Here is Jim’s cover for Batwoman #2, which continues the “Hydrology” storyline, our first 5-issue Arc. I’ve already seen some of the interior art, and it’s pretty incredible stuff – Jim really captures both the horror of the new villain we’re introducing, and continues to humanize Kate Kate.
As with previous issues, Amy Reeder will be doing a variant cover.
On sale in March!
The launch event at Red Sky Comics for December 4th has been cancelled for reasons beyond our control. Apologies to anyone who was planning to attend.
Fortunately, the signing at BLUE MOON COMICS in Novato, CA is still on, as scheduled (see details below). We hope to see everyone there! Jim will have art from the Batwoman series on hand for preview, and we’ll have books to sign, including one of our earliest collaborations — a story for Hellboy: Weird Tales (but I only have ten copies of that, so get there early if you want one!). I’ll also have some Star Wars stuff. See you there!
BLUE MOON COMICS
1555 So. Novato Blvd.
Novato, CA 94947
12/11/2010
1:00PM – 4:00PM
Comic Book Resources posted a Batwoman #0 Preview with several pages of art and an interview that Jim, Amy, and I did earlier this week. You’ll see from the preview pages that Jim and Amy did an amazing job collaborating on this issue. As a writer, it was a very cool process to participate in. Jim and I started writing the outline for the Zero Issue several months after we submitted our outlines for both Arc 1 and Arc 2 and a series overview that covers a little over two years of issues. We then completed the script about four weeks after the script for Issue #1, and while we were working on the script for Issue #6, the first issue in Amy’s arc. Although this meant shifting gears a lot, it actually worked out really well because we had a good idea of where the series is headed and could start dropping some clues about future storylines. From an art standpoint, the basic concept was for Jim and Amy to share art chores – but in a rather challenging fashion. Rather than just have Jim do one set of pages and Amy another, we proposed that they would actually both do panels across two-page spreads. As a result, the script for the Zero Issue is fairly detailed, escpecially in terms of the ways in which the action in one set of panels mirrors action in the next.
Batwoman #0 is out today, and the series starts up in February with Issue #1, the first in the “Hydrology” arc.
Batwoman #0 will be on shelves next week (11/24)! Give copies to all of your relatives at Thanksgiving — it’s guaranteed to stave off the effects of tryptophan, watching the Cowboys and/or Lions play, and talking politics.
Top: JH Williams III; Bottom: Amy Reeder Hadley
To celebrate the series launch, Jim and I are doing a NorCal signing in mid-December.
Saturday, December 11th: Blue Moon Comics in Novato: 1-4 PM.
We’re both very excited to be able to support local comic shops, and hope folks show up to get their books signed, buy art and comics, and chat about what we have planned for the series. If you’re a Star Wars fan, I’ll have some of my Dark Horse work on hand as well.
It’s a cover bonaza this week! Solicitations for DC’s February lineup have been posted at Newsarama, so I thought I’d post the cover and solicitation text here too…
We’re fusing horror, vigilante action, mystery, and romance together with this first arc, which is called “Hydrology,” and I think Jim did an absolutely brilliant job capturing the tone of the story with this image. Amy will also be doing a variant cover!
And the solicit text:
The multiple award-winning creative team of J.H. Williams III (DETECTIVE COMICS) and W. Haden Blackman (Star Wars, Force Unleashed) launch the first, chilling arc of the ongoing series fans have been clamoring for! In the 5-part “Hydrology,” Batwoman faces bizarre new challenges in her war against the dark underworld of Gotham and new trials in her personal life as Kate Kane. She quickly finds herself in the deep end facing truths about her past and her future. Who – or what – is stealing children from Gotham’s barrio, and for what twisted purpose? Can she train her cousin Bette Kane (a.k.a. Flamebird) as her new sidekick? How will she handle dark revelations about her father, Colonel Jacob Kane? How is she dealing with the supposed drowning of her sister, the villain known as Alice? And why is a certain government agency suddenly taking an interest in her? The road to the answers begins here!
Batwoman #1 will be on shelves February 23rd, 2011!
Dark Horse has released Tsuneo Sanda’s cover to Darth Vader and the Lost Command #2, which hits shelves February 23rd. Here it is!
With each issue, I’m trying to show Vader in all of his various “roles” – not just as the Jedi Hunter. Wiith all the emphasis on his lightsaber abilities, I think it’s easy to forget that Vader is also a fearsome commander, a skilled mechanic, and (as shown in this issue) a relentless and deadly fighter pilot (among other things…).
Here’s the solicitation text:
Vader in command! Darth Vader steps up his attacks when his invasion of the Ghost Nebula meets with stiff resistance. But when a courageous beauty offers her help in conquering the system, visions of what his life might have been if he had not betrayed the Jedi and if Padmé was still alive affect the dark lord’s decisions. Vader in turmoil!
* Darth Vader, the darkest lord of the Sith, at his best—and worst!
* Written by The Force Unleashed‘s Haden Blackman!
* Art by Aliens vs. Predator‘s Rick Leonardi!
* Darth Vader and the Lost Command launched Dark Horse into its 20th anniversary of publishing Star Wars.
Issue #1 will be out in January!
This is one of a series of posts looking at various “monsters” in different media in an attempt to understand the monster’s role in fiction. I started by trying to establish a list of criteria for what defines a monster, and then began running various iconic monsters through that checklist. I originally posted this look at Halloween‘s Michael Myers a while back, but it was one of the posts that vanished when I updated the site last year. Given the date, I decided it should finally be resurrected.
Just one quick note: this is based on the original Halloween rather than the Rob Zombie remake, which adds more backstory to the character and (in my opinion) defuses some of the fears listed below.
So here it goes:
1. Does Michael represent a primal or universal fear?
I’d argue that he represents several. Ultimately, Halloween is a classic cautionary tale, not far distant from stories like “Hansel and Gretel,” with Michael serving as the ultimate amorphous bogeyman (or “Shape” as he’s called in the credits). Among the fears he commands:
2. Does Michael threaten, harm, or kill us?
In the original film, killing seems to be Michael’s only motivation. But, like real-life serial killers, he is not indiscriminate. His first murder victim is his sexually-active teenage sister Judith, whom he kills in an intimate way (stabbing) when she is extremely vulnerable (alone and half-naked). Years later, as an adult, all of Michael’s violent actions are in pursuit of emulating or reliving his initial murder again and again. His primary victims are young women who mirror Judith in some way. Those who don’t fit this profile are killed out of necessity: the truck driver’s murder provides Michael with a pair of coveralls to replace his hospital gown; the death of the Wallace’s family dog ensures that Michael will go undiscovered as he menaces the teenagers in the Wallace’s house; and Bob’s knifing allows Michael to impersonate the boy in order to sneak up on the nude Lynda and strangle her. Later, he basically ignores the two children Laurie is babysitting in order to pursue her instead.
3. Does Michael require heroic measures to contain, control, defeat, overcome, and/or escape?
Phyiscally, Michael seems impossible to contain. The first time we encounter the adult Michael, he is escaping from an insane asylum, and there’s the sense that he was just biding his time there until he felt compelled to kill again. Loomis has spent fifteen years trying to understand and “control” Michael through therapy, but has failed to make any progress.
Throughout the film, Michael is portrayed as essentially an unstoppable force of nature. Though he never runs, he is inescapable. He is strong enough to lift and carry his sister’s headstone and he seems oblivious to pain and immune to exhaustion. At the film’s conclusion, he is stabbed with a knitting needle, a clothes hanger, and his own knife. He is then shot six times, and falls from a second-story balcony. And still this doesn’t stop him: Michael simply gets up and walks away.
Later installments tried to provide Michael with “magical” powers and a confusing link to some sort of druidic cult, but the original Halloween constantly makes the audience question whether Michael is actually superhuman or simply so insane and driven that he has transcended normal human limitations.
4. Is Michael uncanny in appearance or behavior?
The first time we see Michael as a child, he has a blank, emotionless stare despite the fact that he’s just committed a terrible murder. Loomis later describes him as having a “blank, pale, emotionless face and the blackest eyes; the Devil’s eyes… What was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply evil.”
Michael’s mask has become a horror icon. It is simple, yet unforgettable; featureless but still totally terrifying. The mask is an extension of Michael’s human face: emotionless, inscrutable, and pale. As others have written, it is a blank slate upon which we can project any fear. Finally, it prevents any basic human interactions: we have no way to “read” Michael or glean any insight into his emotions or thoughts. When we briefly see Michael’s adult face, it is only striking in its similarities to the mask – pale, blank, emotionless. The fact that Michael is mute further increases his sense of detachment and impenetrability.
Michael’s body language is also unsettling and childlike. Most memorable is the moment after he stabs Bob, pinning the teenager to a wall: Michael cocks his head and stares at the dying boy long enough for the audience to wonder what’s going through his mind. In other scenes – notably when he sits up after being stabbed by Laurie – his movements have a mechanical, almost robotic quality.
“Challenge, Unsettle, Warn, Inspire”
As portrayed in the original Halloween, Michael Myers is one of the most memorable film monsters of the past fifty years. He has inspired a stream of imitators, including Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th series and to the killers in The Strangers. He is without a doubt incredibly successful as a monster (based on my criteria, anyway).
Unfortunately, the convoluted and often silly mythology created by the sequels and the backstory explored in the Rob Zombie remakes reduce Michael to a mildly frightening instrument of divine punishment, stripping away many of the other fears he originally engendered. Attempts to humanize him and the introduction of the “Cult of Thorns” as the source of his powers have diluted his characterization as”pure evil.” The forced connections between Michael and his victims, and the detailed origin provided in the remake, make him far less of a stranger to us than the people he kills and destroy any notion that he’s a twisted romantic. One could argue that the more we understand him, the more we can see how easy it is to “snap” and give in to the dark side of human nature, intensifying that fear. But few people can relate to being manipulated into killing their families by an ancient cult of druids, and this very notion takes away any sense of agency on Michael’s part. I’d also argue that the more specific Michael’s backstory, the easier it is for us to say “Oh, he’s not like me; I could never become that.”
But none of this undermines the power of the original film. So, if Michael is a “successful” monster and has fulfilled his role, how does he challenge, unsettle, warn, or inspire us? I’d argue that Michael is most successful at being “unsettling” — at the end of the first film, he’s simply gone, leaving audiences to wonder when and where he’ll strike next. But if we face the fears he represents, we do leave with a greater understanding of ourselves and the human condition:
Ever since I resigned from LucasArts back in August, there’s been a bit of speculation about why I left that venerable company after nearly 13 years, and what I’d be doing next. Well, the answer to both of those questions came today when Cedrick Collomb and I officially announced the formation of Fearless Studios, an independent game developer located in Northern California.
You can read the full press release here, and interviews with USA Today, Gamasutra, and Techland are also up.
So, I left a good job, working with great people on arguably the most powerful and recognizable IP in the world to do something more than a little bit crazy, but it’s already been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Creatively, I feel reborn, and have discovered that Cedrick’s knowledge of tech rivals my knowledge of useless X-Men trivia. Together, we’re creating a studio that will combine the best of gameplay and story to create games that are constantly surprising players and leave a lasting impression. Fearless Studios will be an environment where we aren’t afraid to take smart creative risks and tackle new challenges, but we’ll mitigate these through smart tech decisions, prototyping and iteration, hard work, and being honest with ourselves and our partners. We’re already working on six different concepts, ranging from a splashy action title to hardcore horror.
To those of you who contacted me looking for info on my next gig, wishing me well, and/or offering me jobs, I want to say thanks, and to apologize if I was slow to respond or vague when I finally did reply. Since resigning from LucasArts, my mental bandwidth has been consumed with getting Fearless Studios off the ground, so I wasn’t as diligent about following up with e-mail and Facebook messages. And when I did find time to respond, I didn’t want to jinx anything by revealing too much too fast. I hope you all understand.
Anyway, please check out our official site at www.fearlessstudios.com. We’re still working on getting content in, but I hope to post regular updates about our progress. You can sign-up for e-mail updates there as well and follow us on Twitter.
Be Fearless!
At about 2 AM yesterday morning, I finished the script for issue #3 of Darth Vader and the Lost Command. And today, Dark Horse released more info on the upcoming limited series, including the standard cover (Tsuneo Sanda) and variant cover art (Doug Wheatley). Interior pencils are being handled by Rick Leonardi, who was the penciller on the original Cloak & Dagger for Marvel, which is still one of my favorite stories.
Cover by Tsuneo Sanda
Cover by Douglas Wheatley
The official blurb on Darth Vader and the Lost Command from Dark Horse:
Still haunted by the events in Revenge of the Sith, Darth Vader must set aside his past and put his future on hold for a mission to the mysterious Ghost Nebula to locate—and if possible, rescue—a missing Imperial expeditionary force. But what seems a perfect opportunity to lose himself in his duty is complicated by two factors: he is paired with a willful yet highly competent co-commander, and the officer they are being sent to locate is the son of Vader’s rising nemesis, Moff Tarkin.
Darth Vader and the Lost Command #1 will be on stores shelves January 26th, 2011.
The graphic novel tie-in to the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II hit shelves today! I wrote the script, with art by Omar Francia. Rather than a straight-forward adaptation like the graphic novel for the first Force Unleashed, this one tells a story that runs parrallel to and intersects with the events of the game. Specifically, it follows Boba Fett as he hunts for the escaped Starkiller. We chose this route because we wanted to expand on TFUII and give fans more story set within the time period between the two trilogies, and to really have the graphic novel serve as a companion piece to the game itself. From a story-telling perspective, I also really wanted to provide a different character arc for the graphic novel — Starkiller goes on his own journey in the game, but I think that Fett’s character arc is (hopefully) just as compelling. I think we also reveal a little more about Vader too, and for Star Wars fans there are some new characters and locations.
Just be warned that although the focus is on Fett — who has a small but integral role in the game — there are some game spoilers…
