Time Agent Z

Time Agent Z has been in the works in some form or another for over 2 years.  My good friend Josh, who by day is a mild mannered school teacher, came up with this wild idea about time travel and dinosaurs and all kinds of other exciting stuff.  I begged Josh to let me work with him and develop a full fledged comic out of the idea to which he relented.  After we got the story hashed out, Joie Simmons was brought on board.  You will recognize Joie, of course, as the illustrator of Zero's Heroes Chapter 08.  Joie and I both big fans of classic adventure serial comics, so we're trying to channel that energy into Time Agent Z.

I'm very excited to finally get Time Agent Z to print.  Josh, Joie, and I are really trying to do something different with this comic.  Equal parts fiction and non-fiction, it's a fun action adventure story rooted in history.  Time Agent Z:  Dinosaurs at Dunkirk! will be printed next month along with Dogtown and Muscles and Mullets in the first issue of Science Hero.

What I Am Reading - Some comics by Van Lente and Dunlavey

ACTION PHILOSOPHERS!

and

THE COMIC BOOK HISTORY of COMCIS

by

Fred Van Lente & Ryan Dunlavey

I'm only marginally familiar with Van Lente's work at Marvel, but I've been hearing a lot of buzz about the two historical non fiction books he does with cartoonist Ryan Dunlavey.  I must say, the buzz is very well deserved.  I enjoyed these two books immensely.  Both of these books are wonderful learning tools and I would recommend them to anyone regardless of their usual reading habits. 

Despite being their second collaboration, I read Comic Book History of Comics first, mostly because the subject matter is more appealing to me personally.  CBHC is a very thorough and straightforward history of the American Comic Book, from it's inception in the early 20th Century right up to the present day.  This book is a veritable who's who of comics and is a great companion book to Marvel Comics The Untold Story.  Though the two books are completely unrelated, they cover some of the same ground since, as we all know, Marvel plays a significant role in the history of comics.  The two books do a good job of cross checking each other.  I don't believe there were any facts in either book that contradicted the other, and in fact they both seem to corroborate the same story. 

What I liked best about CBHC is that it's not just a history lesson.  It's also a cheerleader for comics as an art form.  The book does an excellent job of educating the reader exactly why comics is a unique and necessary expression.  Van Lente and Dunlavey craft a beautiful book that is full of references to characters and creators alike.

ACTION PHILOSOPHERS! is a lot like CBHC, except instead of depicting he history of Comic Books, it outlines the history of philosophers (duh).  Like CBHC, Van Lente and Dunlavey give us, not only the history of famous philosophers throughout history and their theories, but also helps to explain what the nature of philosophy is and why people pursue it.  This book never seems to get too deep, but it does a good job of introducing different schools of thought and traces them all together though history and how they influence and relate to each other.  What I got most out of ACTION PHILOSOPHERS! was the desire to do some heavy research into a whole slew of writers and philosophers that I previously only had passing knowledge of.

DOGTOWN

Illustrated by Chris McJunkin

Dogtown is a second series I'm working on with Chris McJunkin and will appear in my upcoming anthology Science Hero.  I've been really focused on structure with this series.  Each chapter will be 8 pages and focus on a different character and situation in the city neighborhood of Dogtown.  Through this series of vignettes, I hope to create a pastiche of crime, social, and political drama.  As you might notice from looking at these pages, each chapter will also be represented by a predominant color, the first chapter being blue.

I really like writing Dogtown because it allows me to reach for different influences than the superhero stuff.  Dogtown is more verbose than Zero's Heroes because it's primarily inspired by my two favorite novelists, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and Robert Heinlein. 

Chris completely illustrates the pages by himself, and he really brings his A game.  Everything from the pencils, to the colors, to the letters is all his work.  He's got a great eye for design and often times improves the layouts of the page from how they were originally written.  The man's a true talent and I'm lucky to have him creating this book with me.

Here are the first three pages of Dogtown:  The Cold Goodbye.

What I Am Reading - Marvel Comics The Untold Story

Marvel Comics The Untold Story

by Sean Howe

This book is an absolute must read for any fan of Marvel Comics.  These days, Marvel Entertainment is definitely the giant of the comics industry, but it's interesting to note that they built their cult of personality around the concept of being the underdog.  

Sean Howe gives us an oral history of Marvel Comics culled from personal interviews, published articles, and pretty much any other source available.  This books starts at the very beginning, starting in 1940 when magazine publisher Martin Goodman decided to move into comics because it was easy money, right up to the recent purchase by Disney.

The book is framed around the tragic relationship of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.  The two of them struck creative gold together throughout the 60's and it nearly destroyed both of them.  Anybody who grew up reading Marvel comic books is more than familiar with Smilin Stan Lee's mustache and glasses caricature, as well as his boisterous, self aggrandizing personality.  In this book, the veil is lifted and we see Stan the Man for the man he really is, a man who never really wanted to be in comics in the first place and desperately craved critic approval.  Likewise, we see Jack as we largely always knew him, a guy who was overwhelmed by responsibility, who put his family first, and preferred to work instead of making waves.

I was completely engrossed by this book.  It tells the story of the age old struggle between art and corporate interests and the people that get caught in between.

Muscles and Mullets

Muscles & Mullets is a short story I did with Grant Perkins and Jamie Roberts.  I'm a big fan of these two British artists, particularly when they're together.  So, I was really excited to get to work with them.  Grant's work appears twice in Zero's Heroes, albeit, not on the website.  He has a pin up in the Volume 01 trade paperback and another pin up in the Convention Special.

Muscles & Mullets is about Bolt Nova and his brother Crash.  Together they run an intergalactic detective agency where they run into any manner of alien, cartoon, or fantastic characters.  In this particular story, the Brothers Nova are hired by The Guitar Wizard to track down his priceless guitar, The Paramount Axe.  I think this is the most straightforward "comedy" story I've done so far, even more so than Zero's Heroes.  Grant and I came up with the story after a few email exchanges.  Once I realized that we had the same silly sense of humor, the whole story sort of wrote itself.  Though I can always see flaws in my work, I really liked the way this turned out and plan to do more with these characters.

Though this 10 page story was completed quite some time ago, it is finally going to appear in an upcoming anthology I'm working on that should be ready to print in January.  The anthology, titled Science Hero, will contain two other comics by myself and different artists which I believe will come together to form a really nice package.

Cover Art
Pencils - Grant Perkins
Inks - Mike Bunt
Colours - Owen Watts

Pencils - Grant Perkins
Colours - Jamie Roberts

Pencils - Grant Perkins
Colours - Jamie Roberts