SPACE Finds Part 1: The Colony

Jason DeGroot was on our shuttle to the hotel, and we we had a terrific conversation on the ride. We had some mutual friends, and spent a fair amount of time hanging out over the course of the show. He's writing several titles and managing the whole operation for Repercussion Comics. At his table I picked up Kreetor and The Colony — and, though it was issue 2, that's the one I feel compelled to write about. Read the rest »

The Colony is the story of paranormal investigator Jason Thorne's mission to a remote colony of, well, vampires and assorted other nasties. He's undercover as an ambassador of sorts, but with a secret purpose: to eliminate the anointed leader of the Liber Carneus. As the story picks up, Jason's cover may have been blown — but with the secrets that are revealed, that may be the least of his problems.

I know a lot of the backstory, because there's one of those "what has gone before" pages to bring us latecomers to the party up to date. But, still, there's the sense in the story that, even though I may have missed the first issue, I'm just arriving in time for the good part; it's a credit to the writing that it invites participation even a quarter of the way in. It's a talky comic, though the revelations that come from the dialog are handled with a good sense of suspense. And the story that parallels Jason's tour of the Colony helps build the atmosphere of dread and danger. Overall, it does an excellent job of suggesting at, and building, a world with just the references and allusions in the conversation between two characters and the locations they happen upon. The cliffhanger ending, in the great tradition of serialized comics, opens up a whole 'nother world of trouble and invites us in.

The artwork is more cartoony than one might expect from a horror story, but it suits the flow of the action and the dialog well. The composition is dynamic, even when it's just people talking, and the character designs leave no doubt as to what each person (or creature) is about. The backgrounds, though minimal at times, really help build the world the characters are talking about and populating.

I've just received my issue 1 in the mail, though my real interest is in what choice Jason (both of them) makes next.

The Colony
by Jason DeGroot and Marc Haines
Black and white with color cover, 28 pages
$3.00
www.repercussioncomics.com

And now Jason's got his SPACE stories and pictures posted.

X-Men: The Last Stand: not as bad as I was led to believe by the reviews. I'd argue that it even did a few things well. Not going to post any of my "...and another thing" complaints, as they're mostly spoilers.

Reviews of SPACE stuff to come. Monica's gotta do some additional CSS wrangling.

Yesterday, received in the mail my (signed) copies of The Red Star and From Hell, out on loan for more than a year and feared lost. Came back the worse for wear, but, hey, they're back. An interesting study in contrasts — The Red Star's artwork is marvelous, technology-enabled stuff that breaks the boundaries of "traditional" comic style; in From Hell, Eddie Campbell works in ink scribbles that capture every nuance, every expression, every setting, with a precision that doesn't seem possible.

Book Benches in Turkey. Darned cool. Via Adrants.

At SPACE, Sean traded some his work for one of our fellow 7000 BCer's. Once I checked it out, had to email him to get some of my own.

"Some Hangovers Deserve A Day To Themselves" notes Marten. (Scroll down).

Graphic novels for book groups; a solid list, if a bit predictable. Just found the blog via Xplane, so now I'm exploring it.

Raphael passed along this appreciation of Big Barda from Michael Chabon's blog.

Just last week, Stan Yan led some SPACE-ers in a Sunday morning comics jam; we were able to participate for one panel before scurrying off to catch our flight. Let me just say that ten minutes to do a panel seems like an awfully long time until you hear that two-minute warning . . .

Update: Now with photos!

This article popped up again recently; I remember reading it a few years ago (joking with our friends, you should name your daughter Trinity, hah, hah, um, heh, OK, apparently not a joke) and was fascinated by the competing theories — trends, sounds — behind names.

All because of a squirrel.

SPACE pictures from Matt and from Rafer. (And I'm in the background of one of the photos here.)

A day of comic posts over at Coudal: transnationalblueblood, atomic comics at the Authentic History Center, and Achewood.

your opinions, please!

I've thinking about releasing some bonus material, in the form of desktop patterns (or wallpaper, for you Windoze™ people). Last time I asked for feedback, the silence was deafening, so speak up, people! Desktop patterns for download: good idea? stupid? misguided? What's your screen resolution? What would you like to see, content-wise? Please leave comments on this post, okay? Hello? Anyone out there? [sound of crickets]

The Shouts-out Continue:

We met so many terrific people at SPACE. A few more, as we excavate through our haul (and, I'm a hoarder — I've still got unread stuff from SPX — but I'm actually reading these is a timely fashion, so more later):

• Seth, Nathan, and Elton from Three Trees Studios, making their first appearance at a show with their Random Ink anthology;
  
• The folks at Space Monkey Comics, with whom we had a nice chat; read their Love in a Time of Supervillains the other night, and it was great fun; got Hate Your Friends left;
  
• Young American Comics, with their books and comics promo stuff;
  
• Rene Blansette and his long-running comic Thief;
  
• Day Prize Winner, former DC-er, Red Sox fan, giver of rides home from the bar, and self-publishing powerhouse A. David Lewis;
  
• Jason Brooks, who was kind enough to visit with us for a while, creator of the sci-fi series Frontier;
  
• Larned Justin with his great observations on makin' comics and his series Nut;
  
• Bill Wilkison, the inkslinger behind Wha? — he talked with us about the comic group for a good long time; filling a sketchbook for his wife Cathy, recently diagnosed with cancer, to which Monica was honored to be asked to contribute;
  
• John Mallett and Phonzie Davis, 66% of the Columbus-based comics group behind 33%;
  
• Curt, behind us all the way, with the multimedia experience that is Unicorn Mountain;
  
• Josh Johnson, who actually had a letterpress at his table;
  
• instigator of the SPACE comics jams, Denver-based Stan Yan, creator of his own warped work and collaborator with Kieran Carew;
  
• fellow jammer Max Ink with his lyrical mini Blink;
  
• and, of course, Bob Corby for putting it all together.

mini SPACE report:

Bram and I got back from SPACE last night, had a great time, and sold a bunch'a books for 7000 BC. I just posted some pix from the show at the 7000 BC website.

A quick shout-out to some of the awesome people/places/things we met/went/saw (I'm sure Bram will blog about the show in more detail later):

• Jason DeGroot from Repercussion Comics;
  
• Kern's Cafe;
  
• Vernon from New Orleans, who loooooves him some Guinness, and draws Dexter Breakfast;
  
• Andrew, Matt, Carol, Jake, and Evan from the DC Conspiracy pimpin' the brand-spankin' new Dr. Dremo Vol. 2 and Shear Terror;
  
• The series premiere of The Alberic Heresies;
  
• Rafer (the entire "discount whorehouse" joke cycle) and Nan! (ANGRY! LOVE! POEMS! and color-coded drinks);
  
• Awesome art from Jim Foster (no site yet) and Kyle Strahm;
  
• Friend or Foe: the coolest stuffed... critters... I'm kicking myself for not getting.

More to come, as the unpacking continues.

Off to staff tables 122-123 at SPACE for 7000 B.C. Our friends from the DCC will be a couple rows over, tables 72-75.

Thalia can't catch a break — Dirty Thoughts didn't make the cut at Threadless. It's a shame her illustrations aren't appreciated there; Monica was checking out her other work, and we both think she's got a great style.

New books! The first in our guest artist series, Squirrel Tales, is available for download over there to the left. And a preview of New West is further down the page in the other work section. We'll be giving away issue 1.8 and Squirrel Tales to anyone who buys the trade paperback this weekend at the 7000 B.C. table at SPACE.

Dale just circulated some pages from the first story of his long-awaited Rez Luv. I think this panel's my favorite. Keep an eye out at the 7000 B.C. site for its release — and here for his upcoming Rose story.

As I'm sure we've all experienced, spammers put randomly generated words and phrases in email subject lines. In my spam filter recently, I've been noticing that they're pulled from online news articles; if I get enough junk in the right order, I can get my news from my spam.

In a way, we celebrate Free Comic Book Day every day here (what with our comics all available for download, though we also celebrate when people buy the trade paperback), but we have a special Series Preview that we'll be distributing at True Believers tomorrow as a part of their day-long event.

All sorts of new stuff going on over at Alberic Heresies in advance of the launch of the first issue. Gonna see Jeff and Jake at SPACE and get mine.

The art and design of painting NASCAR cars. Via the Agenda Inc. Live Feed

In the absence of squirrels, it seems that the prairie dogs are climbing trees here.

The adoblogosphere is all abuzz with the new Apple commercials (which Coudal notes stars John Hodgman as "Mac," as the PC, [I was just assuming] adding, I guess a little extra indy cred). They're not bad — I don't think TV was ever really Apple's strong point ("1984," though maybe overrated, excepted) — just misguided. I'm sure the creative brief was to focus on features and compatability, but by playing that game, Apple's allowing itself to be defined in relation to Windows, not as something unique. And making boasts about resistance to viruses is just asking for trouble. But that Network one does have some pretty good moments.

Whoa — there's new posts over at Gone and Forgotten after 18 long months.