Moore, Carey discuss Sci Fi-Virgin's 'The Stranded'

Announced last year at the New York Comic-Con, the alliance between Sci Fi Channel and Virgin Comics is about to bear its first fruit in the form of “The Stranded,” a five-issue series that debuted in comics shops this week and online at Scifi.com and Virgincomics.com.

The object of this exercise is, of course, to create comics that can be translated later into TV, movies or other media, and that’s reflected in how comics writer Mike Carey and Virgin Comics editor Stuart Moore have worked with Sci Fi in developing the series.

“We’re very much approaching this arc, this story as being like the equivalent of a pilot episode, defining the characters, setting out the big scenes, the big ideas and sort of laying trails for later stories,” says Carey, who is perhaps best known as the writer of the Sandman sequel series “Lucifer” for DC/Vertigo and current scribe of Marvel’s “X-Men.”

The Stranded is about five individuals who learn they not only have superpowers but are from an alien planet they have absolutely no memory of. A mysterious assassin named Janus, however, begins hunting them down, with the mysterious and beautiful Tamree doing her best to save them.

Moore, a Vertigo alumnus and author of such sci-fi comics as Earthfall and Para, says the collaboration process has been so far smooth — more like a consultation process than an hierarchy of approvals — with both companies learning from each other’s approach to telling stories.

“(Sci Fi has) had to learn that there are things we can do in comics that they sort of automatically screen out, because they can’t film it or they wouldn’t want to put on screen because they just don’t consider it,” he says. “At the same time, we’ve been working in comics so long that there are certain conventions we just take for granted. And occasionally they’ll stop and say to us, ‘Well that’s a little confusing,’ or ‘What does that mean?’ And it forces us to step back and make a comic that actually I think is a little more accessible to more people.”

Drawing the book is Virgin workhorse Siddharth Kotian, who defies the trend toward manga-style art and gives the book a classic and clear American style look. “It’s very realistic by comic book standards,” says Moore. “It’s less exaggerated than most superhero work. So it’s a little more relatable and a little more down to earth while still very exciting.” The first issue also features covers by Marc Silvestri and Greg Horn.

Real science fiction has always had a bit of a tough time standing out from the superheroes when it comes to comics. No one knows this more than Moore, who launched the sci-fi Helix line for DC more than a decade ago, with only Warren Ellis’ “Transmetropolitan” emerging as a hit in the imprint’s short life span.

Carey says his own sci-fi inspirations come from Joss Whedon’s “Firefly”; J. Michael Straczynski’s “Babylon 5,” for the way the series mixed stand-alone stories with larger arcs; and the British skein “Sapphire & Steel.” In print, Carey says he admires “Transmet” in comics and the novels of Ashley Gwynn in prose.

But The Stranded #1 reads more like a TV show, offering an interesting idea and enough story and action to make the debut stand out and work as a comic book.

And for the moment, that’s all they’re trying to do. “By the time we get to the end of this arc, we’ve met all of our sort of core team, our core characters,” says Carey. “We also end on some major revelations, which are going to kind of have implications for where the story will go after this, and which I don’t think anyone will see coming.”

Moore says there’s no set conditions, such as selling a certain number of copies, that would get a TV version of The Stranded greenlighted for TV. “Sci Fi is just sort of looking at the progress,” he says. “I think it depends on their internal needs and how they feel it comes together.”

Should The Stranded come to TV, Virgin and the comic’s creators expect to be very much involved. “Virgin’s intent from the very beginning has to keep the creators involved. And Sci Fi certainly seems open to that,” says Moore.

Comic-Con: A chat with Warren Ellis

For those who still come to Comic-Con for the comics, Warren Ellis was as big a star as any Hollywood actor or actress at this year's show, at least in part because he last appeared at the show 10 years ago.

In that time, Ellis has become one of comics'™ most consistently entertaining and inventive voices. He rose through the ranks at Marvel working on various X-Men related books before his sci-fi maxi-series "€Transmetropolitan" caught on and became the only series in DC'€™s Helix line to survive its demise and move over to Vertigo. He followed up with canny ventures into the "€œwidescreen" superhero epic with "The Authority,"€ the pulpy origins of comics in "€œPlanetary,"€ and the joy and horror of space exploration in "Orbiter," thrilling readers with a mad mix of ideas, stories and characters that were irresistibly clever and vulgar at the same time.

Now, he divides his comics time between a number of comics publishers, such as Marvel, where he i€™s set to take over "€œAstonishing X-Men"€ from Joss Whedon, and DC/Wildstorm, home to "€œDesolation Jones." On the indie side, "€œFell"€ with artist Ben Templesmith has been a hit at Image Comics and Ellis has carved out a nice niche for his work at Avatar Press, where since 1999 he ha™s published horror and sci-fi titles such as "€œStrange Kiss" and the Apparat line of singles.

Credit Avatar with finally getting Ellis back to San Diego to promote the launch of three new projects: the historical graphic novel "€œCrecy,"€ the sci-fi series "€œDoktor Sleepless" and the political superhero miniseries "€œBlack Summer."€

Also, Ellis' first novel, "€œCrooked Little Vein,"€ was just published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, and has been getting solid reviews and attention from the likes of Entertainment Weekly and the Los Angeles Times.

Ellis spent much of his time at the show signing at the Avatar and HarperCollins booths, as well as appearing on a couple of panels —€” one of which was a two-hour Saturday night spotlight on his work —€” and doing press from a hotel room well-stocked with cigarettes and Red Bull, where he answered some questions Saturday afternoon about his work, the comics industry and returning to San Diego.

"€œIt'€™s a completely different show,"€ Ellis says of the convention. "€œThere are three times the number of people than were here the last time I attended, the hall is three times bigger and I had a brief walk across the convention floor yesterday and I couldn'€™t see any comic stands at all,"€ he says. "€œThe only comics presence I'€™ve seen is the Avatar Press booth that I"™m signing at."€

Ellis says he works with Avatar because they give him complete creative control, from the rights to getting as involved as he likes in the production process and final look of the books. "€œThey basically do the job right,"€ he says. "€œIf I want to write what I want to write, then there are certain companies that it'€™s absolutely pointless to take them to."€

Of his new Avatar books, "€œBlack Summer"€ has already gotten the most attention for a scene in which a superhero executes the president of the United States for prosecuting an illegal war. "€œI'€™ve already turned up on Fox News as an aider and abettor of terrorists,"€ Ellis says. "€œAn unnamed apparently ex-FBI man claimed that if there was an attempt on the president'€™s life, I'€™m the first person that should be arrested."€

"€œDoktor Sleepless"€ is perhaps the most conventional of the new Avatar books, mixing sci-fi, politics and culture in a way Ellis'€™ fans have come to expect. "€œCrecy,"€ about the historical battle between England and France in 1346, is a compelling departure that evokes, in its own way, the same thrill of ancient battle as "€œ300."€

That kind of notoriety and the intense online following Ellis has earned has, so far, not turned into much work in film or TV, he says. "€œAs a comics writer, as you know, you can'€™t get arrested in Hollywood."€ He does have a few such projects in the work: writing an animated film adaptation of the "€œCastlevania"€ videogame and a TV series for AMC called "€œDead Channel."€

Reviews for "€œCrooked Little Vein"€ have so far been mostly positive, but there were some surprises he found in working with a major prose fiction publisher. "€œI think possibly, it was my own preconceptions,"€ he says. "€œI assumed that I would be able to be a lot more hands off with a novel publisher, then I found myself having to get quite heavily involved in things like cover design, which came out great."€

The comicbook market has been a tough on creator owned properties in recent years, as the big two have increased their grip on the direct market. In late 2003, Ellis said he expected his kind of work to be crowded out of the market and that he would turn to other media. That has not turned out to be the case.

"€œI think we might have just been waiting for a new generation to come in,"€ he says. "€œI think the people who had come into comics with say '€˜Transmetropolitan'€™ had maybe drifted out of the field again afterwards. I certainly felt that. But I think online comics and manga have brought a whole new generation back into the western comics form."€

That'€™s been good for comics that aren'€™t based on established superheroes. "€œThat hard bifurcation is still there, there are still clearly two different markets, but the other market, if you like the market that create their own work, is strengthening again, I think,"€ he says.

Garth Ennis on "Streets of Glory"

Anyone who’s read Garth Ennis’ work, especially on "Preacher," knows he has a deep love of the West. Now, Ennis is going back to the old West in a new six-issue oater from Avatar Press called “Streets of Glory,” due to start in October with art by Mike Wolfer.

Here’s how Avatar describes the tale:

In the past fifteen years, Joseph Dunn hasn't seen much of the little civilization Montana had to offer in 1899, but his absence along with the death of a generation has rendered the atmosphere unrecognizable.  Dunn is the last of the drifters that independently roamed the western frontier of the United States in the 19th century.  These were men who fought with nobility, wits, and an easily un-holstered gun at their side.  The body count will rise when Dunn's trigger finger is forced to settle new problems with the only solution he knows.

Ennis answered a few questions via email about the new series.

Variety: You obviously have a great love for Westerns. Which films, books and especially comics in the genre do you admire?

Garth Ennis: “Unforgiven,” “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” “The Good, The Bad And The Ugly,” “The Shootist,” “The Searchers,” “The Wild Bunch,” “Lonesome Dove,” “The Cowboys.”
“Blood Meridian,” by Cormac McCarthy, also his Border Trilogy. “True Grit,” by Charles Portis. “The Tonto Woman And Other Stories,” by Elmore Leonard. “St. Agnes' Stand,” by Thomas Eidson. “Lonesome Dove,” by Larry McMurtry, also “Zeke And Ned.”
The only comic that comes to mind is “Jonah Hex: Two Gun Mojo,” by Joe Lansdale and Tim Truman.

Variety: Tell me about Joe Dunn. What makes him a hero? How is he different from some of your other, cowboy-like protagonists, like Jesse Custer?

Ennis: He's the protagonist, the lead character. He's capable of heroism, but whether he's a hero or not is up to the reader to judge. He's a harsh man born of harsh times, capable of extremely harsh acts. He's not a million miles away from Jesse, in that both are dangerous men given to patient consideration before acting. Dunn, however, is a good forty years older.

Variety: The description of Streets of Glory meshes pretty well with your previous work, in that it’s the story of a man at odds with society. What about that kind of character do you find appealing?

Ennis: The conflict it throws up. The enduring appeal of the outsider, the underdog.

Variety: Your protagonists also have a real talent for giddy, extreme violence that suggests a certain fatalistic viewpoint. Does Streets of Glory continue in that vein and do you see an optimistic side to this story as well?

Ennis: Yes and yes. The Old West was a wild and brutal time, but I can't believe it was 100% squalor and misery.

Variety: Talk about working with Mike Wolfer. How much latitude did you give him in your scripts and what do you think his strengths as a comics artist are?

Ennis: I write the same way for Mike as I do for anyone, sparsely. He's an excellent storyteller, does a lot of it in the faces. Great characters. Very good with action. Not afraid of detailed research.

Variety: Your track record in comics seems to give you the latitude to work with any publisher you wish, so what prompts you to bring projects like this to Avatar?

Ennis: Total creative freedom, good contract, William Christensen's care and attention to detail regarding production values. Essentially, I can do anything I want and the end result will look very good indeed.

Variety: What is it about the Western as a genre that manages to endure despite constant pronouncements of its loss of influence or impending doom?

Ennis: It's utterly classic. Truly epic in scope. We're talking about a time of exploration, colonization, violence, romance, horror; filled with myths that have seared themselves into our culture. The Western isn't going anywhere, no more than sci-fi, crime, war, fantasy or any other genres are.

A Mad Year

Year-end wrap-ups have become a mind-numbing fixture for media outlets desperate to fill slow December news days. But few have quite the same skewed POV as Mad Magazine, whose ninth annual list of the year’s 20 dumbest people, events and things hits stands Dec. 20 in issue #473.

Mad editor John Ficarra says the list is a yearlong project for the “usual gang of idiots” who put out the magazine. And luckily for them 2006 had more than its fair share of candidates.

Among the obvious events to make the list were the war in Iraq, Vice President Cheney accidentally shooting his hunting buddy, “Survivor” winner Richard Hatch failing to pay taxes on his million-dollar prize, Mel Gibson’s drunken screed, the rise of YouTube, Paris Hilton’s short-lived vow of celibacy, and the Bush administration’s assault on civil rights.

The events that make the list are a combination of the obvious and dumb luck, Ficarra says. “I think we knew the war in Iraq was probably going to be on the list just from the way it was going, so that was pretty much a no-brainer. And then you have the things that fall into the comedy writer’s lap like the Mel Gibson tirade.”

Doing humor in a magazine requires its own approach. Ficarra says Mad prefers high-impact visuals, but also has the space to go in more depth.

“We can do a takeoff of a movie poster, or a take off of YouTube, where we can really capture the flavor of whatever it is that we’re spoofing and make it look just like it,” he says. “(Readers) can go back and take a second or third look, especially on the denser ones. We did YouTube this year and there’s an awful lot on that page you might not get the first time out.” 

Here are Ficarra’s comments on a few of the items on the list:

* On Hatch, portrayed in the magazine with tax forms tattooed all over his body in a spoof of the TV show “Prison Break”: “You have to wonder what is going through this guy’s mind. Half of America saw you win the money, you have to think the IRS saw you too?”

* On Hilton’s celibacy vow, portrayed with a faux cover to No-Action Comics No. 1 (Final issue!) drawn by J. Scott Campbell: “Paris keeping away from sex is like a dog promising not to sniff a fire hydrant. It’s just not going to happen.” (Click on image for a closer look.)

* On the Cheney shooting accident, which also made the cover: “That happened very early in the year and yet it made our cover because it seems like such a dumb thing.”

While a few late-breaking dumb things were past the issue’s deadline, such as the O.J. Simpson book disaster and Britney Spears’ underwear forgetfulness, there was one nice coincidence. The Gibson item is illustrated with a picture of the actor on the cover of a book titled “Mel Kampf” that is published by Regan Books, which was to publish the O.J. Simpson confessional book and whose founder, Judith Regan, was ousted last week in part because of anti-Semitic comments.

“We’re not as smart as we look having that on there, but I’m very happy that it is on there,” Ficarra says.

Mad has managed to survive where other humor mags have not for a number of reasons, but Ficarra
points in particular to the way it appeals both to young and old readers.

Ficarra says they try to layer the magazine so it appeals to different ages. “We don’t use four letter words in the magazine. It makes our job harder and it keeps us tighter as writers.” Sexual content is done more with words and visuals.

Mad readers follow a typical pattern of giving up the magazine around age 16 and coming back to in their 20s.

“You go away (from Mad) for a while and then you’re out of college and on your first business trip, stuck in an airport on a layover, milling around the magazine shop and you’ll go, ‘Oh, Mad! I haven’t seen that in a while.’ You pick it up and we’ve got you back again,” Ficarra says. “Anecdotally, we hear that story all the time.”

Marvel's Days of Future Past

Marvel Comics’ past and present will come together this Saturday, as Stan Lee and Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada appear at UCLA with Kevin Smith in a benefit event for The Hero Initiative called Marvel Then & Now.

“With a guy like Kevin Smith acting as the interlocutor, I don’t think there will be any problem having a real fun evening,” says Lee, who as most people know co-created most of Marvel’s classic superhero characters. “I’ve done things with him before. Of course, he’s a lot smarter and cleverer, more articulate and more innovative than I am, but at some point he always has to stop for breath.”

The Hero Initiative is an org that provides financial assistance to comicbook creators, many of whom created or worked on classic characters at a time when there were no royalties or retirement benefits. Lee says that there was little time to think about such things in those days.

“Years ago, nobody was making enough money that they could say, ‘Gee, maybe we ought to help out the other guy.’ Everybody was just hoping they could pay his own rent,” he says. “But now comics are paying better, there are royalty arrangements and a lot of really top writers and artists in the business – and even those who aren’t quite at the top but are working steady – they’re making fairly good money. And when we think about the people who were in it years ago, who were really the ones who helped start the business, and who for some reason or other aren’t finding employment and are down on their luck, it seems that it’s kind of a nice thing to do to get a fund and help them out when we can.”

The death earlier this week of Dave Cockrum, who co-created such seminal characters as Storm, Nightcrawler and Colossus during his stint as X-Men artist in the 1970s, is one such example. Cockrum benefited from a pension arranged by Marvel a few years ago, when his health was in decline and medical bills were piling up. But that arrangement is not the norm for artists in his situation.

Lee says he hopes the efforts of The Hero Initiative will encourage comics publishers to make such arrangements common. “I would think they’re all decent human beings and I would think that there’s a good chance that this will make them all feel we should set something up. It’s just a case of we should take care of our own.”

The Hero Initiative, while modeled on a similar program for retired baseball stars, also has analogs in Hollywood, such as the Motion Picture & Television Fund.

“Most of the people in the entertainment business have things like this where they help their own. And I think it’s just a sign that the comic business is growing up,” he says.
Of the event itself, Lee says he will go in and see what the crowd is interested in hearing him talk about.

When it comes to Quesada and today’s Marvel Comics, Lee says he’s impressed with them, especially the current Civil War storyline in which Spider-Man revealed his secret identity to the world.

“If I had thought of it, I would have tried to have done it. I think it’s that great an idea. I would have fought for it,” Lee says. “In those days, just having Spider-Man get married or having an issue were he decides to give up to stop being Spider-Man for a months or two, those things were considered revolutionary. But we’ve gone beyond that now.”

The event is set for 7 p.m. at UCLA’s Ackerman Grand Ballroom, and will be preceded by a VIP reception at 5:30. Tickets to the event cost $20; admission to the VIP reception is $100 and tickets are available by calling (310) 825-2101.

Fraction by the numbers

Fans of independent comics have known about writer Matt Fraction for a while. He turned the 1970s-style action pic genre on its side with “The Last of the Independents,” united Mark Twain and Nicola Tesla to fight crime in “Five Fists of Science” and now is jumping into the Marvel Universe with Punisher War Journal #1 and Immortal Iron Fist #1 due next month.

But the ultimate Fraction reading experience so far is Casanova, an ultracool take on the spy genre that’s near and dear to the Kansas City-based writer’s heart.

“I’ve always loved the super-spy genre — and not even necessarily the John le Carre or ‘Sandbaggers’ sort of working-class spy. I want ‘The Ipcress File,’ I want ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,’ ” he says.

The impetus for Casanova, published by Image Comics, sprang from the format Warren Ellis developed for Fell — a 24-page book with a 16-page comic story and eight pages of text material published monthly for a mere $1.99. Fraction says that format was almost like a challenge.

“I thought: ‘Sixteen pages. I can find the time somewhere to scribble down 16 pages,’ ” he says, adding that he had at the time a full-time job working on videos and commercials for local studio MK12.

The format also made sense for other reasons. “It’s a $2 book, and that really kind of minimizes everybody’s financial risk across the board — retailer, publisher and consumer.”

The result is a trippy series about the scion of the family behind the secret, world-dominating spy org E.M.P.I.R.E. The tales are an unusual and intoxicating mix of daredevil violence, sex, family rivalries and the twists and turns of loyalty that come part and parcel with the spy genre. Illustrated by Brazilian artist Gabriel Ba, whose work includes the excellent graphic novel “Ursula,” Casanova has earned critical attention from discerning fans and mainstream media such as Entertainment Weekly.

Writing those 16 pages a month is, however, not as simple as it may seem as the format demands a density of story that belies its relative brevity. Fraction says he recently finished writing the first volume of the series, which will run seven issues, and says it feels like he has crammed three to four years’ worth of story into that space.

Fraction says he’s thrilled to have Ba illustrating the series, which is black and white with green spot color. Ba also has designed and executed the striking covers, which are unlike anything else on the comic book stands. “He’s really kind of making them work as a set,” Fraction says.
Image also published this summer Fraction’s original graphic novel “The Five Fists of Science,” illustrated by Steven Sanders. An admirer of both Twain and Tesla, Fraction says that his first thought upon learning the two men were real-life friends was that they would fight crime together, not realizing how close to reality that instinct was.

“I just tugged at this loose thread hanging off of this sweater and suddenly there’s this amazing story in my lap where Twain and Tesla were in fact really close friends and had this plan to bring about world peace,” he says. “We were halfway into the book and Sanders found this essay by Tesla about war automatons after we’d already sort of made it up. We thought we were making up more than we actually were.”

Fraction says a lot of thought was given to whether the book should be serialized first. “To commit to a monthly schedule we would have had to have had the last issue finished anyway by the time we solicited it. It seemed like a graphic novel and that was what we always wanted to do and there it was,” he says. “Neither one of us were terribly well known, so I don’t know that it would have done any better one way or the next.”

Fraction has made inroads with other publishers, writing a serial for 30 Days of Night: Bloodsucker Tales and a Wolverine story drawn by Sam Keith for X-Men Unlimited #9. Now, he’s planting his feet firmly in the Marvel Universe with the debut of the new Punisher War Journal series. The title debuts Nov. 22 with art by Ariel Olivetti and will have the character interact more with the Marvel Universe than he does in Garth Ennis’ Punisher title.

Fraction says he sees the vigilante character as having gotten over the trauma of seeing his family killed. “Frank’s mission is to prevent other Franks from happening,” he says.

And while the tone will differ from that of Ennis’ book, there is no escaping the character’s potential for comedy. “It’s impossible not to find moments of black humor in anybody that’s that single-minded and psychotic. It’s just a really enjoyable thing to write,” he says.

Punisher War Journal #1 is followed the next week by the release of Immortal Iron Fist #1, written by Fraction and Ed Brubaker and featuring art by David Aja. Iron Fist has never had much success as a solo character — his original series only ran 15 issues before it was merged into the mildly popular 1980s series Power Man and Iron Fist — and more recent attempts to establish him as a solo star have fallen short.

Fraction says the goal on the new book is simply to bring out the cool facets of Iron Fist while staying true to the character’s origins as part of Marvel’s take on the grindhouse films of the 1970s.

“He’s a billionaire kung-fu master who has this crazy burning fist that can destroy things when he punches it and he goes around kicking people and being a billionaire and has a really hot girlfriend,” Fraction says. “We want to write a big kung-fu comic, an awesome fight comic with a kind of sleazy exploitation-y superhero awesomeness.”

Now writing comics full time, Fraction says he feels lucky to have entered the field able to focus on quality rather than having to take any available work to make ends meet.

“I’m not afraid to walk away if I know I’m not sticking the landing rather than embarrass myself and produce something that’s mediocre,” he says. “Which might end up being sort of megalomaniacal and presumptuous and suicidal as time goes on, but it lets me look at myself in the mirror so I’m pretty happy with it.”

Winick on "Trials"

He's strong, he wears a cape, he flies and everyone knows who he is. He takes on a colorful rogue’s gallery in his battle for truth and justice. He’s not Superman; he’s Shazam! (a.k.a. Captain Marvel), who decades ago rivaled the man of steel in the hearts and minds of comic book buying kids everywhere.

The intervening decades have not been kind to the good Captain and his extended family of Marvels, something that DC comics and writer Judd Winick and artist Howard Porter are looking to rectify in the “The Trials of Shazam!,”  a 12-issue maxiseries that debuted in comics shops this week.

Winick, known to millions from his tenure on MTV’s seminal reality show “The Real World,” has become a mainstay at DC Comics, which has long struggled to find the right approach to Captain Marvel.

“Dan (Didio) and I talked about it and the bottom line is what wasn’t working about him isn’t so much the antiquated qualities of the character as much that everyone thinks of him as a rip off or Superman,” Winick says. “He needed his own realm, needed his own toy box. And for us, we wanted to concentrate on his becoming a character of magic.”

Magic has always played a part in the DCU, but Winick says he thinks a lot of the best magic ended up migrating to the Vertigo imprint with titles like "Hellblazer" and "Books of Magic." That left the DCU in need of getting its magic back.

“We want to tap into what it’s like to have cool magic, stuff sort of like 'Hellboy' and Joss Whedon’s 'Buffy' and things like that and wrap it up in this new version of Shazam,” Winick says. “In general we’re taking a more realistic view of an unrealistic realm. People who are doing magic are aware they’re doing magic and they comment on it and think it’s crazy. I have small little bits of it in the first issue, where he’s fighting and this giant demonic frog crashes out of the castle and attacks him. His comments under his breath are like, ‘Wow, that’s a really big frog.’”

The status of magic in the DCU became a major element in the Days of Vengeance series, which shows The Spectre killing the wizard Shazam, who gives Captain Marvel his powers. That opens the door for major changes in the plot of “Trials of Shazam!”

“Captain Marvel more or less gets kicked upstairs. He’s no longer going to be the guy in the red suit. The wizard Shazam perished in Days of Vengeance and now someone has to fill that void,” he says.

Filling the void left by Captain Marvel is Freddy Freeman, better known for more than 50 years as Captain Marvel Jr. Freddy has to visit the gods whose powers make up the name Shazam and undergo their trials to prove he is worthy of replacing Captain Marvel. “If he succeeds in his tests, he is rewarded with their power,” Winick says. “And when he succeeds, he will become, not Captain Marvel, he will become a character called Shazam.”

The new magic order in the DCU has a permanent effect on the members of the Marvel family, which in the Golden Age expanded to include Mary Marvel and such oddballs as Uncle Marvel, Tall Marvel, Fat Marvel and even Hillbilly Marvel and Tawky Tawny the talking lion. “We clearly define that there are no more Marvels. They’re all gone,” says Winick.

For hardcore fans, the whimsy and the often silly nature of the Golden Age Captain Marvel was what made it unique. “There’s a lot of stuff that’s in the same realm as Plastic Man and a lot of the old-school fans like that. But that doesn’t work real well for the mainstream comic book audience,” he says.

It was humor that first made fans sit up and Winick for his work on “Barry Ween,” a series Winick says is on the backburner while he concentrates on his work for DC and his Cartoon Network show, “The Adventures of Juniper Lee,” now in its third season.

That doesn’t mean “Trials of Shazam!” will be humorless. “Anyone who’s read my stuff knows that I crack jokes ad nauseum. My most serious books have lots of jokes in them. Being funny and being serious are not two different things.”

Stan's still the man

Stan Lee is still creating new superheroes. His company, POW! Entertainment and IDT Entertainment have teamed up to create a pair of new animated superheroes that will debut on DVD under the banner “Stan Lee Presents” and air later on Cartoon Network.
“They’re pretty much Marvel type, you know, what I’ve done all the time, but they’re different. I don’t want to repeat myself,” Lee said Saturday at Comic-Con Intl.
The first feature stars a teen-age superhero character called Condor. “I felt that it was time that we had a really good Latin superhero,” says Lee. “He’s a skateboarding wizard also. And you can since it’s in animation, there’s so much we can do with the skateboarding.”
Lee says Condor will be in some ways similar to his hallmark creation, Spider-Man, in that he’ll have to deal with his parents, girl trouble and school. “It has a lot of action, but I’d like to think it also has a lot of heart.”
The second title is Mosaic. “Mosaic is a little more fanciful. There’s more fantasy to it and it has to do with another race of people,” Lee says. “Again, we place it in the real world with a lot of real world situations and incidents so that it doesn’t seem ridiculous or far-fetched.”
Condor and Mosaic will debut on DVD first and then air on Cartoon Network in the first quarter of 2007.
But that’s not all. Lee also says he’s working on developing a movie called “The Forever Man” at Paramount. The project is still in the early stages of development and writing the screenplay.
Lee also has his reality competition show, “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?” debuting Thursday on Sci Fi Channel.
“Obviously, we can’t expect them to try to leap over buildings or run faster than a Ferrari, so we test them on qualities that we think a superhero should have, like courage, sympathy, dependability,” Lee says.
Early response from critics and viewers has been positive and Lee says he’s happy with the sportsmanlike tone of the show. “The people don’t hate each other. They’re not out to hurt each other. They’re all competing, but all the competitors have become friends and when one is eliminated you should see how the others try to comfort the one who was eliminated.”
Lee also is getting back into the comics action, scripting the “lost issue” of Fantastic Four, which will reconstruct the original plot and art for issue #102, which was Jack Kirby’s last on the title.
Marvel will be celebrating Lee’s 65th anniversary with the company next year with a special project. For each issue, Lee will write a 10-page story in which he interacts with one of his Marvel creations and another 10-page story written by the company’s top writers that will be in some way about Stan.
“I made them funny,” he says. “Nobody has ever done a humorous story about these characters. The world may not realize this, but I love to write humor. I like to write humor more than anything. So I finally had a chance to get it out of my system.”
Lee says he kept that humorous approach for an X-Men comic book story he wrote for an upcoming DVD release of the movie trilogy. “I figure if I’m going to write comics, there’s no point in just doing another X-Men adventure,” he says. “But by making them funny, it’s all a new way of looking at it. But I’m doing them in a humorous way without changing the characters. The humor comes out of my interplay with the characters, but the characters remain in character. I’m not poking fun.”

Tad Stones: Hellboy and beyond

Tad Stones is the writer, producer and director of "Hellboy: Swords of Storms," the new animated DVD feature film. His past credits include "The Return of Jafar," "Darkwing Duck," "Buzz Lightyear of Star Command," and "Atlantis II: Milo's Return," to name a few. After hosting the Hellboy animated panel at Comic-Con, he took a few minutes to chat about Hellboy, working in animation, future projects and his blog.

Thanks for meeting me to chat about this.

TS: No problem. I'm really excited about the project so it's easy to talk about.

I went to the screening, and you pretty much answered 90% of my questions there.

TS: Especially, the "What's Happening with Hellboy 2" question, right?

Actually, that's what my boss sent me to get.

TS: We had planned for the question/answer. We knew the first question would be, "What's happening with "Hellboy 2?" The second one will be, "Why aren't you making more 'Hellboy' comics?" And the third one will be "Why doesn't this look like the comic?" We tried to hit all that we could.

How did you happen upon "Hellboy"?

TS: I collected comics when I was a kid, fell out of it around college, got back into it around the time I came to Disney TV animation, and around that time there were many comic shops. It was the perfect time to get back into it because Frank Miller put out "The Dark Night Returns," "Watchmen" came out, and the independent comic book explosion happened. It was really fantastic. I went back to my old collection and realized some of it I was just collecting because I wanted a perfect set. I traded them in instead of getting cash. The guy would let me pick out any comic and I got to sample a large range. And I became familiar with Mike's work through "Cosmic Odyssey" with DC and his style really popped for me. I knew about "Hellboy" when it came out, so I read it since day one. It's been fantastic to work with him.

Why didn't you go with CG for "Sword of Storms"?

TS: Frankly it was a practical call on my part. There was a CG test done by a guy in Sweden and it looked fantastic and right out of the comic. But it took him two years to do because he was finessing it frame by frame. That was very interesting and it excited a lot of people. But I was like, what does Liz look like? What does the female characters look like? It had a kind of a puppetry look. Not like a high end project like Pixar. On a DVD level, you don't have time to finesse it.

The other reason is that part of the design of the movies -- and we hope to have a big series of movies -- is that the characters never go back to the same place twice. This is was really out of the question because you'll notice a lot of CG movies, like in science fiction, you'll have rocky planets or deserts in the background because you can generate those. But in "Hellboy," we might use an ancient English castle one day and tomorrow we'll have a Tibetan temple or now we're underwater.                  

People think the characters can be more detailed and you don't have to worry about models. I'm not worried about the characters, I'm concerned about the world around them and putting them in it. I knew we couldn't do it on our budget in CG as well as I could in a 2D universe. Frankly, the first question I was asked by the studio was, "Will this be 2D or CG?" I think they were taken back by how quickly I said 2D because I've been thinking about it. I pitched this project 11 years ago at Disney so I've been thinking about it a lot.

I can't even imagine going for "Hellboy" 11 years ago at Disney. I doubt they would go for a film with the word "Hell" in the title.

TS: That's the trick. This is when Dean Valentine was at Disney (he later went to UPN), he just wanted to shake things up and try different things. He said pitch anything you want for primetime. And this is what I pitched. He said, right or wrong, this is a narrow niche that you have. I like this stuff, but I was pitching a half-hour show and he said the network didn't have anything to hook it up with. There are things they liked about it a lot, but they were looking for another "Simpsons," as everyone who works in primetime looks for. If you have a half-hour fantasy horror show, what do you link it up with? "Who's the Boss?" You need to think of programming.

So what are the future plans for the "Hellboy" DVD series?

TS: The main future plan is that as long as enough people watch and buy the DVDs, IDT has seven years of rights and the best plan for them is a series of movies. Unless you have a hit live-action series, selling a series is a trick sell. They were saying for them a series of movies is better. I started off thinking of building a TV series, but I moved it for many reasons. A movie, even if limited by budget and time, you can still finesse it to get it to tell the story you want to tell.

In a TV series, you really can't justify beautiful storyboards. You can't do it over. Time and schedule is king. It needs to go through. And Mike Mignola's involvement would be much less. With a movie, we work out the story together. We go over the outline, he'll read the script, and any character that he originally created, and I make sure he sees the design. In a series, unless he wants to give up everything he's doing, which is a lot, there is not way he can be involved other then in the premise. I'd have to say, "Here are a few ideas," and we can go over it, but it can't take over his life.

How long have you had your blog going?

TS: Since November of last year. My frustration of the blog is that they don't want certain images out. I had to wait to Comic-Con. For the last month part of what I've been doing in okaying sculptures, and paint jobs and things like that, and now that are all in display cases downstairs and I can tell people about it. The blog was a chance to show people behind the scenes. I got the best reactions for the mundane things like storyboards. And it's a different inside take. I couldn't do a daily blog because of the gap in time.

Any other comics you wish to give a movie makeover to?

TS: Naw. The next step would be doing my own character. There's a character I've done that's a young girl protagonist that's a lot of fun. Doing my own comic is the next stage. I've made a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot money for Disney and other places. I did the Disney homevideo "The Return of Jafar." I pitched the homevideo to keep our budget up on the TV series and it went out and did fantastic. It started a whole new area of business for them.

Look at what Mike has done. He created a character that is so much a part of him. I have a taste for that now. I'd like to step out on my own. People are asking me to do comic stories and I get to enter that as a little bit of a professional. Should I go into a character, I wonder if it should debut as a script, or should it debut as a comic? That's the fun of seeing Comic-Con. When you see these characters come out of independent comics, some games suddenly having a comic or a new movie. It really is the pop culture convention. The world comes here to see some bizarre stuff. "Hellboy" was my dream project. Now it's time to make my own dream. And then get some sucker to animate it for me.

Of Mouse and Man...

Bags & Boards wraps up its in depth look at Archaia Studios Press with our interview with David Petersen, creator of "Mouse Guard." Issue #1 of "Mouse Guard" has already sold-out its initial run of 8,000 copies which hit shelves this past February. As David deals with new found popularity, Bags & Boards sits down with him before he really blows up.

Bags & Boards: When and how did you first decide to approach Archaia Studios Press and Mark Smylie?

David Petersen: It was suggested to me in San Diego last year that I should talk to Mark about publishing "Mouse Guard." I was familiar with his book "Artesia" and had spoken with him at a convention years back about my portfolio, but didn't know that Archaia was starting to publish other fantasy type work. After hearing that, I went right over to the Archaia booth and reintroduced myself.

BB: I was quite taken by the black and white version. Did you originally intend
to realize the series in color?

DP: I self published the black and white mostly because of budget. When I drew it, I intended it to be black and white, but I have always thought of the story and characters as a world with color.  The first images I ever made of the mice were in color so it wasn't a stretch in my mind. I'm very pleased with the color results.

BB: How have people responded to "Mouse Guard?"

DP: Very well. It's pretty amazing. Everyone from little kids to the elderly has said they enjoy it. Comic collectors or not, everyone who contacts me about it is pretty positive. The book has received some great reviews, and I could not be more pleased with the response.

BB: In your introduction to "Mouse Guard: Belly of the Beast," you reveal some of the history of the "Mouse Guard." Will you explore the winter of war in a prequel mini-series?

DP: It's a story I decided not to tell when I started Mouse Guard. I didn't want the first story to have weasels at all. I also didn't want the first story to introduce the characters mired in a war.  It's something that I would plan on exploring at some point though. I have verbally told the war plot to a comic artist friend of mine, he made me promise to do that story eventually.

BB: You have Mouse Guard sculptures on your personal website. Did you sculpt and paint those yourself?

DP: Yes, I did. They travel with me to some of the conventions I attend and they are received well. I hope that we can do something similar as a product for the "Mouse Guard" audience.

BB: What other artists have inspired your work as a writer? As an illustrator?

DP: I'm fond of Mike Mignola's straightforward story approach to "Hellboy". It has a great face value. While you can read into it, at that point what you see is what you get. When I 'write' "Mouse Guard," I'm really typing up an outline of a story I have told verbally to myself or close friends. Like a good joke, it gets honed the more it's told. As an Illustrator, I am a fan of the visuals of Rick Geary, Mike Mignola, Arthur Adams, Maurice Sendak, John Tenniel, and E. H. Shepard.

BB: Do you feel Baby Boomers and Gen-X'ers will respond to the material since they've grown up with "Watership Down," "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" and "Red Wall"?

DP: To some degree, yes, I think it runs deeper than that, though. There are no shortage of books and stories with animals as the main characters. Rudyard Kipling, Kenneth Grahame, Aesop, and many Native American tales are great examples of this being an ongoing tradition. You can imply volumes about who a character is by using an animal to represent them.

BB: These three novels eventually came to life as animated films ("Watership Down" and "The Secret of NIMH") and a TV series ("Red Wall Abbey"). Do you hope to see a similar adaptation of "Mouse Guard"?

DP: I think it would be a good fit.

BB: Have you put together a script?

DP: I'm focusing all my energy on the comic right now. I think the 6 issue story arc would be a great outline for a movie script. It introduces the main characters, explains who the Guard is, what they do, what they don't do, and shows you where and how they live.

Reprints of issue #1 and the new issue #2 are available at your local comic book shop this month.

Alex Sheikman ... Mr. Robotika

Bags & Boards interviews "Robotika" creator Alex Sheikman as Part 2 of our "Digging into Archaia" spotlight.  We get behind the genesis of his steampunk samurai story and get seriously educated on some of the other great artists who have inspired Alex's work.

Bags & Boards: On your website, you say that you have been working on "Robotika" for a long time. Exactly how long has it taken to get "Robotika" into readers’ hands?

Alex Sheikman: I seriously started working on "Robotika" a little over two years ago. The first year was spent on designing characters and trying to write the script for the first 48 pages. At the time, I was thinking that I was going to self-publish "Robotika" as a 48-page graphic novel, so I spent a lot of time figuring out the printing and distribution aspects of comics. Last April-March I got hooked-up with Archaia Studios Press. Since ASP took upon themselves all the responsibilities for printing, marketing, and distribution, I was able to devote myself to drawing and writing. That has been awesome, and I just want to say how much respect I have developed for independent creators who self-publish their work. There are just not enough hours in the day to get everything done!

BB: What inspired you to create this futuristic world and tell this tale of a new age ronin?

AS: For me, "Robotika" began as a sketch of Niko the "SteamPunk Samurai". I drew a warrior that was a cross between a Mexican bandit and a futuristic samurai. I kept doodling and making up other cross genre mind benders that combined past with future and West with East, like "wasabi western" and "cossack yojimbo". As time went on I realized that I was coming up with something that I would be very much interested in expanding into a real story and drawing.

Given a chance to write my own story, I used that as a mechanism to expand on my thoughts about heroic fantasy and how to portray a hero. As I got more comfortable with writing, the tone of "Robotika" changed. The first issue reads more like a fable than an adventure story, in the second issue I started shifting away from captions and doing most of the action description through dialogue. By the time I was writing issue #3, I was in full swing writing an adventure story in the tradition of books like Three Musketeers and Treasure Island.

BB: "Robotika" seems ready made for telling in an anime or manga format with its techno-organic cityscapes, conniving corporations and genetic manipulations. Yet the Western look is the exact opposite of those mediums. How did you arrive at the aesthetic of your world?

AS: I think that the look of the series is a reflection of where I am in my continuing development as an artist. I am not someone who can switch art styles to suit different assignments. I spent the last few years drawing RPG illustrations and during that time I worked out an approach to visualizing my ideas a certain way. When it came time to start drawing "Robotika," I just continued working the same way.

I think like everybody else. I tend to draw the kind of artwork I like to look at. I have not mastered putting down on paper exactly what I see in my mind's eye, but I hope that as I get more practice that I'll get closer to that.

BB: You have a visual style that feels new yet familiar. Who and/or what have been influences over you illustration style?

AS: That is a tough question. Everything influences me. I tend to absorb many things from movies and books, as well as comics and book illustrations.

Two artists have very much influenced my approach to drawing and specifically my approach to "Robotika." Alphonso Mucha is known as one of the most influential Art Nouveau artists and I just love how organic his line work feels. I have tried to learn how to put down lines like that using a brush.

On the other side of the spectrum is a German graphic artist, Ludwig Hohlwein. His forms are so simple, yet very expressive, powerful, and yet subtle. I love his work and have been looking at it a lot. So I am struggling to achieve a balance somewhere in between the organic Art Nouveau and the graphic Art Deco look.

I am also very excited about the artwork by Tony Salmons, Rodolfo Damaggio, and Leif Jones. Tony Salmons is able to communicate movement and energy in his drawing that is just incredible. Rodolfo Damaggio is a superb storyteller and reading his comics or following his movie storyboards is just a real pleasure. Leif Jones is a friend and a fellow artist whose artistic quest and experimentation has been inspiring me for years. He is just one of these guys who can draw anything and make it look good.

BB: You silhouette and use shadowing generously. Are these deliberate techniques that you use for pacing and storytelling?

AS: "Yes" and "No." I do try to spot my blacks in such a way as to draw the reader's eye across the page and direct the story flow. At the same time, my approach to drawing tends to be very graphic with solid black areas indicating shadows and helping composition. So it is a combination of trying to draw the best that I can, and at the same time trying to keep in mind the overall composition of the page and the flow of images across it.

BB: Have you collaborated with Ryan Sook (cover artist) or Joel Chua (colors) prior to "Robotika?" How did you connect with these guys?

AS: Ryan is an old friend who was very influential in the beginning stages of "Robotika." In fact, when "Robotika" was called "SteamPunk Samurai" and was only a short story, he was actually going to write it. From his script came some of the building blocks around which the first 4 issues are constructed. Ryan has always encouraged me to pursue my artistic endeavors and his work has been an inspiration that kept me going through the rough spots in the creative process. Ryan is a natural storyteller and every time I hit a "bump" I always think of him as someone who can help solve any storytelling problem.

Art wise we only collaborated once. I inked Ryan's pencils for a Wizards of the Coast championship contest. It was a fun assignment and I learned a lot from it.

Joel is a new friend, whom I met when Mark contacted him to color "Robotika." He is a great artist in his own right and I must admit that I did not make "Robotika" easy for him. I always think in very graphic black and white, and I even completed the first issue thinking that the book will be published in black and white. I merged gray tones right on the digital files and Joel had a tough time separating the different layers. He is doing a great job, and I very much hope to work with him in the future.

BB: On your website, you have links to two French artists: Claire Wendling and Benoit Springer. How would you describe the difference between American and European illustrators? Do you feel a greater affinity to the work being done in Europe?

AS: Good comics are good comics, no matter where they are being published.

I worked and lived in Netherlands for a bit, and while there I was exposed to the work of many fine European cartoonists. It was a great experience that helped me broaden my artistic horizons and "discover" some very cool artists like Wendling, Springer, Palacios, and Toppi. Since than, I have noticed that more and more of European artists are starting to get exposure in North America. Sergio Toppi is doing covers for Marvel, Juanjo Guarnido's "Blacksad" is being published by iBooks, and Claire Wendling's Iguana Bay 2.0 got published in an English edition. I think that is awesome because I can't read French and I look forward to the day when all of their work will be available in English.

As far as the differences between American and European illustrators goes, I think it is mainly a difference of "expectation". Here in North America a comic book artist is expected to pencil 10 issues of 22 pages each to stay in the comic book public's eye. In Europe, an artist pencils/inks and colors about 50 pages a year. That is a huge difference of expectation and workload. I think both are fine because they are describing two different markets and I think I am fortunate that I am able to enjoy both versions of creativity.

Join us for the final installment of "Digging into Archaia" as we interview David Petersen, the creator of "Mouse Guard."

Digging into Archaia Pt. 1

Archaia Studios Press is enjoying a banner year even though it's only March. David Petersen's "Mouse Guard" issue #1 has sold out its initial 8,000-copy print run, and ASP plans a second printing of issue #1 to hit shelves with issue #2. On the critical front, the hardcover edition of "The Lone and Level Sands" has garnered nominations for the Glyph Award (Best Reprint Publication) and the Howard E. Day Memorial Prize. All of this success comes after an expansion in 2005 into publishing other creator owned properties.

With three major cons behind us, Bags & Boards takes a moment to sit down with ASP founder Mark Smylie and Aki Liao to discuss their books, the biz and the future for ASP.

Bags & Boards: Archaia Studios Press ends 2005 by getting "The Lone and Level Sands" on shelves.  Then ASP starts off the New Year with two new titles, Mouse Guard and Robotika, and more on the way.  How long has ASP had this expansion in the works?

Aki Liao: Mark and I initially talked about working together and expanding the line of Archaia Studios Press offerings in early 2005.

Mark Smylie: Well, it might have been even a year or two before that when we first started talking about it, but early 2005 saw our first official expansion talks with Alex Sheikman’s submission of Robotika. We didn’t want to proceed with the expansion idea until we were sure we had at least one solid book to base it on, and Alex’s book was the one that made us say, "Hey, maybe we can do this." And as we were working on landing Robotika, David [Petersen] showed us Mouse Guard, and I think we absolutely knew that the expansion would work.

BB: What other titles does ASP plan to introduce in 2006?

AL: As announced, we’re looking forward to working with Chris Moeller on the next installment of his Iron Empires series, entitled "Blood und Iron," slated for Fall/Winter 2006. Peter Bergting (The Portent) has been attached to do the artwork. And we’re in very preliminary talks to launch at least one other project in 2006. In general, we’re looking at adding a title once a quarter

MS: We hope to have our late 2006 and early 2007 projects in place by the summer convention season to give us good promotion time. In the meantime, the next Artesia limited series, Artesia Besieged, will begin in June…finally!

BB: Is ASP still looking for more creators to collaborate with in the near future?

MS: Yup.

AL: As we’ve stated, ASP is interested in publishing creator-owned comic books in the fantasy, horror, pulp noir, and science fiction genres that contain idiosyncratic and atypical writing and art. We’ve been very fortunate to be working with such a wonderfully talented and easy-to-work-with group of individuals, producing really fantastic work. What we’re also careful about is not just to publish comics for the sake of publishing comics. So a lot of it will depend on what we come across in the submissions.

BB: How did you find David Petersen (The Mouse Guard) and Alex Sheikman (Robotika)?

AL: First and foremost, it is clear that Mark Smylie is the consummate professional and his reputation as an even-keeled individual precedes us.

MS: Huh?

AL: I’m fairly certain folks are working with us because of him. Alex’s Robotika was pretty much a cold submission. David Petersen was an introduction through a mutual friend, Bill Baker. David also credits Mark’s helpful and insightful portfolio review of his work at a Wizard Chicago Con some years earlier as leaving a lasting and positive impression.

MS: Well, you’ll have to check with David about that. But yeah, I’d met David at Chicago several years ago. Then at San Diego Comic-Con last year, Bill had told him that I was looking for new submissions. I think I pretty much offered to publish Mouse Guard on the spot.

BB: Have their titles met your expectations in terms of creativity, audience demand and critical response?

AL: We’re quite proud of all of our titles. We are very pleased with results of Mouse Guard #1 and #2. Fans and retailers alike have been very positive about the series. I hope the momentum will continue to build throughout the course of the series. David is already hinting at another Mouse Guard series after this initial 6-issue run is completed. Alex’s Robotika has done fairly well considering the odds of getting a new title to market. There’s a strong following already and hopefully this is only the beginning. Alex is quite a talent, and I look forward to the coming issues. Critical response to all of our titles has been really positive. Even our historical fiction hardcover graphic novel, The Lone and Levels Sands (by A. David Lewis, MpMann and Jennifer Rodgers) has been getting high marks. It’s terrific that all of our books including the mainstay, Artesia, are critically acclaimed.

MS: The Lone and Level Sands has already been nominated for a few awards—the original black-and-white edition is short-listed for the Howard Day Prize, it’s up for a Glyph Award for Best Reprint Publication, and it just got nominated for Best Graphic Novel of 2005 in ForeWord Magazine’s annual Book of the Year Awards—so we hope that the book continues to attract the kind of favorable critical attention that it has so far, and that it’s a harbinger of things to come for our other titles as well. And the complete sell-out of Mouse Guard #1 in less than a week (even though we had printed over 2,000 copies over initial orders) was a pleasant, though not totally unexpected, surprise; Mouse Guard in particular seems to appeal to a wide demographic, far wider than Artesia or Robotika, so we thought there might be a strong response from retailers and readers to David’s book.

BB: What’s the common theme that runs through ASP projects?

AL: Great art and storytelling. Our creators and artists have been terrific to work with. We’ve been really lucky. All of them are very supportive of each other, which is wonderful to see as well.

MS: I also hope that the books we’re publishing are all very personal works, true labors of love. For example, Alex’s Robotika has gotten some critical flack over his decision to use a vertical font for one of the characters, deliberately making it somewhat difficult to read what she’s saying. But it’s that kind of risk-taking and personal artistic and design creativity that we’re looking for. I think we hope our books won’t look like cookie-cutter factory product, but instead will look like the intense expressions of stubborn individualists. [laughing] Though come to think of it, there’s already been some talk of having an ‘annotated’ or ‘translated’ collection of Robotika so people can understand what Cherokee Geisha is saying…

BB: How has the RPG Artesia: Adventures in the Known World been received by Artesia fans and the general RPG audience?

MS: It’s still early on that so far. The reviews and feedback from people that have picked it up have been great, but the gaming market and the comics market are two different beasts and in effect I have to introduce myself and ASP as a gaming publisher to a new market almost completely from scratch. It also took way too long to finish (it’s 352 pages) so Artesia’s absence from the store shelves has probably had an effect as well.

BB: Aside from you own titles, what other books excite you?

AL: I’m a closet superhero guy at heart. As I’m fairly new to all of this, I’ve been going through quite the education with Mark handing me stuff to read. Anything from the classics—100 Bullets, Ghost in the Machine to Arvid Nelson’s Rex Mundi and Sean Wang’s Runners to new stuff. I recently picked up DMZ, Queen & Country, Fables, GunCandy, Roach, Dark Mists. So a variety of stuff. I love going over to Midtown Comics in NY and browsing the new releases shelves.

MS: [laughing] I, on the other hand, hate superheroes. 100 Bullets and Hellboy are probably the most mainstream books I read. Normally I tend to gravitate more towards fantasy and science fiction—books like Finder, Age of Bronze, Thieves & Kings, Rex Mundi—and books that have art that intrigues me—painted European books like Raptors from NBM, or Japanese manga by Shirow or Miyazaki. I guess I read books I’d like to publish.

Join us as we continue the discussion with Alex Sheikman and discuss his "Robotika" series in "Digging into Archaia Pt. 2."

Under the Sea

“Smallville” co-creator Al Gough has spilled some details on the upcoming Aquaman TV show, which will star former model Will Toale as the exiled King of Atlantis.

The show, as yet untitled, will shoot a pilot in March and is expected to become a signature show on the WB in the fall. The concept is similar to that of “Smallville,” with Arthur Curry being a 20-something dive shop owner. Gough says the show will differ from “Smallville” in that Aquaman will be an adult who is struggling to find his place in the world instead of a teenager trying to figure out who he is. The show also will have a strong environmental theme.

Despite heavy involvement in such comicbook projects as “Smallville,” “Spider-Man 2,” a potential “Iron Man” script and now Aquaman, Gough says he and writing partner Miles Millar were not into comics before it became a professional concern.

“We always feel like outsiders because it’s not a world we came from,” Gough says of comics fandom. “It was interesting to play in the DC universe and to play in the Marvel universe as well,” he says. “I think by not being longtime comicbook fans you can bring a fresh perspective to the table because you’re not encumbered by what they did in issue 142.”

Gough says he and Millar chose Aquaman for a number of reasons, including such simple things as availability. “When we looked at Aquaman, it was an interesting story. He’s an exiled prince of Atlantis and, in our incarnation, he is living in the Florida Keys,” he says. Throw in the environmental angle and the fact that Aquaman’s mythology is far less complex and more open than Superman’s and the choice was clear. “Of all the other superheroes in the DC universe, he had the most real world agenda.”

"Smallville's" 100th episode is airing Jan. 26, and Daily Variety will publish a special report on the show's milestone that day.

Of "Torso" and "Spawn"

Todd McFarlane’s plans to adapt the Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko graphic novel “Torso” to the big screen took years to develop, despite the seemingly obvious commercial slam-dunk you’d expect for a story about Eliot Ness and the nation’s first serial killer.

Now with Par on board as a studio, David Fincher attached to direct and writer Ehren Kruger adapting the script, McFarlane is confident the project has enough momentum to get made.

“We’ve done potentially one thing that is beneficial when you’re on the creative side which is you get the studio partially pregnant” by signing guys like Fincher and Kruger, McFarlane says. “They’ve got some money out there.” McFarlane says Fincher envisions the film as having a budget around $65 million and that the script should be ready by the time Fincher wraps his next project, “Benjamin Button.”

McFarlane says Kruger was the right choice to script for a number of reasons. “One, the studio liked him. Two, a lot of the scripts he writes get made into movies. Three, he’s able to focus on key people, characters and move them through stuff.”

McFarlane bought the option for the comic, which was published by Image, from Bendis and Andreyko. He says the comics’ creators will be involved in some capacity. “I’m sure they’ll be around and given as much input as people want to give them.”

Other McFarlane projects in the works include a new “Spawn” animated series, for which his company is searching for an animation house. McFarlane says there has been plenty of interest in the skein from various cable outlets, though no deals have been signed. The show will be offered first to HBO, which aired the previous “Spawn” animated series, he says.

McFarlane also is planning another “Spawn” feature. “I’m writing that script right now and if I’m not directing that movie this year, that would surprise me,” he says. McFarlane says he plans to finance production of the film himself.

Pekar Looks Back, Forward

Harvey Pekar’s been writing comics stories about himself for more than 30 years in the pages of “American Splendor.” But until now he’s never written about his life before he began publishing comics. “The Quitter,” a hardcover graphic novel illustrated by Dean Haspiel and coming out Oct. 5 from DC/Vertigo, changes that as Pekar tells the story of how he came to be comics’ most famous real-life curmudgeon.

The decision to write about this period of his life came in a roundabout way and involved repaying Haspiel for a major favor, Pekar says. “Dean Haspiel is the guy who introduced me to Ted Hope, from the movie company that made ‘American Splendor,’ and that was one of the biggest breaks that ever happened to me,” he says. “So I said to Dean, ‘What can I do, within reason, to pay you back?’ And he said that he’d like it if I would let him illustrate a long work of mine.”

Haspiel was at the time working for DC Comics and got the company interested in publishing Pekar’s next work. “At first we were just kicking around different ideas. I didn’t exactly know what I’d have to write in order to get DC to accept it. I guess my stature had grown to the point they were willing to consider stuff from me. I thought I might have to write something that was pretty much a compromise.”

Originally, the project was to be fiction, but morphed into nonfiction in the development.
“When I started doing this stuff, it just seemed to me to be so much better if I wrote it as it happened in an autobiographical way. And so I just did that and fortunately they liked it. They got behind it. I have to say I’ve gotten great support from them.”

At just over 100 pages, “The Quitter” is the longest story Pekar has written, but it retains the honest, warts-and-all look at his life that has been the hallmark of his work. The title comes from Pekar’s penchant to give up on various pursuits as a kid and recounts problems controlling his temper and holding a job.

“The reason I covered the period I did was I had never really gone to any great length to write about the years prior to the age of 32, when I first started publishing autobiographical comics,” Pekar says. “So I thought I’d write about what made me such a neurotic curmudgeon. It seems people are always interested in the curmudgeon angle.”

Pekar says he has no problem writing about his own faults or mistakes he’s made in his life.
“It’s not difficult because, maybe I’m a freak, but I don’t think I did anything that I should be ashamed of. I certainly made some bad judgments and got myself really badly messed up, but I didn’t kill anybody, I didn’t ruin anybody’s life or anything like that. There are much worse that you can do to people,” he says. “I try and talk about my faults and hope that others will identify with what I write. I mean, what’s the point of writing self-aggrandizing autobiography? To me, there is none.”

Pekar says he still writes comics the way it was portrayed in the 2003 “American Splendor” movie, using stick figure layouts with captions and word balloons for the artist to work from. Pekar and Haspiel had previously worked together on a handful of pages and Pekar says he was very happy with the results on “The Quitter.” “To my amazement, he was able to bring off practically to the letter what I asked him to do — or wanted him to do, anyway. He did some things that I hadn’t thought of, but they were all good.” Pekar says he and Haspiel have a few more collaborations in the work, including short strips for Playboy and Spin, and a short story for Dark Horse Comics.

“He’s got pretty good connections in New York and he was able to line up some jobs for us. And as far as I’m concerned, if he can line up work, I mean by using my name, well go ahead,” Pekar says.

Finding a place in the market hasn’t always been easy for Pekar, whose work often was lumped in with superhero comics by general audiences and largely ignored by comicbook fans who preferred superheroes and fantasy. Pekar published “American Splendor” himself at a loss and never expected to make money on the venture, especially after a series of well-known appearances on “Late Night with David Letterman” in the 1980s had no real effect on his sales. It took the “American Splendor” movie to change that.

“I didn’t think my comics had any kind of commercial potential,” Pekar says. “I thought, ‘God, if I can’t get people to buy comics — go on the David Letterman show and act the fool — and not get any response, it’d take like an act of God to sell these things.’ But when they made the movie, they put out a companion volume, a trade paperback, and that sold real well. And since then I’ve put out a couple of more books and they’ve sold pretty well, too.”

Pekar says he has a few more longer projects in the works and is pleased with the way comics have matured as a creative medium even if the realities of working in comics don’t necessarily match the perceived popularity of the medium.

“I’m personally very pleased that after so many years comics have opened up to works of unlimited length. It’s ridiculous that at one point a novelist could write as much as they wanted but a cartoonist was limited to at most a few dozen pages. Matter of fact, that’s one of the main things I got into comics to accomplish, was try and make it — I mean I don’t know how much influence I’ve had — make it a medium that doesn’t do just superheroes and talking animals,” he says. “I think there’s no subject that you can’t deal with in comics.”

You say you want a color revolution

Range Murata plans to do nothing less than revolutionize the Japanese manga industry. His plan is simple: Introduce color to the exclusively black and white medium. Behind him, he has an army of artists anxious to work in color and the support of his publisher WaniMagazine Inc. to make his vision a reality.

This month WaniMagazine releases Robot Vol. 3 – a full color, oversize manga anthology – to Japanese audiences who most recently got their color fix with Vol. 2 in April. U.S. audiences, on the other hand, are just getting their first taste through the Digital Manga Publishing translation of Robot, Vol. 1.

Humble and soft-spoken, Murata expressed the difficulties in bringing this project to market. The added costs in production and printing have prevented other publishers from exploring color manga. Fortunately for Murata, WaniMagazine bought into his pitch as a way to reinvigorate the industry and break the growing number of artists working in color illustration. With three books behind them, this gamble just may pay off. "In Japan, it seems to be going really well right now," he says.

By introducing “Robot” to an American audience, Murata and DMP hope to tap into a more accessible audience. "[The American audience] is used to this stuff," says Murata. "They are closer to it and will accept it with open arms." Color helped Otomo Katsushiro's classic manga “Akira” gain cult status when it was published by Marvel Comics in 1988. TOKYOPOP continues this trend today with its Cine-Manga titles. Only time will tell if “Robot” sells as well or better herein the U.S., but DMP already has plans to translate and publish Vol. 2 for release in Q2 of 2006.

Murata has since moved on to his next project, doing character design for the next “GONZO” anime. He anxiously awaits the debut of sunglasses and watches from GoFa — the Gallery of Fantastic Art, — in Japan that feature his signature sterling and brushed stainless steel design. These products will make their debut at the GSX show in September. Fans still have awhile to wait before seeing his motorcycle design from “rule” come to life. "It's in the works," Murata says. "We really haven't made the definitive motorcycle yet."

Murata someday hopes to turn his attention to production design for live-action film, having conquered the worlds of manga, anime, videogames, collectibles and fashion. "I'll be happy to work for anyone," jokes Murata.

— By Rick Hernandez

The Deal with Neil

One of the biggest comics-related announcements to come out of Comic-Con was Neil Gaiman writing a manga for TOKYOPOP that would expand upon “MirrorMask,” the upcoming Jim Henson Co. movie written by Gaiman and directed by his frequent comics collaborator Dave McKean.

Gaiman is best-known for his long relationship with DC Comics, which published Gaiman’s seminal series “The Sandman” and several of his graphic novels, including collaborations with McKean such as “Mr. Punch.” While he’s done work for other comics houses, most notably the recent “1602” for Marvel, Gaiman also has become a popular novelist with “American Gods” and is current on a tour of Asia and Australia promoting his new novel, “Anansi Boys.” That this unexpected return to comics form comes at TOKYOPOP and in manga turned the heads of those paying attention to the comics biz.

Gaiman says there are many reasons why the manga project appealed to him, starting with learning TOKYOPOP was working on a deal to publish prequels for popular Henson Co. fantasy pics “Labyrinth” and “Dark Crystal” and having a lot of background material that would make for a good story. “I thought, well, ‘MirrorMask,’ was made by us for Henson, with a brief of can we do something like ‘Labyrinth’ or ‘Dark Crystal,’” Gaiman says. “There’s an awful lot of backstory, some of which gets delivered in the movie in rather large, hasty lumps. And I thought telling that story would be really fun and it would be nice if I did it rather than somebody deciding to do it in 20 years time.”

The manga format also solved some problems Gaiman thought would crop up if he and McKean had done a graphic novel version of the film that was more like their previous work. “Dave doesn’t have time to do a graphic novel and if you hired someone to do a graphic novel trying to make it look the movie, which would would make it look like they’re trying to rip Dave off, visually it would be really weird because you’d get somebody imitating Dave McKean,” he says. “In addition to which, people would assume wrongly that the graphic novel came first and the film was an adaptation of that, and we wanted the film to be the thing that the attention was on.” 

The conventions of manga, however, eliminate those expectations and put the focus where Gaiman says it belongs. “We can emulate content — obviously there will be fish flying through the air and people with strange masks and so on and so forth — but you’re not going to try to make it look like Dave McKean, and it would be perceived accurately as what it is, which is part of a line of really cool Henson prequels.”

Gaiman says he’s fascinated by the audience for manga and the fact that it’s large, young and female. “What I love most about manga is they’re giving girls stories they want to read and they’re reading comics,” he says. “And also it’s the audience for ‘MirrorMask,’ which I think is more interesting and more important.

Gaiman will be collaborating on the series with another writer, providing plots and then getting as involved as he can beyond that. The other writer has been chosen, Gaiman says, but until the ink dries on the deal he can’t reveal who she is.

As for whether McKean will ever contribute to the series, as he did with covers for “Sandman,” is unknown at this point. “It’s a weird kind of balancing act because there’s a level on which you really really want this to be manga, and to look and taste and feel and smell like honest to goodness manga,” Gaiman says. “And I don’t want it looking, feeling, tasting and smelling like something else. I think it’s important that it really is manga.”

One Vote, One Love

Politics is one of those topics that’s rarely used in fiction in the United States. Whether it’s because people prefer entertainment and politics separate or because it’s so hard to be political without also being preachy is hard to say. But the rare success, such as TV’s “The West Wing,” show it can be done. Comics has for the most part lacked a lot of overt political fiction. Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson put heavy overtones of politics in their excellent “Transmetropolitan” series, but the sci-fi elements and setting made it more abstract than concrete.

But the divisive politics of the past four years have begun to change this, with more documentaries such as “Fahrenheit 9/11” putting film in the political arena. Comics played a part in the days after 9/11, with a number of excellent benefit projects seeing print. Now comics also are moving into the arena more fully, with Art Spiegelman’s “In the Shadow of No Towers” and now with the immensely entertaining indie comic series “Everyman, Vol. 1: Be the People” (FWD Books, 96 pages, black-and-white, $6), written by brothers Dan and Steven Goldman and drawn by Joe Bucco.

The book, released to comicbook stores today and coming soon to Amazon.com, is a rarity: A modern political fiction that is relevant, believable and invigorating. The story follows author Thomas “Mack” Womack and his girlfriend, social engineer Perdita “Dita” Orozco. Frustrated with the state of politics in 2004, they concoct a web site called onelove.us, promoting nonpartisan solutions to the nation’s ills. (The URL is live with a companion site the Goldmans created). They join with presidential aide Manolo "Prex" Perez to establish a fifth-column network the exposes the corruption of the administration of President Henry Birch and promote a people-first platform for the country. At the center of their struggle is a report Perez “retrieves” from the White House proving Birch plans to use electronic voting machines to ensure his re-election.

The Goldmans have a very smart story with likeable characters and a lot of well-researched infor-mation that makes it satisfying without being preachy or falling victim to asides into trivia or senti-mentality. The climax is thrilling and fun, giving the book a satisfying conclusion, while leaving the door open for the next volume to go just about anywhere. The book uses fictional figures —Birch’s VP is Hanes and his Democratic opponent is Mr. Berry — but the story is firmly set in the larger issues and developments of the nation as it is today.

Variety: What are your backgrounds and how did you get into publishing comics?

Steven: My background is actually in theater and journalism. I went to school for theater, thought I was going to be an actor and ended up moving to playwriting. Along the way I was doing arts and music journalism and when I moved to New York I ended up falling into a position at Fox News.com. I’d always followed politics, but that sort of brought everything very sharply to the fore-front. This was between May and October of 2000, the build-up toward the election. I was watching firsthand what had been a fairly independent dot-com of the Fox News Channel become this very — what they kept describing it as was applying more synergy between the two, where they wanted to have the news on one reflect the news on the other, even if the people gathering that news were differ-ent people. And it was like firsthand learning the business of media spin. It made me pretty ill and I ended up quitting actually, just before the election. I didn’t want to be there anymore. And since then, my brother and I got a house together in Brooklyn and we had been talking for a while about doing comics together. We actually pitched a couple of things to Marvel and we just were going to the 2001 San Diego Comic-Con and we decided ‘Why write other people’s stuff when we could do our own and pitch those kinds of concepts?’ And we went out to San Diego with, I think, 10 proposals.

Dan: We had some really fantastic original stuff and everyone was floored.

Steven: And then 9/11 happened.

Dan: Yeah, and then these two planes hit the World Trade Center and everything just sort of faded into the background for a while.
Variety: Did you guys read comics as a kid, was it something you’d always been interested in or did you come to it later.

Dan: Comics has always sort of been there. When our family moved from Detroit to Miami, I used to be — I’m the older one — I used to help out my dad. We would sell videotapes out the back of our diesel station wagon for extra money on the weekend. And if I worked my ass off all day in the hot sun, he would buy me a bag of comicbooks. And this was before comicbook shops, so this was just like a plastic bag with a stack of comicbooks from the garage. Like no two with the same character and they ranged across 40 years of comics history. I would bring them home and Steve and I would sit on the floor of one of our rooms and read them over and over and over again.

Steven: And later on the down the line was the Albertson’s, going to the grocery store, saving up our dimes to buy an issue of Captain Carrot or (Chris) Claremont and (John) Byrne or Claremont and (John) Romita (Jr.) doing X-Men.

Dan: So they’ve always been there. Steve went to school and studied theater and I studied film. And I was sitting in film school learning about storyboarding and visual storytelling and my brain was going crazy about comics. I guess I kind of always knew this is what I’d be doing.

Variety: Given that the story is so specifically set in the present, why did you give the poli-ticians fictional names?

Dan: Two words: Patriot Act.

Steven: Well, one more word: libel.

Dan: It just seemed like there’s a certain power to the fiction. We wanted it to be abso-lutely thinly veiled, kind of gossamery thin. But at the same time I didn’t want to be hauled away in the middle of the night for something if what we had prophesied, with the president coming in for a second term and things getting worse, if that actually was to happen.

Steven: The other thing is that if you fictionalize it you have the chance to make the world a little different and people aren’t going to jerk quite so hard. They’re not going to be like, “Well, that didn’t happen!” “He didn’t do that!”

Dan: It’s a very different thing to have a story where the current president, even mistak-enly, orders the execution of someone. I mean that’s …