books. Second, here’s my wish for a great 2012 in which publishers big and small produce comics we all have fun reading, and your Cubs and my Red Sox both go deep into the playoffs!

Purchase

Steve Canyon Vol. 1

Kirby: Genesis - Dragonsbane #1 (Alex Ross Cover)

Robert Rodi is a writer of novels, short stories, and comic books including Codename: Knockout, Astonishing Thor, and Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers. His latest project, Kirby: Genesis – Dragonsbane from Dynamite Entertainment, is now available for pre-order. Westfield’s Roger Ash contacted Rodi to learn more about the book.

Westfield: What attracted you to the project?

Robert Rodi: I’ve been working with classic Kirby characters more frequently over at Marvel — Ego, The Stranger, The Eternals, the Deviants — and it’s revived my love for his vibrant, expansive genius. So when I heard about Kirby: Genesis, which gathers together the King’s vast array of unused character sketches and series concepts (the man seemed to inhale oxygen and exhale story) and combine them into a coherent universe, I was intrigued and excited. When I was invited to join the team, it was a very easy yes. I love immersing myself in all this amazing Kirby-ness.

Westfield: If someone hasn’t read Kirby: Genesis, what should they know coming into Dragonsbane?

Rodi: Well, first, let me just say if someone hasn’t read Kirby: Genesis, he or she is a crazy person and should just start already. Because it’s just a ridiculously great read. But to answer your question: Dragonsbane #1 opens in Valhalla, home of the legendary Norse heroes. That’s all you need to know. We’ll guide you from there.

Kirby: Genesis - Dragonsbane #1 (Herbert cover)

Westfield: What can people look forward to in the series? Any peeks at the characters or the stories that you can give us?

Westfield: Sigurd Dragonsbane is the titular hero of the series, and will remain so; he’s a lot of fun to work with, because he’s much younger, brasher, and more impulsive than Thor (the other Norse hero I’ve been spending a lot of time with lately). But in addition to Sigurd and his band of fellow champions, there’ll be heroes — and villains, and monsters, and mysteries — from Greek and Roman mythology, Eastern European folklore, Persian and Arabian traditions, and more. And that’s just our first arc.

Westfield: The artist on the series is Fritz Casas. What can you say about working with him?

Rodi: I’m very excited to be working with Fritz. His work has the classic, burnished look of the comics I grew up with; he’s absolutely perfect for this project.

Alex Ross' cover sketch for Kirby: Genesis - Dragonsbane #2

Westfield: Any closing comments?

Rodi: Just that I’m having the time of my life, and I’m thrilled to be working so closely with Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross, and Joe Rybandt. Oh, and I think we may already have found the breakout star for this series. I won’t say who, but you should know it as soon as you meet her. (Okay, that narrows it down a bit!)

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Kirby: Genesis – Dragonsbane #1

Memorial

Chris Roberson is the writer of such comics as iZombie, Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love, Elric: The Balance Lost, and the upcoming Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes. His latest project, Memorial from IDW, is now available for pre-order. Westfield’s Roger Ash contacted Roberson to learn more about the book.

Westfield: What can you tell me about the genesis of the series?

Chris Roberson: It’s an idea that I first started working on about eight years ago. I had the central idea of this late-teens girl who inherits a magic wandering shop, the kind where you would go in a door at the end of a dark alley and buy a gremlin or a monkey’s paw or something like that, but when you go to return this thing, the shop is no longer there. It was an attempt to try and capture what I liked about Doctor Who and things like that, but to build it from the ground up. I couldn’t figure out how to make it work for the longest time. Over the course of eight years, I finally figured it out. Memorial is the result.

Westfield: What can you say about the story of Memorial?

Roberson: It’s like Doctor Who meets Sandman by way of Miyazaki in terms of the tone I’m trying to capture. The story itself concerns a girl who arrives one day at a hospital with no memory whatsoever of her past. She doesn’t know who she is, where she comes from, or how she came to be there. She’s diagnosed with having something called a dissociative fugue, a medical condition where essentially severe psychological or emotion trauma causes someone to forget everything. She spends a year rebuilding her life. She gets a job working in a book store and tries to find clues to her previous life and fails. One day she wanders down an alley that she has walked past a million times before and there’s a door she’s never noticed. When she goes in it’s this kind of curios shop. It’s a store that sells antiques of all kinds of weird things. Through a misadventure, she ends up inheriting this store. When she goes out the door the next time, the store is somewhere else. She’s being pursued by any number of strange creatures including statues that come to life, an evil living puppet, living shadows, and things like that. The story involves her trying to figure out what this thing is that she’s inherited, why these things are after her, and who she is.

Westfield: What is the girl’s name?

Roberson: Em. When she’s found in the hospital, she has a necklace with just the letter “M” engraved on it. So that’s the name she’s given.

Westfield: Aside from Em, who are some of the other characters readers will meet in the book?

Roberson: The two main members of her supporting cast are an old man named Peter and a talking cat named Schrodinger. The villains – the big bad is a reveal that comes a few issues in but the ground level kind of henchmen that are pursuing her are a man that’s mostly metal named Hook and an evil sentient puppet named Bellow. There’s also a cast of living shadows, animated statues, griffins, things like that.

Westfield: How did artist Rich Ellis get involved with you on the project?

Roberson: That was through the good graces of my friend Paul Tobin. He’s one of the Periscope Studios guys. We’d been talking to Ted Adams at IDW for just a little while about the project – this is back in the Spring – and they were very keen on going ahead with it, but I didn’t have an artist attached. So I called up Paul because he knows so many artists, has been around for a while, and has been working in Periscope Studios with lots and lots of talented artists. I asked if he had any suggestions. Rich was one of the first two people who he suggested I check out as a possibility. While I was on the phone with Paul I pulled up Rich’s web site and immediately decided that he was the guy to do the book. I think we had his name on a contract within 24 – 48 hours maybe. It was a very short amount of time.

Westfield: How much of the look of the book did you have planned out before getting together with Rich and how much did he add once he came onboard?

Roberson: I’ve been very lucky with artistic collaborations starting with Shawn McManus on Cinderella and Mike Allred on iZombie. Rich Ellis on Memorial is right in that camp. In all those cases I’ve come to the project with visuals in mind – I have an idea in my mind of what I think it’s going to look like. Those have been worked out in my head before an artist is attached. But when I describe it to the artist, they go off and come back giving me something that’s exactly what I asked for but so much better than what I could have imagined. Rich has taken the descriptions I’ve given him, completely fulfilled the letter of the law with them, but made them so much more awesome that what I had anticipated.

Westfield: Why the name Memorial?

Roberson: That gets explained in the course of the first storyline. The main thing is that the series is about memory – the loss of memory, the recovery of memory. And the store, Memorial, is filled with curios and mementos and things that are each associated with some memory or other. It very quickly makes sense.

Westfield: Is this an ongoing series?

Roberson: It’s an ongoing series of miniseries, much like the way they’ve structured Locke and Key. Each story arc will be a self-contained 5-issue miniseries but it will be followed immediately by another.

Westfield: And you’re having Mike Kaluta do the covers for the books?

Roberson: Mike Kaluta is doing the covers, yes. They’re pretty amazing.

Westfield: How did he become involved with the project?

Roberson: I like to think that it’s good karma from all the hardships I’ve endured and not that I’m building up a karmic debit that I’ll have to pay off some day. That was entirely IDW’s doing. At one point, we talked about different people doing the covers and I wasn’t really sanguine about any of them. At that point, I was happy to have Rich do the covers. We got this very apologetic email a while back from IDW that said sorry. Looks like Rich won’t be able to do the covers. Instead, we’ve lined up Mike Kaluta to do them. Neither Rich nor I had our feelings hurt in the slightest. Certainly, just the idea of Kaluta doing the covers was enough, but then we got the first cover in. It is just gorgeous.

Westfield: Is there anything you’d like to say about other projects you’re working on?

Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes #3

Roberson: iZombie continues apace. I’ve got Elric: The Balance Lost, which is the Elric miniseries that BOOM! is doing. It has another eight or nine months to go. And with IDW, the publishers of Memorial, in another month or two the first issue of the Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes crossover that I’m doing with Jeff and Philip Moy comes out. I’m pretty excited about that.

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Memorial #1

Hawken #1

The father/son team of Tim & Ben Truman bring you Hawken, a western tale of revenge, from IDW. Tim Truman’s name is familiar to comic fans for his work on such books as GrimJack, Scout, and Conan. Ben, who has done a Conan story for Myspace Dark Horse Presents as well as work in the video game industry,  may not be as well know but that is sure to change after readers get a look at Hawken. Westfield’s Roger Ash contacted Tim and Ben to learn more about the project.

Westfield: How did the book come about?

Ben Truman: The folks came out to visit me in Tucson, Arizona. We toured the state for about a week, making lots of stops from The Grand Canyon to Tombstone.

Don’t know what prompted it, but somewhere around Sunset Crater I asked my dad if there was ever a story about a man who survived a scalping.

Tim Truman: Believe it or not, that’s all it took to plant the seed. It’s very strange, but that’s how it works out sometimes — the strangest things can sometimes kick start a project.

Ben: Before we knew it, there it was in front of us, and after that Hawken was all we could talk about. Mom was stuck in the back seat, forced to listen to Dad and I create this awful human being’s ghastly past.

Tim: Well, we’ve been married for 30 years so she’s pretty used to it by now. She actually got a kick out of it, listening to Ben and me start to brainstorm.

That evening, we were walking through Flagstaff looking for a place to have dinner. Ben said “He should look like a mountain man.” I said “Yeah, and his name is ‘Hawken’” — a tip of the hat to the famous frontier rifle that all the mountain men favored. I think we came up with the idea for his dog, Caramba, on that walk, too, and the fact that Hawken can see the ghosts of all the people he’s ever killed.

Ben: Which naturally led to our coming up with just terrible ways for Hawken to have killed all these people.

As we visited spots like Tombstone and Bisbee, we came up with ideas for Hawken’s long history of occupations. It probably came from Doc Holiday being a dentist and a gunfighter. Living in the southwest demands an ability to adapt to survive, so Hawken has a patchwork past that always guarantees a trick up his sleeve.

Tim: Hawken is totally Arizona-inspired. The most important aspects of the story grew out of the history and scenery, especially the Sonora Desert country.

Hawken page 7

Westfield: Who is Hawken and what can people look forward to in the book?

Ben: Hawken is a grizzled old bastard, with little trust and a big temper. People can expect lots of big action sequences and snappy dialog. The set pieces are strange and offbeat, and once the story gets going it winds up in places that people won’t expect.

Tim: Ideally, Hawken takes the iconic western “loner” character and the “revenge quest” epic and bounces them on their heads. We use issue 1 to sort of kick down the door and get peoples’ attentions — to wake them up and get them curious about what’s going on. With issue 2, we start piling on the story, and with every issue that follows people learn more and more about the people Hawken is hunting, the reasons for his vendetta, who some of these ghosts might be, and the reason that they keeping popping up to give him unwelcomed advice.

Hawken is a tough, bloody, brutal book. But it isn’t just about bodies piling up. There’s a ton of story here, and some really subtle characterization touches.

Ben: Also, the action in Hawken is really different from the traditional fare. We’ve come up with a lot of unique action scenes, and  fun twists on old western standards. When Hawken finishes somebody, it’s going to be memorable in the same way the action scenes are memorable in an Indiana Jones film.

When you think of those particular movies, you can probably remember how every person dies because each fight ends with a very rewarding pay off. The enemies aren’t expendable in the same way another action movie might have a guy just simply shot and killed. We also mix in elements from the cinematic feel of Sergio Leone and the visceral bits of Hong Kong action cinema.

Hawken #1 variant cover

Westfield: How do you two work together on the book? Who does what?

Ben: Basically, I write, he draws. We both assembled the concept and main plot, but I do the page-to-page bits, block out the action, craft the dialog, plot the character arcs. Then Dad and I pass the script back and forth afterwards until everything seems just right.

Tim: It’s a great way to work, though pretty time-consuming. The benefit is that we each get equal input into the overall concept, and that one might catch something that hadn’t occurred to the other. Plot-wise, it’s very collaborative process.

Hawken page 21

Westfield: Working as a father/son team has the potential to be contentious. How have you found working together?

Ben: Maybe it wouldn’t have worked so well when I was 13, but at 28 it’s pretty awesome. I’m learning a lot about visual storytelling and narratology. We’ll have quibbles over small story points, like should Hawken say a particular line of dialog here or there, but we both understand the big parts of the story and know how everything needs to fall together to best serve the story.

Working together is pretty easy too, thanks to the internet and smart phones.

I’ll usually call whenever I’m walking to work to talk about the latest script ideas and developments.

Tim: We’ve been working on the whole concept for over a year now, going at it hard. We haven’t had any fights, which is surprising, because we both can be pretty hard-headed and stubborn. Working with Ben is like working with a colleague rather than my son. Of course, the fact that he is my son and that we’re having this great time together makes Hawken all the more exciting. The project is just as fresh to us now as it was over a year ago.

Hawken #2 cover

Westfield: If this miniseries does well, do you have more Hawken tales to tell?

Ben: We sure do. There is a sprawling back story left to explore, and an interesting future as Hawken plows forward on his quest for revenge. And, once you learn that the ghosts who follow him could be old friends, bested rivals, or somebody who just looked at Hawken the wrong way, this vast history between Hawken and these supporting characters opens up.

Tim: I’d love Hawken to just go on and on and on. We could easily do four or more arcs of material. I’ve never quite so welded to a project before. This thing is epic. We have to take it past the first arc.

Ben: The way this story started was we were just throwing ideas for scenes back and forth, back and forth. We wound up with a huge pile of scenarios, and we picked the ones that stuck out the most and started finding all the pieces where they could fit together. In the end we came up with a really solid story full of big action sequences, plot twists, cat-and-mouse elements, detective bits, drama, and heart.

I can’t wait until people have read all six issues. I think they’ll be very happy with the whole experience.

Hawken #3 cover

Westfield: Are there any other projects that either of you are working on that you’d like to mention?

Ben: I had stories published in each volume of FUBAR, a WW2 zombie anthology. There are huge pools of indie talent in each book. They’re both great jump off points to find other independent comics created by smart, creative folks.

Also, I’m the Story Lead for a computer game called Black Mesa Source, a remake of the popular PC game Half-Life.

And just recently, Dad and I got a chance to adapt a story for an anthology of stories written by Native Americana.

Tim: Besides working on Hawken, I’m writing Conan: Phoenix On The Sword miniseries for Dark Horse. I still enjoy doing the Conan stuff quite a bit. Tomas Giorello is drawing the miniseries.

Besides that, I still do a lot of book cover work for Subterranean Press. And starting in October people can go to the Grateful Dead website, www.Dead.net,  and see some new work that Rhino Records asked me to do for the band. They’re doing the band’s newsletter, the Grateful Dead Almanac entirely online now, and they asked me to do some new “Grateful Dead Comix” pages for them. The new pieces will be interactive — when you click on different parts of the drawings, something will happen: a verse will play from the song that I’m adapting, the drawing might change, or there might be some sort of visual effect. It’s pretty exciting.

Other than that, I’m also writing and recording some special Hawken “soundtrack” tunes that will be available to check out online, via my website at www.timothytruman.com and at IDW’s site.

Westfield: Any closing comments?

Ben: Just thanks for the opportunity, Roger, and I hope you enjoy Hawken.

Tim: What my partner said.

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Hawken #1

Chuck Jones: The Dream That Never Was

Kurtis Findlay is an animation blogger. He also conceived the idea of a book focusing on animation legend Chuck Jones’ little-known comic strip, Crawford. The result is the Library of American Comics’ Chuck Jones: The Dream That Never Was, edited by Dean Mullaney and Kurtis Findlay; designed by Lorraine Turner; with an essay by Kurtis Findlay; and published by IDW. Westfield’s Roger Ash recently contacted Kurtis to learn more about this exciting new book.

Crawford

Westfield: For those who don’t know him by name, who is Chuck Jones?

Kurtis Findlay: Chuck Jones is best known for his work as an animation director for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons from the forties and fifties. Anyone whose childhood involved Saturday morning cartoons has certainly seen a Chuck Jones cartoon, even if they may not realize it. Among the most popular are One Froggy Evening, What’s Opera Doc, and Duck Amuck. During his thirty years at Warner Bros., he created dozens of original characters, including the Road Runner and Wile. E. Coyote, Pepe Le Pew, Marvin the Martian, and many others. His films have won numerous awards and Oscars, and his 1966 television adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas has become a holiday classic. He was a brilliant artist and a great thinker. Animator Carl Bell describes him as “a totally creative person at all times, and in all places.”

A Crawford Sunday proof

Westfield: This is a project that even fans of Jones may not have heard of. What is Crawford?

Findlay: In 1978, Chuck Jones wrote and drew a daily syndicated newspaper strip about a group of school-age children who contemplate life, existence and growing up. The main protagonist and titular character is Crawford, a red-headed, eight-year-old intellectual who, in many ways, embodies many of Jones’s personality traits. Jones was always challenging himself – intellectually and artistically – and Crawford was a chance for him to try out a medium that he hadn’t tried before. The writing leans more to the philosophical, drawing on many of the classic tongue-in-cheek thinkers, like Mark Twain, who Jones greatly admired. And of course, Chuck’s drawings are just as charming as ever. His experience as an animator brought Crawford’s artistic quality to a level above the average strip of the time.

A Crawford comic strip

Jones' command of body language is on display in this strip.

A previously unpublished Crawford strip

Unfortunately, the comic strip had its fair share of problems and didn’t even last a full year. The book will take readers through the journey of how the world-renowned artist came to draw for newspapers, and why the strip ended before it had the chance to take off. We will reprint Crawford’s entire six-month run, and as a special treat, we have also included unpublished strips and many of Chuck’s preliminary sketches and unused gags. This will be the definitive book on the subject.

A Crawford storyboard

Westfield: Aside from the comic strip, what will readers find in the book?

Findlay: Crawford’s origins begin almost twenty years before its 1978 newspaper debut. Jones originally developed the character for television in the sixties but it never made it past the concept stage. Chuck Jones: The Dream That Never Was will present a behind-the-scenes look at Chuck’s original proposal, supplemented with a treasure trove of never before seen Crawford concept art, including an entire storyboarded episode. Fans of Chuck Jones’s art will marvel at the wealth of drawings we’ve uncovered.

A baseball sketch

Crawford character sketches

The book will also discuss Jones’s post-Warner career, highlighting the films he produced at his own studio, Tower Twelve, which later became MGM Animation/Visual Arts, and how Crawford fits into the picture.

A Crawford Sunday strip

Westfield: What makes this book exciting to you?

Findlay: I first learned about Crawford while reading Chuck Jones’s Wikipedia entry. “From 1977-1978, Jones wrote and drew the syndicated comic strip Crawford (also known as Crawford & Morgan) for the Chicago Tribune-NY News Syndicate.” That was it; a single sentence. I longed to know more, but could only find two examples of the strip online. It isn’t discussed in any of the books on Chuck Jones, including his two autobiographies.

Crawford meets a new friend

I started to do some investigating and quickly found that no one really knew anything about Crawford. Through various interviews with Tower Twelve employees, family members and even his editors from the Chicago Tribune, I’ve been able to piece together a history that will give this previously unknown strip some much needed attention.

A sketch of Crawford's two dog characters, Shep & Ralf.

Jones returns to his Warner Bros. roots for this gag.

Dean Mullaney, Creative Director of the Library of American Comics, shares my vision and has been instrumental in producing this book. Dean, himself a Jones fan, felt that a comic strip, even one that failed, by such a noteworthy cartoonist as Jones, deserves a spot in the Library of American Comics.

Sketches of Crawford

Westfield: Any closing comments?

Findlay: This will be a Chuck Jones book unlike any other. Almost all of the art has been reproduced from Chuck’s originals. I encourage everyone to check out our official webpage, http://www.chuckjonescrawford.com, and “like” our Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/chuckjonescrawford, where you will find examples of the rare Chuck Jones art that will be included in Chuck Jones: The Dream That Never Was. This is a must-have for fans of animation, comic strips and, of course, Chuck Jones. You will not want to miss it when it hits stores in November.

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Chuck Jones: The Dream That Never Was

Knightingail: The Legend Begins #1 cover

Wayne Gardiner is the creator/writer of Knightingail: The Legend Begins coming in November from Ardden Entertainment (it’s available for pre-order now!). Westfield’s Roger Ash recently sat down with Wayne to learn more about the book.

SPECIAL OFFER! Every copy of Knightingail #1 pre-ordered through Westfield will come signed by Wayne Gardiner!

Westfield: How did the series Knightingail come about?

Wayne Gardiner: I was at the San Diego Comic Convention in 2009. I had just written a series called CrossStar, and I was trying to get an artist for that. I had a concept for a character called Knighingail in the back of my mind. The character was basically this elvish princess with healing powers who got brainwashed and captured by these evil witches and turned into a sorcerer. Later, she escapes and combines both of those powers into this healing warrior princess type of character. That was in the back of my mind. I was walking through this big convention looking for an artist, I saw this picture of a character that some artist had created, and I said, “That is the look of Knightingail.” I went and talked to the artist and she was possibly interested and agreed to talk about it later. On the way home I basically did a whole backstory of the story and came up with this larger epic story – this fantasy adventure to place Knightingail in. That’s how it started. I wrote the series, and then in January of the following year I started having the artist produce it.

Knightingail preview page 1

Westfield: What can you tell us about the story?

Gardiner: The series is called Knightingail so obviously it focuses on that character, whose name is Eloa. It starts out as a six issue miniseries that introduces this teenage princess, who’s from a forest tribe. She has healing powers and doesn’t know where they came from. Through the miniseries, she finds out that there’s this prophecy that she needs to reunite all seven tribes in the land and only by doing that would she be able to stop this massive invasion force that’s coming. She only knows about three tribes, so she dismisses the idea. Pretty soon there is an invasion, and she’s thrown into the middle of this and makes some bad judgments. At the end of the day, she reunites with her friends and is able to become the character Knightingail. After that, I intend that the story would then become a monthly series where the larger story would be told – this whole thing called the Restoration War and how she has to then find all the seven tribes, reunite them, and rescue her homeland from this huge invasion that’s taking place.

Knightingail preview page 2

Westfield: This is listed as an all ages book. Was it important to you to do an all ages book?

Gardiner: It kind of worked out that way. You have this teenage princess who’s not a natural leader and she gets thrown into a situation where she’s expected to become a leader. Because of that, because she’s female, because of the way the artwork’s drawn, it has a more light manga feel that a lot of female cosplayers and female audience really love. I remember comics like Bone or ElfQuest just bringing in that more all ages type of audience. So this has just kind of turned into that vehicle. There really are not that many comics that are for all ages. If you like Lord of the Rings, or if you like Chronicles of Narnia, you’ll definitely like this series as well.

Knightingail preview page 3

Westfield: Aside from Knightingail, who are some of the other characters readers will encounter in the book?

Gardiner: She starts with her best friends who are in two other tribes. Eloa’s from the forest tribe. She has a best friend, Kaeli, who’s from the Hunter tribe. She’s kind of an animal-like character who has a long tail and is kind of furry but still wears clothes. She finds out there are things about her powers throughout the series. Also, they have a friend called Daniel who’s from the Carver tribe. He sort of looks like Eloa with pointy ears, but the Carvers are actually a mountain-based tribe. Those are the key friends who start the series together. They find out about this whole prophecy and about the invasion, and it’s about how those three tribes come together. At the end of the series it becomes a real team book with Knightingail leading these two, plus some others who are introduced throughout the mini-series.

Knightingail preview page 4

Westfield: You mentioned before that finding the artist was really important to Knightingail. What can you say about her?

Gardiner: The artist, Tina Francisco, is really essential to this whole universe. In any fantasy, you’re creating a new world, a new environment, new characters, everything. Tina comes from a company called Glass House Graphics. All the artists on the book are from the Philippines. When I was looking through Glass House Graphics’ dossier of people, I looked at Tina’s artwork; it was extremely detailed; and it had this manga-like influence to it but not too strong. Her facial expressions are wonderful. This is a character driven book and when you look at Knightingail’s face, you need to know exactly what she’s thinking without even looking at the words. Tina was immediately beneficial to the project. She came up with all the character designs, all the costumes, and the detailed environment. One of the things that sets this book apart is it’s very detailed – there are lots of environmental aspects to it that really brings the universe to life.

Westfield: And you also working with Katrina Mae Hao as colorist.

Gardiner: She came in and put the depth to it. When you look at the lush atmosphere and the costume colors, or when it gets to a darker aspects of the story, she was able to bring a 3-D depth to the book through the coloring. It’s just amazing.

Knightingail preview page 5

Westfield: Are there any other projects you’re working on that you’d like to mention?

Gardiner: Like I mentioned, when I started Knighingail, I had already done the full scripts for a character called CrossStar. That’s a more traditional superhero type book. It’s actually kind of a detective series. It’s set in modern day America and this hooded character with a sword just shows up and starts fighting crime and no one knows why. It’s told completely from the perspective of the people who see CrossStar. It’s a detailed investigation into who is this guy and why is he in modern day America. I hope to start that series near the end of Knightingail’s run.

There’s a third project that I’ve already done the background for and it’s called The Purifires. That’s more of a historical book. Six people from the American Revolutionary War form a militia and their intention is to purify America from the British occupation. It’s a sort of team superhero book but it’s based on reality and history. It’s told from their perspective as they travel throughout the American Revolution. I hope it will give the reader an appreciation of how America was founded. That will probably be launched at the end of next year.

Knightingail preview page 6

Westfield: Any closing comments?

Gardiner: I definitely appreciate Ardden Entertainment who’s taking a big risk on an unknown creator. The artist’s are professional and have done a lot of work before but are not well known. But they’re incredible. For Ardden Entertainment to look at this project and say “Yes, I can see the quality of this project,” I really appreciate that. I hope to have a big launch for the book.

To keep up on all things Knightingail, check out her Facebook page here!

Purchase

Knightingail #1

LoveSTRUCK

Writer Dennis Hopeless has written Gearhead and has numerous other projects in the works. Artist Kevin Mellon drew Gearhead and has also worked on books such as Deadline, Hack/Slash, and Thirteen Steps. They’re reuniting for LoveSTRUCK which is available for preorder from Image. Westfield’s Roger Ash recently spoke with Hopeless and Mellon to learn more about the book.

SPECIAL OFFER! All copies of LoveSTRUCK preordered through Westfield will be signed by Dennis Hopeless and Kevin Mellon! They will also include a special print by Mellon.

Westfield: How did you two get together on this project?

Dennis Hopeless: We worked together on a book called Gearhead back in 2007. Kevin and I have been friends for six years now. We actually started working on LoveSTRUCK pretty much right after Gearhead got done. Kevin had some other projects that he did first but it’s been a long road for this one. We first talked about it… Maybe 2006?

Kevin Mellon: Yeah. We were in the middle of promoting Gearhead being solicited. We were just going to cons without a book to sell. You had pitched it to me as something completely different a year or two before. Then you refigured it and repitched it to me on the way home from Chicago, I think.

Hopeless: That sounds right.

Mellon: Basically, on the car ride home from the airport you outlined what you wanted to do. At the time you didn’t have full notions for how it was all going to work out, but you’d refigured the characters, you’d added in the dynamic scenes.

LoveSTRUCK preview page 1

Westfield: Where’s the story come from?

Hopeless: I read Preacher for the first time in college. Pretty much immediately after I put it down, I knocked out a rough plot for my 75 issue epic modern fantasy. I’m guessing a lot of young writers have their versions of Preacher rotting in drawers. In mine, Cupid and his winged minions were the primary villains. I think that’s what Kevin’s talking about; that’s probably the story I originally pitched to him. Once it became clear that a 75 issue indie series wasn’t going to happen, I took my favorite notion from the story (the idea of Cupid as this gluttonous, megalomaniacal being who uses his power over the human race for his own gain) and wrapped a smaller, more character-driven story around it.

LoveSTRUCK preview page 2

Westfield: Why did you decide to do this as a graphic novel rather than a mini-series?

Mellon: The realities of publishing. This will be, depending on which hits first, either Dennis’ second or third book. It’ll be my eighth or ninth. At the time, it was supposed to be both of our second book. With the realities of pitching a series and the realities of publishing, it took a while. We initially got turned down by Image. We started looking at different publishers. Basically it became in order to get it out, the publisher we pitched it to that liked it, that’s the way they did things. I’m a huge fan of wanting to put it out as one big thing. I would like more original graphic novels but I understand the realities of publishing are such that you need a series to pay for the graphic novel. But the original publisher – that was their format and we very much wanted to be a part of that and test that out.

Hopeless: When we originally pitched it to Image, we pitched it as a full color mini-series.

Mellon: The original pitch pages are actually in the book. I just redrew them like three times. I think we pitched it as six issues. Doing it as a graphic novel, the only constraint we had was time. There was no page constraint. The page count is 190-some, but the story runs about 180 so that’s nine issues worth of stuff.

LoveSTRUCK preview page 3

Westfield: What can people expect in the book?

Hopeless: The general premise is what happens if people who don’t believe in love are given the power to wield it? You’ve got a megalomaniacal Cupid love-powering the most cynical, bitter, “I have no interest in relationships” people he can find. It stars a character – Kalli Monroe – who’s just coming into this world and is about to become Cupid’s favorite minion.

Mellon: The thing I’ve been telling people is that while the high concept is pretty high – Cupid running a multinational corporation – it’s a very personal story because you’re following a cast of six or seven and you’re very much following the main protagonist, Kali. You’re exploring Dennis and my ideas about how relationships work and how they don’t work, more often than not. Also trying to come to terms with growing up; shedding the things that you loved as a child. When you become an adult you’re more jaded and you question everything. You don’t follow the leader as easily as you used to.

Hopeless: We’ve kind of personified that period of time when you’re struggling to transition from teenage relationships and interests into harder but more meaningful adult relationships. Our characters are all sort of stuck in a state of arrested development. Wallowing in self-pity instead of moving onto the next stage of their emotional lives. Instead of getting their own s**t together, they spray love flames around and mess with other people’s lives.

Mellon: The thing that I love about this and the thing that hit me a lot while working on it was that not only did I heavily relate to what the characters were going through, more than I probably should have, but the fact that they all mess up; they all do bad things. They don’t mean to hurt people but they do. There are consequences and they have to deal with that.

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Westfield: Something I liked with the cast of characters is that you get different views of love from a young, 17-year-old girl to an older man.

Hopeless: The primary cast members are all fundamentally broken in that they can’t make relationships work. We know people like that in our own lives. We may be those people; people who are really talented, interesting, smart, and engaging but who completely fall apart when it comes to relationships. Our characters are all in different stages of life, but they’re all equally useless in that one way. They suck at love. And then, ironically, we give them the power to make other people fall head over heels.

Mellon: That was something I discovered through working on it and exploring scripts with Dennis. As I said, I relate to what the characters are going through and infused a lot of that into the book. Everyone has gone through periods in their life where you feel like you can’t love properly, or people can’t love you properly, or some combination of the two. Each character has their own personification of how they’re broken in love.

Westfield: In addition to talking about love, there’s also a look at how corporations work and how people are manipulated. Is that something that you intentionally put in there?

Hopeless: Yeah, definitely. We come at it like love is basically a product. A very very popular product. That product is sold on every street in every country and somebody is getting rich. So Cupid’s our power mad CEO who manipulates the market by controlling that most powerful emotion. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And nothing is more corrupt or more powerful than a big bad corporation.

Mellon: Something we don’t say in the book but it’s something that people may or may not know is that in America, corporations have the same rights and privileges as individuals. For me, while working on it, there was the metaphor of even corporations that maybe have good intentions can be broken about how they treat the people that either run them, or buy from them, or work for them. They can be fundamentally flawed in that same way that we as individuals can be about our intentions towards other people.

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Westfield: There’s also a huge music connection in the book. Where did that come from?

Hopeless: You noticed that, huh? [laughter] This one’s tough to explain. Kevin and I had talked a lot about how people hold onto the music that was important to them when they were in high school, in college. Ever notice how most pop music lyrics stop being even remotely relatable once you reach a certain age? There’s something to that. And I just saw an obvious connection between music and love. In both cases, it’s just doesn’t hit you the same once you grow up. Kalli, our main character, was very much a punk rock girl growing up. Now she’s in her late twenties and as much as she hates to admit it, pop punk just isn’t doing it for her anymore. There’s a direct parallel between that sense of outgrowing a music scene and outgrowing immature notions about love and sex and relationships. Like so many things, we crammed that into the book.

Mellon: For me it has a more personal connection because I grew up playing in bands. I still play music. I’m working on a story that’s dealing with the same sorts of things I was dealing with. I don’t know if Dennis was watching me go through it or it’s just how stereotypical I am; watching my dreams about music shift and change and going from being in bands to switching to working in comics. The music connection is heavy because I first learned to play the guitar around the time I got into girls. The two have always gone hand in hand. For me, that connection is a huge part of the story. There’s a portion later in the book where there’s a meeting of the minds and the music connection is driven home even further in a way that I hope’s rewarding for the audience.

Westfield: We’ve been talking a lot about concepts, but I do want to add for our readers that this isn’t just a concept piece. It is a very exciting story.

Hopeless: Well, thanks. I guess it’s easier to talk about the concepts without giving away big chunks of the story. But the characters are the reason I wanted to do the book from the start. Putting them through hell and then bringing them back out. The journey of these characters is the focus of the book much more than my ideas about corporations or even love.

Mellon: As Dennis talked about his ideas with me and we developed the characters visually, it very much became that these characters and this story only exists in this world. While it mirrors our world, it’s not  and I hope people enjoy the character’s journeys.

Westfield: Are there any other projects you’re working on that you’d like to mention?

Hopeless: I have a couple of Marvel projects coming up. I’m writing a 4-issue Legion of Monsters series drawn by Juan Doe. That starts in October. Then I have another not-yet-announced Marvel series coming up after that.

Mellon: I just finished working on an iPhone/iPad game which also hasn’t been announced. I’m working on another series for Image and I’ve got a fully drawn book that I just need to color that will be out from Ape Entertainment.

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Westfield: Any closing comments?

Hopeless: The book makes a lot more sense than it probably sounds. [laughter] I think we put together a pretty fun and relatable story around these weird ideas of ours.

Mellon: I would just like to say that it’s a graphic novel, it’s 190 some pages, it’s 17 bucks, and it comes out in September. September’s going to be a really hard month for comic dollars. It’s going to be a great month for retailers. It’s going to be a weird month for people like Dennis and myself who are putting out something like this. I hope people give it a chance. I hope people try it and like it and support weird, off-the-wall, off kilter books.

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