The mythic world of Steve Horton and Michael Dialynas’s Amala’s Blade is divided into two warring groups: Modifiers, who use technology to improve their bodies and eliminate defects, and Purifiers, who eschew such modification. Amala, a young girl, is chosen to become the new leader of their country and to bring the two tribes together, but when strangers arrive at her house to bring the news, she flees into the night and joins a band of assassins instead.

Amala’s Blade will run as a three-part series in Dark Horse Presents, starting with issue #9 (on sale in February). The series kicks off with a battle of wits and weapons between Amala and a pirate captain. I was intrigued by the premise, so I asked Horton and Dialynas to explain where they got the idea for Amala and where they are hoping to take it; Dialynas also shared some of the concept art.

Robot 6: Let’s start with the elevator pitch: What is Amala’s Blade about, and how is it different from all other adventure/steampunk comics?

Steve: Amala’s Blade is about a girl picked at age 8 as a spiritual leader, raised by the state to stop civil war between two halves of the same country. She runs away instead, is kidnapped, and ignites 20 years of war. Recruited into a sword orphan cult instead, she’s trained as an assassin, and now she’s the sole surviving member. Making her way as a killer for the unscrupulous Vizier, her past is catching up with her in a hurry. To be honest, there aren’t a whole lot of adventure/steampunk books out there, and there’s certainly nothing at all like Amala. I wanted to do it because it was different, fun, and had exactly the right artist in Michael Dialynas.
 
Robot 6: Steve, what is your inspiration for this story? Are you a longtime steampunk/sci fi fan?

Steve: Michael and I are mashing together our favorite influences like a mash-up album and what’s coming out is entirely new. Our influences here are Moebius and Miyazaki, which can be seen in the two warring factions: the Miyazaki-influenced Purifiers, who eschew technology in favor of what they can build themselves, and the Moebius-influenced Modifiers, who implant bulky but high-tech implants throughout their bodies. Other than the overt influences, though, Amala’s Blade strives to be as original as possible, and I think we’ve succeeded.
 
Robot 6: The contrast between modifiers and the purifiers is an interesting commentary on environmentalism and technology. Where did you get the idea for that?

Steve: The original inspiration for Amala was reading an article on the Dalai Lama and how a new one was picked. Then, I thought about how a futuristic civil war would look like where such a leader would be needed. A division over technology seemed like the next logical step.
 
Robot 6: Michael, what were your visual inspirations?

Michael: Well Miyazaki and Moebius have been the visual compass on Amala; I remember when Steve mentioned what he would like the comic to look like in one of our first emails and I can say there was a moment where I high-fived the screen. I have a nice section in my nearest bookcase with all the Incal and Nausicaa which have been out on my desk since we first started.

But yeah, I used a lot of Moebius with the cyber-punk Modifiers and also a hint of the Mega-Drive game “Zero Wing” (famous for the “All your base are belong to us” quote) with the cybernetic over the top enhancements. As you can see with the concepts ive given you, there are a lot of wires and screws on those pirates! 
 
Robot 6: How did the characters evolve from original conception to final form?

Steve: Michael pretty much designed them whole cloth from my character bible. However, we have a fully-finished prequel which landed us the gig at Dark Horse. Due to the structure of Dark Horse Presents, we decided not to use the prequel and instead present a new, present-day story in three parts. The character of Amala’s father, present in the prequel but an inner voice/ghost in the Dark Horse version, has been redesigned in the process. If we get to use the prequel in print somewhere, Michael wants to redraw the whole thing.
 
Michael: As Steve mentioned, I do want to redraw the prequel if the chance arises. The characters have evolved on their own as they tend to do the more you draw them. The very first drawing of Amala had an oriental feel to her and her colour scheme was in hues of purple but when the DHP story came around and Steve told me that we are doing pirates, I knew I had to give her a costume change to fit the occasion. So now she has tints of green and more steampunk elements on her plus a scale-plate shoulder piece which I have always wanted to use!
 
Robot 6: You sent me a prologue and a first chapter—will those appear together or in separate issues of Dark Horse Presents?

Steve: The three chapters of Amala’s Blade: Skull & Crossbows will appear in Dark Horse Presents #9-11, beginning February 22. We’re not sure about the prequel—at the least, it’ll be redrawn and possibly rewritten. We’re hoping to get to do more Amala in the near future, after the DHP run concludes, and the prequel will likely appear at that point.

I should note that the DHP version is a self-contained story about Amala’s assassination attempt on the captain of the largest Modifier pirate ship in the world.
 
Robot 6: It seems like there is a lot of story here—do you envision this as the first part of a longer comic? If so, what are your plans for it?
 
Steve: We’d love to do a miniseries next. Actually, I think there’s enough here to do a really long ongoing series, but a mini would still be awesome.
 
Michael: Yeah, I would really like to draw these characters again and watch them evolve in new stories and adventures! Amala’s witty little smile has really grown on me.

Concept art:

Initial designs for Amala

Snarked!

Welcome to the turkey hangover edition of What Are You Reading?, your weekly look into the reading lists of the Robot 6 crew. Our special guest today is Andy Hirsch, creator of Varmints and artist of The Royal Historian of Oz.

To see what Andy and the Robot 6 crew have been reading lately, click below.

*****

Tom Bondurant

Daredevil #3

I have never been a big Daredevil fan, but so many people have been saying such good things about Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera, and Marcos Martin’s work that this week I grabbed all five issues of the latest series. Overall I thought it was very good. Certainly it’s been put together well, especially the layouts designed to show DD’s point of view. The lawyer in me is still trying to process the ethical implications of Matt and Foggy’s new business (and also the practical considerations which drove them to it). I’m not sure it’s won me over to Daredevil for good, but I’ll probably follow the series as long as Waid’s on it.

Yesterday I was happy to see our library had a copy of Deadly Storm, the graphic-novel adaptation of Richard Castle’s first book featuring hard-luck investigator Derrick Storm. Being familiar with Castle primarily through his work with the New York City police department, unfortunately I hadn’t read the original Deadly Storm, but I suspect it had more room to flesh out its characters. This graphic novel was a quick read, propelled by Storm’s narration and various action sequences. It features a few reversals and red herrings, but on the whole it’s a pretty straightforward story of a rumpled gumshoe getting caught up in something much bigger than what he’s used to. I thought the script (by Brian Michael Bendis and Kelly Sue DeConnick) was talky without being wordy, capturing the feel of Castle’s prose pretty well. The art (breakdowns by Lan Medina with Tom Raney, finishes by Scott Hanna with Dan Green) was a little less successful. It told the story competently, but its characters’ features were often angular in an off-putting way, and there was at least one too many brunette femmes fatales. I take it from the credits that Medina was one of Howard Chaykin’s assistants, so some panels had that certain Chaykin flair, but the art tended to take me out of the story. As a Castle fan, I found Deadly Storm a pleasant enough diversion, but not quite essential reading. Maybe Marvel should have adapted one of the Nikki Heat books instead …

Brigid Alverson

Stargazing Dog

I finally got around to reading Stargazing Dog, the new single-volume manga released earlier this year by NBM, and honestly, I found it disappointing. Partly that was because the basics weren’t in place: The drawing was crude in places, the characters had a limited range of facial expressions (which robbed the book of much-needed nuance), and the book was poorly produced, with typos and backward text. I don’t usually mind flipped manga, but this was done without any attention to detail, so, for instance, all the numbers on a speedometer appeared backwards. Beyond that, the story itself was unconvincing‹the characters were simply flat, acting in stereotyped ways without much reflection. Basically, it’s the story of a guy who, without much explanation, loses his job and his family and travels around in his car with his dog until he dies (of a heart condition, but really of sheer inertia). The one part I liked a lot was the extra story at the end, about a social worker who goes to fetch the man’s body and attempt to return it to his family. The social worker had a lot of personality and a real back story, and I wish the rest of the book could have had that kind of depth.

The first volume of Only Serious About You was much more enjoyable, with characters who at least talk to one another and express emotion. It’s the story of a single dad who works as a cook in a restaurant and takes care of his five-year-old daughter; a customer at the restaurant makes a play for him, but the dad is straight. Then his daughter gets sick, and the customer gets to play Good Samaritan. It’s actually more complex than that, and it’s a good soap opera with an attractive male cast. My one complaint is that the ex-wife is such a flat character–more a story device than a real person, in fact. She leaves her husband and child for the vaguest of reasons and then abruptly demands the child back. This is a yaoi manga, so the focus is on male relationships, and the story is not really all that plausible, but the charming characters and straightforward art make it readable even for those of us who are not yaoi fans.

Breathe Deeply is a medical drama that weaves questions of ethics and philosophy into a romantic soap opera about a dying girl. The girl actually dies in chapter one, of a heart condition, but her memory haunts the two boys who loved her. Both boys grow up to be heart researchers, but with totally different approaches–one wants to use embryonic stem cells to grow new tissue, the other tries to engineer an artificial heart. The story is surprisingly nuanced, both in its consideration of the ethical issues involved and in its depiction of the romantic triangle. There’s also some good beaker-tipping lab intrigue to keep the plot moving. It’s a dense manga, filled with detail and plot twists, but it’s also complete in one volume, which makes for a very satisfying read.

Andy Hirsch

Bear Quest

Bear Quest, Zach Taylor’s surreal interpretation of 8-bit action platforming starring a cyclopean blue bear, reads like the fevered field notes of a six-year old watching his older brother play Nintendo. Yes, it is as cool and crazy as it sounds, and Taylor demonstrates a storytelling technique that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

Y’see, Bear Quest exists as two simultaneous comics on a single page. Your classic sprite aesthetic runs along the bottom third as a series of screens, but above is a fully rendered version of “what’s really happening.” The plot is as absurd as any game of the 8-bit era, and flipping the book sideways for the amazing finishing move LINEAGE BURN makes for one of my new favorite pages.

Pirates of Mars, by JJ Kahrs and Veronica Fish, is a snappy pulp adventure about exactly what it says. Kahr writes a crew of believable, lovable misfits (yes, complete with meatbag-hating emancipated robot), and Fish knocks it out of the park with some gorgeous black and white brush work. Less immediately apparent but so very, very admirable is the efficiency of the whole project. There’s nothing self-indulgent or unnecessary holding it down; not a single wasted page. On the blog, Kahr rightly explains that a pulp adventure has to “sing for its supper,” and that it does. The whole first volume is up online, but the physical book is a newsprint comic, and you’d better believe I’m a sucker for that. Seriously, pick this up. Don’t you all like Firefly and swords?

Gastrophobia

David McGuire’s Gastrophobia chronicles the 100 percent historically accurate adventures of an exiled Amazonian, her son and their Pomeranian in Ancient Greece, and it’s got to be the webcomic I miss most between updates. McGuire has an outrageously charming and expressive style that’s just fun no matter what the particular tale is about. Go ahead and read the most recent storyline before coming back.

Yup… that’s some good Care Bears versus My Little Pony fan-fiction.

The day a new issue of Roger Langridge’s Snarked! comes out continues to be the day I head over to the comic shop. Honestly, Langridge is a fellow that knows what he’s doing, and what he’s doing is having an adventure that really earns the label “rollicking”. Every bit of it is so well-crafted, even outside the confines of the story pages. Reluctant protagonist Wilburforce J. Walrus (of The Walrus and the Carpenter) helms the (hilarious) recap page and letters section, and the zero issue included an honest-to-gosh activity section. An activity section!

Also, Daredevil, but at this point that ought to be a given.

Walter Simonson has been posting lots of pirate art lately on the Official Walter Simonson Page at Facebook. In one post, he describes the project as “one story in a set of stories I’m working on for a single project. So, basically, it’s a one-off of a character I drew in another one-off 30 years ago.” One reader guesses that’s a reference to Captain Fear, an early-’70s DC character from Adventure Comics whom Simonson drew some back-up stories about for Unknown Soldier in 1981.

Rich Johnston concurs and offers an old quote from Simonson referring to the Golden Age stories as “beautifully drawn,” but “an historical rat’s nest” with ships, uniforms, and weapons from many different time-periods (or no recognizable time-period at all) appearing in the 1850s.

Captain Fear later appeared in John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake’s Spectre series in the ’90s as well as Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang’s Doctor 13 story in Tales of the Unexpected. Most recently he’s shown up in last year’s The Outsiders #26 and Peter Tomasi and Gene Ha’s story from Superman/Batman #75. There’s no telling exactly what Simonson’s working on, but I’d love to hear guesses in the comments.

Lady Sabre & the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether

Writer Greg Rucka and artist Rick Burchett launched their swashbuckling steampunk webcomic today, Lady Sabre & the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether. As announced back in April, Rucka said the comic is “steampunk, pirates, western thing,” noting it would feature airships, floating islands, gunslingers and sword fights.

“Swords are cool. People fighting with swords are cool. Airships are cool. Cowboys are cool. Pirates are cool. Clockwork men are cool. Smart, savvy, witty women are very cool. Laconic gunslingers? Totally cool. Steampunk? Frosty,” the strip’s “About” page reads. “That’s what Lady Sabre & the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether is, that’s what it’s about. The adventures of the Lady Seneca Sabre and those she meets along the way as she travels the Sphere. Who she fights, who she foils, who she befriends. It’s about adventure and romance and excitement and, to paraphrase the great Zaphod Beeblebrox, ‘really wild things.’”

They plan to update the comic every Monday and Thursday, and they’re also selling a limited edition print (above) featuring the title character. Go check it out, or at least add it to your RSS feed for updates.

The Unsinkable Walker Bean

The Unsinkable Walker Bean
Written and Illustrated by Aaron Renier
First Second; $13.99

As popular as pirates are, you’d think there’d be more comics featuring them. Certainly there’ve been some good ones over the years. Isaac the Pirate and Polly and the Pirates immediately come to mind, but the most recent of those is more than two years old. And even then, that’s not a lot of pirate comics for a time when Jack Sparrow was the hottest thing going at the box office. Since then, there’s been what? Boom! did a nice one-shot called Pirate Tales about four years ago and there was also Galveston, a pirate-Western mash-up by the same publisher, in 2008. That’s not a lot, but maybe I’m missing some. Let me know in the comments. It’s hard to believe that we haven’t even had a licensed Pirates of the Caribbean comic yet (outside of some short stories in the old Disney Adventures Magazine). That sounds like a no-brainer.

One reason for the shortage of pirate comics may be that it’s damn hard, apparently, to write an original pirate story. I interviewed Chuck Dixon about it back when he was promoting CrossGen’s El Cazador. When I asked him how we end up with so many bad pirate stories, he said that the problem is not having a story in the first place, but relying on a string of clichés and hoping that’ll suffice. As anyone who’s seen Cutthroat Island or that Walter Matthau movie will tell you, that’s true. You need a lot more than just peg legs, buried treasure, and a character who talks like Robert Newton.

Aaron Renier’s doing his part though. The Unsinkable Walker Bean is as original as it is swashbuckling and adventurous. It’s the story of a young boy named Walker Bean who’s never been to sea, but comes from an ocean-faring family. In fact, his father and grandfather both serve in the navy of the fictional country they belong to.

The Beans at home

The world of Walker Bean closely resembles ours (and you’ll certainly recognize the oceans and land masses – if not the names –  on its map), but since it’s not really ours the story has a cool feeling that anything can happen at any time. If the giant lobster-witches at the bottom of the Atlantic want to rise up and destroy civilization…well then, they bloody well can without factual history’s being able to deny them. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The story kicks off when Walker’s grandfather returns from sea with a mystical skull, stolen from the lobster-witches who now want it back. The skull grants special insight to anyone who looks into it, but it also makes them fatally sick unless the viewer has blood “as thick” as the witches’ (what that means is a mystery for Walker to figure out). Unfortunately, Walker’s grandfather has looked and will die unless Walker can return the skull to the deep ocean trench where the witches live. Preferably before the witches come looking for it, trashing everything in their path.

Complicating matters is Walker’s own dad who doesn’t believe the legends about the skull and only sees money to be made from it. And of course the pirates who learn about the artifact and also want it. Walker’s journey leads him all over the world, surviving on his wits and the ever-shifting alliances he’s forced to make with the various parties who covet the skull. It’s a great page-turner of a story, charmingly told with fantastic art.

Detail from The Spread

Renier’s expressive linework drew me into Walker’s world and the details in it kept me there. There’s a double-page spread that I must have spent fifteen minutes studying all by itself. In it, Walker is being shown around a new town by a friend and Renier unfolds it like one of those Family Circus strips where Billy and Dolly explore the entire neighborhood on their way home from the park. As I traced Walker’s path, I was amazed at the stories I encountered along the way. In the space of two pages I found a barefoot pirate waving merrily to the whore he’d just spent the night with, a well-dressed busker playing the violin, a young man crying deeply over some unnamed loss, a murder about to happen, naked children playing in a Poseidon-shaped fountain, a rooftop chase and gunfight, a killer game of hide-and-seek, and more shoppers, vendors, and lovers than you can shake a belaying pin at. There was literally a story around every corner and I wished that Renier was able to tell them all. Or not, since I had a great time making them up myself. The spread was as packed as a Where’s Waldo page. Which reminds me that yes, I even found Waldo too.

Now I’ve got the itch for more like this. Renier promises at least one more volume and I hope for even more beyond that. In the meantime, I need to dig up some others. Pierre Mac Orlan and David B’s The Littlest Pirate King and Drew Weing’s Set to Sea have been on my Wish List since they were announced and Brigid just mentioned Scott Christian Sava’s Gary the Pirate earlier today. What else am I missing?

Witch attack!

Gary the Pirate is a cute story about a klutzy pirate (he knocks over a whole row of pirate ships early in the book) and a girl who isn’t quite ready to grow up yet. There are some tender moments and a battle between pirate ships in the sky. The art has a Disneyesque feel to it, and it’s definitely a kid comic—there are no sophisticated asides for the grownups. But it’s great to have on your computer or iThing if there are going to be young folks in danger of getting bored over the holiday season.

Something spooky this way comes: Over on the Fantagraphics website, you can find previews and pre-order info for a pair of creepy kids comics from European comics superstars. First up is Toys in the Basement from Blab! mainstay Stéphane Blanquet, about a kid who shows up for a friend’s Halloween party in an embarrassing bunny costume, only to get stranded in the basement with a secret society of very pissed-off toys. Fanta puts it this way: “Imagine Toy Story as reimagined by David Lynch and Charles Burns and you’ll have a good idea of what this story is like. And yes, it is for kids!” Sold!

Next up is The Littlest Pirate King by Epileptic genius David B., adapted from a story by Pierre Mac Orlan. In this tale, a baby is adopted as the mascot for a crew of undead pirates, but things change as he grows up. Fanta notes that this will be David B.’s first full-color graphic novel to be released in English, and that alone makes it worth the price of admission even if you don’t enjoy pirate skeletons, in which case I don’t wanna know you anyway. All-ages meets All Hallow’s Eve!

Shipwreck in the window

One of the books I read over my summer vacation was The Unsinkable Walker Bean (my review is here), and it’s perfect summer reading, a smart, witty adventure tale with pirates, mer-witches, a cursed skull, and even a little magical steampunk. Now it’s more than just a book, it’s a window display: Creator Aaron Renier has set up a pirate ship, mer-witch (complete with glowing eyes) and general undersea weirdness in the window of Quimby’s, a Chicago comics store. Check out the pix at the First Second blog, or the full set on Flickr. And if you happen to be in Chicago (I just left, more’s the pity), Aaron will be at Quimby’s for a book signing tonight at 7 p.m.

“Death Tales” by Jaime Hernandez

Tozo The Public Servant by David O’Connell

Sea Urchins by Jason Whitley and Scott Eckelaert

“Desperate” by Dave K.

Nightmare Town by Dashiell Hammett and Francesco Francavilla

“Reasons why superheroes aren’t online more often” by Zee M. Kane

The Intrepid Girlbot by Diana Nock

The All-New Cartoon Boy Adventure Hour by John Kerschbaum

Hat tip: Chris Mautner, Sean T. Collins, Sean Kleefeld, Flog and Lauren Davis

On Stranger Tides

Back at the D23 event in September, Disney announced they were doing a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, subtitled “On Stranger Tides.” This caused several people to wonder aloud, “Hey, does this have anything to do with the 1988 Tim Powers book of the same name?”

Yes, it does. Geoff Boucher with the L.A. Times catches up with Powers, who says Disney optioned the book almost three years ago. His book is about a group of pirates, including Blackbeard, searching for the Fountain of Youth … which viewers of the third Pirates movie may remember being mentioned at the end of that movie:

“I’ve watched all the movies several times, of course, and I think the clear thing they would use is the trip to the Fountain of Youth,” Powers said. “My main character doesn’t overlap with Jack Sparrow at all [in personality or circumstance]; they’re totally different characters. I suppose they might overlap the Geoffrey Rush character Barbossa and Blackbeard. The only thing I feel certain they will hold on to is the Fountain of Youth since they telegraphed that at the end of the last movie.”

The movie is scheduled to come out in the summer of 2011.

Labor Days Vol. 2

Welcome once again to What are you reading?, the weekly column where the Robot 6 team runs through what comics and other stuff they’ve been checking out lately. As Chris is in Bethesda this weekend, I’m filling in for him as your host.

Our special guests this time are Philip Gelatt and Rick Lacy, creators of the Labor Days graphic novels published by Oni Press. Volume two, Just Another Damn Day, is now available in finer retail establishments everywhere. (You can check out a preview here).

See what they’ve been reading, as well as the rest of the Robot 6 crew, after the jump …

*****

Underground

Tim O’Shea: The first issue of Underground by Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber hit the shelves this week. There’s so much to like about this first installment of a five-part miniseries. But I find myself focusing one element of Parker’s writing–his ear for dialogue. The core of the story has people of opposing views conflicting quite frequently and I love how the storytellers allow the word balloons to overlap and interrupt characters in mid-sentence.

I rarely read Bongo Comics, despite the fact I enjoy the show and typically respect the writers that work on the comics. But with the release this week of The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror 15 (edited by Sammy “Damn Wasn’t the Last Book He Edited Huge?” Harkham) features an amazing collection of indy creators (including Jeffrey Brown, Jordan Crane, C.F., Tim Hensley, Ben Jones, John Kerschbaum, Ted May, Will Sweeney, Matthew Thurber, and John Vermilyea). Each creator takes a unique take on the characters, but for me the strongest off-the-grid comedic horror vibe is captured (not surprisingly) by Kerschbaum in a straightforward two-pager “Three Little Kids.”

I’m struggling to fully enjoy Hickman and Eaglesham’s Fantastic Four. In the positive column is getting to see a world of many Reed Richards (even one that’s fully bald/half doom and half ZZ Top; another that looks like he’s 1980s Atari logo Reed; and Reed as Morrison’s Seaguy) and Eaglesham’s ability to convey emotion in Ben Grimm’s rocky face. In the negative column, the tagline on the front cover: “…This morning, I helped kill a Galactus on Earth 2012.” Has the status quo of Reed Richards been made so “modern” he takes pleasure, or at least seeming indifference, in killing villains?

I’ve really appreciated Matt Fraction’s take on many of Marvel’s characters, and he’s really seemed to hit his stride with Dark Reign:The List–X-Men (Lord that title is a mouthful though). There’s three or four pages of the team in battle that is the closest to recapturing the finest rhythm and kineticism of Claremont and Byrne’s definitive X-run (the kineticism is thanks to the never-disappointing art of Alan Davis [inked by Mark Farmer]). That being said, as great as Fraction is with the X-team, his Namor is cracking snide lines in the midst of a fight. A few WAYRs back I spoke highly of Jeff Parker’s approach toward Namor. So, if anybody at Marvel is reading this, you’re seemingly leading toward giving Namor his own book again, please consider Parker and Davis teaming up for it.

Wednesday Comics #1

With Wednesday Comics having finished this week, I have to go back and read them again. And that’s not going to be easy, as my son took a liking to the Metal Men arc. And when I say take a liking, I mean he took the issues apart, as he read and reread them (leaving the pages he did not like behind) –leaving me with a disorganized mess. It was only when I started trying to reconnect the issues that I realized, after the cover pages–there are no page numbers or issue number identifications on the interior pages. But I have a newfound desire to reread Paul Pope’s pages in particular after finding out through CBR’s interview that he was aiming for something Ditko-esque–rooted in Jungian influence and inspired by McCay’s Little Nemo pages.

In terms of music, I’ve got Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers’ Levitate in heavy rotation on my CD player, along with Death Cab for Cutie’s The Open Door EP.

Dark Reign: Ms. Marvel

Carla Hoffman: Believe it or not, I’m reading things. I bought the Dark Reign: Ms. Marvel HC on a dare from a customer who wasn’t sure if it was going to be good and I honestly couldn’t give him an answer. But seeing how hard Mr. Reed has been working on the character, I thought I’d give the book that switched main ‘heroine’ thanks to the new status quo. First part of the book, we’re thrown into a Alias-esque super spy style story in which we lose Carol Danvers due to the theme of Brian Reed’s run of ‘I can’t control my wacky powers’. The middle of the book is Karla Soften dealing with her new role within the Avengers and actually gets to be kind of entertaining, watching her deal with the public, her crazy boss and the fact she might have the psychological edge on them all.

And then we get reality-altering MODOK babies.

Any sort of seriousness I had given the book was lost. The rather deux-ex-mutant of ‘Storyteller’ (seen in the Ms. Marvel annuals) was fused with MODOK’s giant brain DNA and now 25 or so babies in jars can warp reality to AIM’s will.Everything had been so personal until then, a really good read and clever character development for Karla that her sudden need to ‘save the babies’ just lost me. The New Avengers show up, hell, Deadpool shows up, everyone fights for the babies and in the end, Carol Danvers can’t be kept dead for too long. Yeah, I’d say skip this aside from a couple issues in the middle, or at least don’t buy it in hardcover like I did

Fantastic Four 571

Unlike My Pal Tim(tm), I adored the horizonless Reed Richards consortium of geniuses ( I swear one of them was in Starfleet) and could have easily read this issue spread out better into a couple more installments of the weird cross-time-caper Reeds and all their kooky high science plans plus some more with the family who almost always get wasted in the face of the super sci-fi. I hope this high adventure grounds Reed once and for all on this whole ‘fix everything’ kick he’s been on since Civil War because I’m tired of him lording his big ol’ brain around and Hickman might just blow the lid of this thing once and for all.

Dark X-Men: the Confession as the weirdest Gift of the Magi as guilt trip seen yet. Or ever. Yes, Scott now knows that Emma worked with the Cabal! Yes, Emma now knows that Scott has a kill-death squad led by Wolverine and has generally been unsavory. “I ruied the Dream!” “No, I ruined the Dream!” “Oh, kiss me you fool!” The end. Playing fair, this is actually a pretty good intro comic for anyone wanting to jump into the main X-Men storyline right now as they recap a lot of the past year. So… there’s that for $3.99.

Superman: Secret Origins

Tom Bondurant: Some prominent commentators (including Chris Sims and our own Chris Mautner) have called Superman: Secret Origin #1 “unnecessary,” or something similar. That was also my reaction at first. However, it got me thinking: so far this is the third, or perhaps fourth, account of Superman’s post-Crisis origin, and that’s getting into Gospel territory. (Think of the slipcased-hardcover possibilities!) I mean, we started with the Book of John (Byrne), and a while back we had the Book of Mark (Waid). If you count Superman For All Seasons, I suppose there’s a Book of Jeph too. Now, though, here’s the Book of Geoff, which apparently aims to be definitive.

And so far, it’s executed well. I’ve always liked Gary Frank’s Christopher Reeve-inspired Clark/Superman, both because it’s a fitting tribute to another “definitive” interpretation and because it’s a good mix of the character’s power and humanity. In fact, this issue is a very pleasant contrast to Frank (and inker Jon Sibal)’s work on Supreme Power‘s Dark Smallville. I found that book sterile and calculating, but here Frank and Sibal are warm and pastoral. For his part, Geoff Johns obviously intends to show how Clark overcomes this issue’s discomfort with his powers, especially those heat-vision “eyejaculations” (tm Television Without Pity). That was a nice lift from the “Smallville” series, and I also liked how Johns handled Clark’s nascent football ability. Still, that tornado was awfully convenient.

Secret Origin‘s larger story remains somewhat unclear, though, and that I think is where the true measure of necessity lies. I tend to prefer Waid (and artist Leinil Yu)’s Superman: Birthright to Byrne’s Man of Steel because the former actually tells its own story while the latter is more a collection of vignettes. Ironically, Secret Origin‘s purpose may vary inversely with its necessity. If it’s meant to stand alone on the bookshelf, it must tell us something about Superman we don’t already know. However, if it’s just another part of the great Superman plot-puzzle (as the “Secret Origin” arc in Green Lantern was), then I’ll wonder why this needed to be its own miniseries.

Planetary

Earlier last week, I stayed up for about two hours Sunday night reading all of Planetary. I don’t have anything insightful to say about the series as a whole, mostly because I’m waiting for Ellis and Cassaday’s final issue. However, I stayed up for those two hours because each issue practically dared me to read the next one. Now I can’t imagine waiting months or years between issues, because the thing moves so quickly.

On a completely different note, I finished Essential Spider-Woman Volume 2 a few hours before picking up Planetary. ESW Vol. 1 started off on very shaky ground, thanks to the character’s scattershot background: she’s a freak of evolution! She’s a HYDRA agent! She’s got a Camelot connection! To his credit, once writer Chris Claremont came aboard for most of the series’ last quarter, he tried to pull these threads together; and those issues (drawn with quirky charm by Steve Leialoha) are probably the series’ high point. Writer Ann Nocenti then wrote the series’ final few issues, including a fourth-wall-breaking goodbye to the reader. Those issues weren’t bad, but I’ve read enough middle-of-the-road superhero books to know when a writer is just wrapping things up. I don’t dislike Spider-Woman, although the series (thanks to its eventual SoCal private-eye premise) seems firmly rooted in the 1970s, and I’m content to leave it there.

Matt Maxwell:

Elric of Melniboné

Elric of Melniboné
Roy Thomas, P. Craig Russell and Michael Gilbert, Tom Orzechowski
Based on the books by Michael Moorcock

I’ll admit to not having read the original books, which I should rectify, if they’re half as good as this adaptation. The real star is the artwork, by both P. Craig Russell and Michael Gilbert. It’s perfectly stylized, yet not sacrificing style for expression. There’s a lot of fear and uncertainty, gloating and triumph on these pages, and the linework doesn’t miss a step in relaying it to the reader. You could easily skip the text altogether and still follow the story clearly, perhaps leaving out only a few subtleties.

Before this, I hadn’t realized exactly how influential Moorcock’s take on fantasy had become. Certainly, Tolkien reigns supreme as high lord of fantasy. But Moorcock, with his blend of treachery and addiction, of magic that takes more than it gives, of graceful empires that are doomed by their very design, his dark vision has its fingers deep in modern fantasy (particularly influential in what is debatably the most popular fantasy today, that being World of Warcraft, though not strictly a book, but has a subscriber base that most books would kill for).

Elric presents a compelling story, last in the line of fabled sorcerer kings, ruling over a civilization slipping into slow decline, never brighter than the day that Elric takes the throne. Fighting off the schemes of his ruthless cousin Yrrkoon and becoming a pawn of the Lords of Chaos, Elric only barely begins to understand the powers at play in Melniboné, and will not fully grasp them in time.

Recommended, though I’m not sure of its status in print now, the graphic novel that is. I read it in the edition published by First Comics in the middle eighties (making it one of the first collected graphic novels, well before The Sandman and the like). Someone may have picked up the reprint rights to this, but it might require some sifting through the used bins as well.

Other reads this week, Batman and Robin #3 (I await the return of Pyg), Agents of Atlas #10 and #11 (M-11 is THE GREATEST) and the first issue of the new Dominic Fortune miniseries (Howard Chaykin is a very bad man.)

Far Arden

JK Parkin: Far Arden by Kevin Cannon starts off as a zany fun adventure comic, and at some point morphs into something a bit more serious. And somehow, it works really well, I’ve decided, after contemplating it for a couple of weeks. It’s actually kind of shocking how well it works, too, and how much emotional investment you realize you have in the characters when, well, stuff happens. I should probably read it again.

I mentioned a few weeks back that I was reading Peter & Max, the Fables novel by Bill Willingham. Despite the ending being a little bit telegraphed (at least if you’re paying attention), I thought this was an excellent outing for Willingham and the Fables characters into the world of prose. I recommend it for anyone who is a fan of the comic or just likes new twists on old fairy tales, and I hope to see more of these in the future. I’ve also started re-reading the first couple of Fables arcs, which are being issued as a hardcover, and it’s interesting to see how far the book has come, both in terms of the plot and how the characters have developed. And the first Farm story, which was the second story arc, is still one of the book’s best.

And finally, the second Guardians of the Galaxy trade was every bit as fun as the first. Although it’s billed as being part of War of Kings, there were no appearances by Inhumans or Shi’ar … just more zany fun cosmic adventures.

On Stranger Tides

Philip Gelatt: I made a promise to myself that I was going to read butt-loads of science-fiction and fantasy novels during 2009. Sadly, with the year wrapping up, “butt-loads” has kind of turned into the far less impressive “half-butt loads.” But this quest of mine has introduced me to an author named Tim Powers and he is swiftly becoming a personal favorite. He specializes in well-researched historical action-fantasy-sci-fi pieces, that include a big dosages of both the surreal and the mad cap.

Yeah, that’s right: his books use every cool genre ever, mixed into one. And somehow he makes it all work.

Currently, I’m reading his On Stranger Tides. It is a pirate tale filled with Caribbean magic, large-scale ship-to-ship combat and so much swashbuckling. It focuses on a young pirate named Jack Shandy as he is caught between the plots of three powerful pirate captains, each possessing strong voodoo magic and nefarious intentions.

The Secret of Monkey Island and Pirates of the Caribbean (the movie) are both said to be loosely inspired by its heady mix of adventure, fantasy and high seas chicanery. Plus I’m getting an actual overview of the end of the pirate era in the Caribbean.

Oh and it has Blackbeard in it. And at one point he says “More blood salt than sea salt in the water tonight.” And that alone, my friends, is worth the price of admission.

King City #1

On the comic book front, I just took my sweet time savoring every last panel of Brandon Graham’s first issue of King City. I didn’t read this title in its previous previous printing, so this is my first exposure to this strange sci-fi world. The larger format really suits Graham’s artwork and he’s made excellent usage of every square inch of this book, filling it with amusing extras and add-ons.

I’ve been a fan of Graham’s work for awhile (via Multiple Warheads and his amazing blog), and the first issue of King City is not disappointing me in the slightest. It is, to my mind, exactly what science-fiction should be: bizarre, charming, visually stunning and chock full of wild ideas that need not be fully explained. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Also I want a cat like that, god damn it.

Rick Lacy:

Mouse Guard #1

Mouse Guard: This is the book that’s currently on my nightstand. I fell for this book like a hot girl on Facebook I never met. It ‘s exactly the type of book I want to create… only with more Conan’s and Madmartigan’s. Not that mice aren’t dauntless and bold, it’s just not where my mind dwells. That being said, David Peterson has really created some interesting and compelling characters that are only a few inches high. My favorite parts of these books are the world building elements he uses. Everything from the mouse city of Lockhaven to the myth of the black axe to the “Moria” like caverns of Darkheather are all fully realized places. Places that I believe actually lurked under the roots of the woods in my old backyard. The supplemental work in this book is also very fascinating. It outlines the different roles of mice in the kingdom. The apothecaries! The medicines and armories! The working mouse elevators and the hierarchy. All well put together and creative. WITH MICE!

The City and The City: This is the latest novel from one of my favorite authors, China Mieville, It’s a departure (somewhat) from his normal genre of “new weird” and focuses on crime drama. Though it is mixed with a good hearty amount of fantastic creativity, by building a realm in a modern time that’s dotted with an alternate world of mystery. By that I mean, the crosshatched existence of two symbiotic cities Beszel and Ul Qoma that live side by side, but hold a very prejudice but checked border. To describe the elements within would take pages on pages! In my opinion, The City and the City is a fairly exhausting read, but Mieville proves yet again that he’s a master of word-smithing by dictating a slew of different dialects, personas and interspersed societal agendas. For more of his work I highly suggest his Bas Lag series. Start with The Scar!

Joan

Joan: I picked up this manga series for wicked cheap at my local comic shop on a whim. It’s gorgeously illustrated by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko in pen ink and watercolor, which was the initial reason I bought it. The story is a retelling of the Joan of Arc saga only with a different woman in the lead role reliving the same experience. I don’t entirely understand why the author didn’t just retell Joan of Arc, herself. Perhaps he wanted to have his own voice. The story is a variation on standard faire with uman rights, religion and loyalty to country taking the main stage. The huge draw, as I mentioned, is the art. The vistas and use of water coloring are beautiful. E very page is a masterpiece. I’ll definitely seek out more of Yasuhiko’s art.

Labor Days Volume 2: Just Another Damn Day: Yes, I know this is my own book! BUT! we just released this edition this weekend and I haven’t seen a copy until now. So this one just got bumped up to the top of the list. I hope it holds up! We definitely pushed the boundaries on our own title in the pages of Volume Two and it’s become closer, I believe, to what we wanted in our initial design. Volume three should be the coup de gras!

Cursed Pirate Girl #1

Cursed Pirate Girl #1-2
Written and Illustrated by Jeremy Bastian
Olympian Publishing; $4.95 each

On the back cover of Cursed Pirate Girl #1, Mike Mignola calls Jeremy Bastian a genius and declares, “I almost never see work this original.” If pirates and Bastian’s whimsical and detailed style aren’t enough to make you curious, praise from Mike Mignola – who knows a thing or two about originality – concerning the book’s uniqueness ought to. I mean, that’s like hearing David Petersen call it “stuff that makes other artists jealous and comic readers drool.” Oh, wait. That’s on the back cover too.

I promise I’ll get to the book itself in a second, but there’s another remarkable quote on the back of the second issue. Painter Gail Potocki calls the series, “our generation’s Alice in Wonderland.” Which is interesting because one of the first things you notice when you open it is the influence of classic Alice illustrator John Tenniel with his opulent linework and exaggerated body types. Another way of describing Bastian’s style might be, “Jeff Smith as inked by Gary Gianni.”

But there’s much more to Potocki’s Alice comparison than just the art. Lewis Carroll’s stories were joyous celebrations of childhood and imagination. And while Bastian’s book isn’t as nonsensical as Carroll’s, there’s certainly that sense that anything can happen. And often will.

Apollonia and her Daddy

The first issue opens not with the Cursed Pirate Girl herself, but with the small daughter of the governor of Jamaica. Young Miss Apollonia follows her father around Port Elisabeth as he and his sinister henchman Mr. Six rough up daddy’s shady business associates. While waiting on the balcony of a tavern, Apollonia notices an older girl (maybe nine- or ten-years-old; Apollonia looks to be about five or six) fighting with some rough-looking boys on the beach below. Cursed Pirate Girl easily defeats them and – once the girls have had a chance to talk – inspires Apollonia with tales of her lost pirate father.

Unfortunately, Apollonia takes her new attitude to her birthday party, which just so happens to be attended by a visiting prince. Disaster and hilarity ensue, but Daddy isn’t much pleased. He not only punishes Apollonia; he also puts a hit out on CPG.

Cursed Pirate Girl in the Omerta Seas

How that plays out I’ll leave for you to discover, but hopefully it’s not too much of a spoiler to reveal that CPG makes it to the second issue where her search for her father kicks off. The first issue was more or less Apollonia’s story, while the second focuses on the title character. Bastian doesn’t ignore Apollonia thanks to an interlude and notes like, “Oh no! Now what will happen to Little Apollonia?” scattered around in the illustrations. But the second issue is devoted to CPG’s adventure, which does get very Carroll-like. Accompanied by a black parrot named Pepper Dice, CPG tries to find the mythical Omerta Seas where her father is supposed to captain his feared pirate ship. She believes that once she finds him, her curse will end.

She and Pepper Dice catch a magic fish, meet a pair of squabbling knights in swordfish-armor, fight a giant octopus, and get adopted by an adorable sea-puppy. Where Bastian and Carroll part ways though is that Bastian’s much more concerned about plot than Carroll was. Whereas Alice’s encounters in Wonderland were very episodic, CPG’s all serve a purpose by helping to move her closer to her goal. I guess in that way it’s more like an undersea Wizard of Oz, only CPG is way more badass than either Alice or Dorothy.

Five out of five impressionable little girls.

The Fruit Incident

My wife and I flew down to Anaheim, Calif. last night to attend Disney’s first-ever D23 Expo, a fan convention focused on anything related to the House of Mouse. The event kicked off on Thursday with a presentation by Bob Iger, Disney CEO, which we unfortunately missed, but you can read about what he said about the Marvel deal over on CBR.

We picked up our badges — or, actually, wristbands — last night, and headed over to the Anaheim Convention Center this morning for our first full day.

We had a few things on our agenda for today, not the least of which was the big movie presentation by Dick Cook, chairman of Walt Disney Studios. Cook’s presentation basically covered everything that fell into the live-action category; John Lasseter of Pixar fame will be here on Sunday to talk about their animation slate.

And let me tell you, if there’s one thing Disney knows how to do, it’s put on a good presentation. Cook spoke in the convention center’s huge arena, to a crowd of about 5,000 I think was the number he gave. Before we headed into the arena, we stood in a long but fast-moving line and had to give up all electronic devices to a friendly Disney employee. Cameras, cell phones, laptops, etc. weren’t permitted into the presentation, which killed any thoughts I had about Twitter updates or live coverage, or even photos to share later.

But anyway, you could tell this wasn’t going to be a normal presentation or movie panel when the orchestra and singers took their places next to the stage. It kicked off with a musical/video tribute to past Disney films, everything from Pretty Woman and Pearl Harbor to Mary Poppins and Sleeping Beauty. The orchestra performed all sorts of music from the Disney mainstays, i.e. Circle of Life, Beauty and the Beast, etc.

Then Cook went into the films and started bringing out the stars:

–Robert Zemeckis as there to talk briefly about A Christmas Carol, a 3-D stop motion thing (think Polar Express) starring Jim Carrey as Scrooge and a lot of other characters. They provided 3-D glasses, of course, so we could watch the trailer and some scenes from the film. Zemeckis is also working with Disney on a Yellow Submarine film.
–John Travolta, his wife Kelly Preston and their daughter were there to promote Old Dogs, a film with all three of them, Robin Williams, Seth Green and a lot of other folks. Travolta and Williams are two older single guys, best friends, and they find out Williams’ character has twins from a previous girlfriend. They showed the trailer and a clip, and the crowd seemed to find it hilarious; it just kind of reminded me of something akin to Wild Hogs (which people also went nuts over when they heard there would be a sequel).
–Jerry Bruckheimer was there to talk about Prince of Persia, which comes out next summer. I thought the clips they showed were pretty cool, but the crowd didn’t respond as loudly to them as they did to other clips.
–Nicholas Cage was there to talk about the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. This is one I wasn’t too sure about going into it, but after seeing the clips and behind-the-scenes stuff they showed, I’m probably a little more excited about this one. Cage plays an older sorcerer who has been looking for an apprentice for centuries … and he finds him in New York City. Alfred Molina plays the bad guy. I don’t know; this could end up being really bad, but I dug what I saw during the presentation. Cook also asked Cage if he was up for a third National Treasure movie, which made the crowd roar.
–Tim Burton was on hand to talk about Alice in Wonderland; I was half expecting Johnny Depp to pop out while he was talking, but it didn’t happen. I also had to chuckle when Burton told Cook he wanted to make an Alice in Wonderland film because he thought no one had ever done it justice … cough, cough.
–After showing the Wonderland trailer, Cook said that they were doing a full-length version of Burton’s Frankenweenie short from many moons ago.
–Live via video from New Zealand, Guillermo del Toro talked about the new movie studio he formed with Disney, called Disney’s Double Dare You. They plan to make animated films with a bit of a horror/adventure bent. del Toro mentioned he was a big fan of rides like The Haunted Mansion, and he wanted to capture the storytelling feel of those sorts of rides in these films. The first one is called The Trollhunters, based on one of del Toro’s ideas.
–Miley Cyrus came out to perform a song from … well, I’m not exactly sure. But I can check “See Miley Cyrus perform live” off my bucket list.
–Also performing on stage were the Muppets, who came out from behind the curtain in a big boat and performed a number. This was one of the highlights, but probably not THE highlight … Cook said a new Muppet film was in the works, called The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made.
–Cook also spoke about other films that are further in the future, like John Carter of Mars and The Lone Ranger. They debuted some concept art for the former and said Johnny Depp would play Tonto in the latter (not sure if that was “new” news or not.) It seemed like there were a couple of other films mentioned as well, but I can’t remember what they were. But watch for a report on the main site.

People were already getting up to leave when Cook pulled a Steve Jobs and said there was one more thing he wanted to mention. At that point, the Pirates of the Caribbean logo appeared on the big screen, with the words “On Stranger Tides” underneath it, followed by “Summer 2011.” Of course, the crowd was going nuts, then was standing and cheering as the curtains were pulled back to reveal a giant masthead and sail. You could the silhouette of someone in the sail, and as it rotated around, there was Johnny Depp, dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow, who swaggered out on stage. He stayed in character as he spoke to Cook, saying he was looking for a talking frog because he likes them — “they taste like chicken” then made a reference to it being time for Rum. Overall, it was a really cool moment and a really cool way to end the presentation.

I’ll have more about what we did and saw soon …

Matthew Shepherd, Michael Shoyket and David Hedgecock rework a few pages from Captain Blood to address the problems independent comics have with distribution, ultimately asking readers to “demand more from comics.” And, in one panel, not to download comics … which seemed very unpirate-like.

Captain Blood #1

Rafael Sabatini’s novel Captain Blood opens with rebellion, battle, and a country doctor dragged kicking and screaming into a civil war he wants nothing to do with. It’s an exciting opening that not only lets you know who Dr. Peter Blood is, but also explains his motivations for the rest of the novel.

SLG’s is the second comics adaptation of Captain Blood I’ve ever read – the other being part of Graphic Classics‘ Sabatini volume – and I think it’s interesting that both adaptations choose to begin their stories later in Blood’s life when he’s been sold into slavery by his own government. They both then flash back to England almost immediately, picking up Sabatini’s beginning.

I’m not sure why that is. I understand the advantage of starting a story with later, more exciting events and then skipping back to explain what’s going on. But Blood’s slave career is hardly more exciting than the action and drama around his fateful midnight house call to the bedside of a rebel leader. Or to his subsequent, wrongful imprisonment and monkey trial. That’s cool, thrilling stuff.

Not that his time as a slave in the West Indes is boring. Not at all. But that part of the story is cool because Dr. Blood – what an awesome name – figures out how to make himself indespensible to the local governor, much to the annoyance of his abusive owner. There’s also intrigue as Blood and his fellows try to plan escapes. And there’s frustrated romance when Blood becomes attracted to the daughter of his owner, but can’t court her as an equal. All of this is great, interesting stuff, but it’s made more interesting when we know what kind of man Blood is from his time in England. I don’t get starting in the West Indes.

I don’t recall this bothering me in the Graphic Classics version, but maybe that’s because it just seemed like an interesting choice at the time. Seeing it done that way again by a different writer and a different publisher makes me wonder what I’m missing.

Enough about that though. It bugs me, but let’s move on. In all other respects writer Matt Shepherd does a great job adapting the story. He doesn’t hit everything the novel does, but he makes good choices about what to leave out. Sabatini spends a lot more time on Blood’s escape plots for instance, which further highlight his wits and resourcefulness, but don’t ultimately play into how he and his friends actually get away. Shepherd skips all that and keeps things moving, getting to the real escape much more quickly.

Peter Blood

I also like where Shepherd ends the issue, though I won’t spoil the details about it. (SLG’s trailer does though, if you’ve seen that.) He gets a lot further into the story than I expected him to and ends at a much more compelling moment than the cliffhanger from the novel that I thought he’d pick.

Mike Shoyket’s uninked art is fantastic and looks great in the sepia tone that they’re using to print it. He’s an excellent choice for a pirate comic. Lots of drama in his use of black and white; a realistic and diverse-looking cast. He doesn’t always draw backgrounds, but when he does they’re detailed and well-researched. The story looks like it’s happening in a real place to real people.

Part of me would like to see it colored so that it looked even more real, but it’s a tiny little part. You’d ruin it if you did a big, flashy, PhotoShop color job on it. You’d lose the mood of those unfinished pencils and I’d hate that. I’m reminded of how much I loved Sea of Red. It’s that kind of feeling.

I’m looking forward to seeing the story continue. Though I’d prefer reading it in one collected volume, I think I understand the economics behind SLG’s releasing it as a mini-series and I hope it does really well for them. Having read the first issue now, I’m anxious for the second and that’s a great indicator of a successful series.

Four out of five island huts.

An island "paradise"

Crogan's Vengeance

Chris Schweizer is a creator that lives in my neck of the woods: Atlanta. I always enjoy the opportunity to support (albeit imported) local talent. I recently email interviewed him about Crogan’s Vengeance (Oni Press), described by the publisher as  “the first in an ongoing series of adventure graphic novels spanning continents and centuries as cartoonist Chris Schweizer climbs through the various branches of the Crogan clan’s family tree! Volume one of THE CROGAN ADVENTURES series introduces us to ‘Catfoot’ Crogan, an honest sailor who finds himself thrust into a life of piracy! Crogan never wanted to be a pirate and he never dreamed he’d wind up at odds with the most dangerous buccaneer ever to sail the Spanish Main! But there’s more to this fight for ‘Catfoot’ than just staying alive, there’s also CROGAN’S VENGEANCE!”

As noted at Schweizer’s own site: “He received his BFA in Graphic Design from Murray State University in 2004, and did his post-graduate work in Sequential Art at the Atlanta branch of the Savannah College of Art and Design . . . he now teaches as a professor of Sequential Art and Animation at SCAD-Atlanta.”

Thanks to Schweizer for an interview and thanks also to Oni’s Cory Casoni for facilitating the interview.

Tim O’Shea: Your pirate tale really relies on strategy being conveyed in battle partially with dialogue and visually, how did you strike a balance that did not make it too detailed or not detailed enough, while still being entertaining?

Chris Schweizer: A lot of it was gut instinct and hope.  In some of the scenes where strategy came into play, I was very mindful of the potential to get bogged down in factual minutia.   I tried to combat this a couple of different ways – firstly, by giving the bare minimum amount of information needed to understand what was going on, making sure that once an idea had been put forth in dialogue that it wasn’t repeated in subsequent dialogue.  The other was panel composition and subject focus.  Showing the different members of the crew in varying states of readiness rather than simply following the protagonist, Catfoot, around, bought me a little bit of extra reader attention during these expository battle preparations… at least, I hope it did.

O’Shea: The book is the first in a Historical Adventure Series–how much research did you do for the first book, Crogan’s Vengeance?

Schweizer: A lot.  The plot is extremely reliant on an understanding of the world I’m depicting, from its social system to the logistics of seamanship, and until I have a fairly comprehensive understanding of the period I’m unable to tailor the story.  So I read – fiction as well as nonfiction – dozens of pirate books, nautical books, books about the early eighteenth century, anything I could get my hands on that I thought pertinent.  Once working on pages, I watched (almost exclusively) pirate, nautical, and swashbuckler movies, and listened to nothing but film scores and shanties.  That probably sounds a bit obsessive, but my interests and enthusiasms have a tendency to latch on to some subject or another with great gusto, and it colors whatever I do, so I wanted to retain a purity of focus that I knew would be lost were I to suddenly get very enthusiastic about, say, seaplanes or mummies.

O’Shea: I was amazed at how efficiently you were able to develop characters in a few panels, get readers attached to them and then kill them off. Were there any characters that you originally developed to be killed, but that you got attached to yourself and decided to keep them alive?

Schweizer: No, although one of the more prominent characters – who dies about 2/3 of the way through the book – was hard to let go.  He’d quickly become a favorite to draw, especially, and I enjoyed coming up with his dialogue, but showing the true danger and reckless anarchy that the villain presented was essential, and my hope was that, if I liked working with the character so much, that readers would be upset by his end, and there would be a clearer need for a confrontation between Catfoot and this character’s killer.

O’Shea: When do you plan on releasing the next book in the series? How many books do you hope to have in total?

Schweizer: My goal is to have a new book out prior to the holidays each year, though I’m sure that I can’t keep up this pace forever.  I teach comics at SCAD-Atlanta, and it’s important for me to continue doing so; as the industry no longer has in-house bullpens in which beginning cartoonists can develop under the tutelage of comic veterans, there’s a necessity for comics education for the good of the medium, and I’m glad to be a part of that.  Between class and school duties, family time, and the heavy amount of research that goes into each book, it’ll only be a matter of time before 12 months turns into fifteen, or twenty.  But I’ll stave it off as long as I can.

The next book (Crogan’s March) will, if I stay on schedule, be on shelves at the end of ’09.

As for the number of books?  Though Oni has agreed to fifteen, my hope is that I can continue making these stories until I’m no longer capable of holding a brush.  Many of the characters could merit more than one book – the Rough Rider is the right age to work as a soldier of fortune during the Mexican Revolution, for example – and as I do research on one book I see more opportunities for others, see ways that the stories might tie together (though each book will, by design, be able to stand alone).

O’Shea: Piracy is a favorite genre of many songs, movies, novels–out of various entertainment genres do you have any favorite pirate tales (other than your own)?

Schweizer: This is probably the hardest question to answer for me – there’s so much!  For movies, my favorite is probably Roman Polanski’s Pirates, which, for all its seemingly aimless wandering, really does a wonderful job of combining the iconic with the historical, and is a lot of fun.  For books, though I’m tempted to lean towards Sabatini or Farnol, or even Treasure Island, I’m going to have to go with Peter Pan, because it had such a huge impact on my childhood and my lifelong love of pirates.  Barrie’s pirates are silly and grand, and I love them for it.  I always enjoy Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance, which I’ve performed in myself a couple of times.  And though the movie is abysmally bad in just about every respect, John Debney‘s score for Cutthroat Island is perhaps the best high-seas adventure music ever written, and that’s a tall order.

O’Shea: The book strikes me as the perfect kind of book to get reluctant young male readers into reading–have you done any presentations at local libraries or middle schools to generate interest?

Schweizer: I want to be as involved with schools and libraries as possible, and I’ve done a few things here and there since the book came out – a talk at a library, workshops with a homeschooling group, workshops and readings at bookstores and colleges, but nothing with elementary and middle schools, which is something I hope to rectify in the future.  The book’s only been out for a couple of months, and as far as I know it hasn’t yet been reviewed in Library Journal or any teaching trade publications.  If those reviews are positive, I hope that it’ll open doors for me to be more involved with the schools.  One problem is that (because I teach) my traveling schedule tends to be open only on weekends and when schools are out of session, a schedule which doesn’t lend itself well to school visits.  But if anyone – especially within driving distance of Atlanta – would like me to visit a class or library, please, get in touch with me; if it’s something that I CAN do, then it’s something that I WILL do.

O’Shea: Are there certain visual pirate narrative cliches that you tried to avoid–such as did you say to yourself: “No parrots and no peg legs”?

Schweizer: No, because as cliché as they might now seem, there was definite historical precedent for all of the cartoonish flourishes that the pirates of popular imagination possess.  Peg-legs, hooks, parrots (or monkeys), striped shirts, wigs… there’s a reason that pirates have been depicted like that since the earliest editions of Captain Johnson’s tell-all tome.  I avoided some, but not for credibility’s sake; as a rule they just didn’t fit into the plot.  Folks with hooks – like Barrie’s eponymous captain, or Farnol’s Tressady – they should, by all rights, be terrifying, and I didn’t want anyone to pull attention away from the palpable menace of my villain, whose has managed to retain all of his appendages.   Other considerations were made for fear of being derivative.  I’d have loved to have included a monkey, but seeing as one had been employed in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, I considered it off-limits.

O’Shea: Did Oni give you complete free reign in developing the story, or were they able to provide you with constructive editorial feedback that helped you improve your story?

Schweizer: Oni really left me to my own devices for this one, for which I’m very grateful; they’re always there with helpful advice and as a sounding board for ideas, but there was no editorial interference at all, which is appealing for me as I always tend to think that I know best.  James and Randy did provide the idea for the framing sequence at the beginning and end of the book as a way to better tie the series together, and for that I’m extremely grateful;  I had concerns from the outset about whether or not people would follow a series with few, if any, repeating characters, and, though the storytelling father and his two sons are on stage for only a handful of pages, I believe it makes all the difference.

O’Shea: Is there anything else on the creative horizon for you?

Schweizer: In addition to the Crogan stories in the books, I’ll occasionally have the opportunity to do shorter stories featuring the Crogan characters.  One such story – a duel between David Crogan (a smuggler) and a vengeful samurai – will be published early this summer in Awesomer, an anthology being put out by Top Shelf.  I’m particularly excited about this project because the cover of the book is being done by Jeff Smith, whose work, which I greatly admire, has been very influential to mine.