Cosplay Friday: Poison Ivy

Fall has finally fell, so this autumnal version of Poison Ivy by the talented Ireland Reid seems the perfect way to close out this week at Super Powered Fiction!

As always, you can check out a lot more great Cosplay pictures over on the Tumblr. And while you are admiring some great cosplay here, don’t forget to check out some of the other great stuff from yours truly this week!

Fearscape #1: a review

I have found myself on the review list for Vault Comics creator owned title, Fearscape, written by Ryan O'Sullivan and drawn by the always talented Andrea Mutti.

From the get go, the book gives a purposefully pretentious tone. Our narrator is presented as a quite fallible man, a would-be writer and actual translator with delusions of his own grandeur. Yet he is friends with an actually talented writer, though one now suffering from Alzheimer's. He takes it upon himself to sneak away with the writer's manuscript. This in turn leads him to be mistaken for said author, and to be selected to enter the Fearscape and save the world from its greatest fear.

In all, it's a quite simple set up, but O'Sullivan's narration through the eyes of our lead give the book a unique feel in comics. Imagine a less talented Neil Gaiman writing himself into his fiction and you will get the gist of what we're seeing here.

Mutti is a very European artist that's done a lot of work for mainstream publishers in the states, but somehow never seems to get any major projects of note. Here, he's working creator owned and getting to draw his heart out in a style reminscent of Charles Vess or John Watkiss. The colors by Vladimir Popov give it an almost painted feel which just makes the pages feel like works of art.

Overall this first issue proves an intriguing start to a new series. Both O'Sullivan and Mutti are talents that deserve greater attention, so be sure to check out a copy of this title. The first issue released in comics shop and on Comixology yesterday.

This is a book to watch for big things. Make sure you check it out.

One night on the Orient Express... and dinosaurs! (WIP Wednesday)

I talked quite a bit about the project I code named the Horror Universe as a potential project a few weeks back. I'm now three chapters into the first tale in the series, an adventure that starts on the Orient Express as it barrels across Europe and towards Bucharest. Our hero is one Lucy Marston, an agent for a government body so secret even the President doesn't know of its operations. The year is 1938, war looms in Europe and she's on a mission to stop what she thinks is a Nazi plot to release a deadly virus in Romania.

Marvel's versions of the monsters by Bruce Timm, whose horror art
continues as an inspiration for the project. 

She has no idea of the true threat she faces however, as a dark being from the recent past seeks to rise from the grave.

The new book is a high energy sexy adventure with the dark undertones that will be built upon with each new book in the burgeoning series. If things go as planned over the next few years, this will be the first in a planned eight part series as I introduce the more monstrous side of the Quadrant Universe.

Make no mistake however: you will see no traditional heroes as this one develops. Just various levels of monsters and men. However, it will get a new nickname as I continue to develop new projects, mostly to avoid any confusion between the original Horror Universe moniker and the overall Quadrant Universe. From now until it receives its final name, it will simply be Project SUPERNATURAL.

I'm still working on a final title both for this initial volume and the series as a whole. This one is likely to fall by the wayside before its completed so as to start my NaNoWriMo project, but more on that one in a few short weeks. But I do have one other project to share.

I built a strong head start on my planned thirty thousand words for the month as well, so I've taken away some time from my heavy writing schedule to finally work towards final edits and writes on Dino Force. The series hit several snags as I worked to connect the disparate stories a bit better than they initially were when I first started editing the book. The book will likely see the light of day early next year, far later than I ever hoped for it to wrap up, but still as a complete gorgeous book which will hopefully lead to more with the characters.

Work on Atomic Werewolf 2000 continues as well, but I don't want to spill too many beans on that one. So I'll close out this WIP Wednesday with a challenge to start your own plans to bring your writing to life. I'd love to hear from anyone and everyone with plans for NaNoWriMo as November looms.

Ember Rewarded (Kickstart the Week 1A)

I've made dozens of posts about various Kickstarters over the year. But I feel it's time to look at some of the wild and weird projects I recommended over the years. That's what the Rewarded posts will be all about. (They will always be marked with an A after the original post number. )So let's head way back to the first title I featured on this iteration of Super Powered Fiction over three and a half years ago!

The Ember 0 Art Nouveau cover is the best to show off her *ahem* costume.
Character published by Boundless Comics. 

I expected adult themes and luscious art when I first introduced Ember on this site many moons ago. I never expected Boundless Comics to take things in a much more adult direction with their titles though. Don't get me wrong, as I expected some nudity. Christian Zanier has made a career on naked bodies ever since his runs on Buffy and Rising Stars ended many moons ago. So his creation of a new superhero seemed ripe for his kind of good girl art. And come on, that costume was a dead giveaway.

So Ember turned out to be a whole lot of crazy. And that crazy was just intensified by the "Beautified" edition released two years after the original Ember 0. This was meant to lead in to the characters return, as she teamed up with the Lookers, a pair of ultra-hot bounty hunters. The new edition took the adult content from the original edition and ramped it up to be closer to the standard fare of the Boundless line.

The book opens with a bit of back story, as our heroine wants to become a model. Her plane is destroyed mid-flight but she survives thanks to the emergence of her flame powers. We flash forward to a battle between the costumed hero, now an idol of millions, and a gigantic woman bent on killing her. Both have taken beatings from the other which means a broken costume on Ember's part and a burnt to nothing costume on the giantess part. This book is nothing if not gratuitous.

The book continues its time jumps by going back to earlier in the same day as the attack and getting even more gratuitous, with a two page spread of  Ember showing herself some love. She sets off the sprinklers when she gets a little too hot. We learn that this is part of her new found fame, that she's become a modern celebutante with millions of followers and a need to show some skin. She's filming herself in the build to her plans for a sex tape, but the conversation quickly turns to worries about normal life. She costumes up and her friend Beth and her head to a premiere.

Unfortunately, they're immediately attacked on arrival by a more clothed version of the giant from our opening. The villainess reveals she was on the same destroyed flight that gave Ember her powers, only she sees hers as a curse and not a gift. Ember tries to talk her into rehabilitation, but the villain continues the fight, only to be crushed under the weight of a building destroyed in their battle.

These first two panels of their fight are literally the only ones I can feature that don't go into R rated or higher territory.

Only she's too powerful for that. She breaks free and attacks the shocked Ember. The two beat on each other, with Ember turning the ground molten and the giantess attacking with all her strength. All hope seems lost for our hero when an attack helicopter appears to gun down her foe and save the day.

In the end, the girl is forced to stand down, but is still not beaten. As both women are flown away from the destruction, the attacker breaks down and admits she shouldn't have let her rage consume her.

The 0 issue ends with a promise to continue in Lookers: Ember, a follow up crossover limited series.

It's a pretty simple introductory piece, mostly designed to let you know what you've got to look forward to in later adventures. Unfortunately, I've yet to read the follow up series, so for now it's just a simple one and done with lots of good girl and bad girl art taking to an extreme. But if nothing else Ember stands as a fun character to show off the problems of fire powers with real world clothes. And for that, I can at least rank it as a lot of fun.

The book is now available from Boundless / Avatar in print or digital at Comic Cavalcade.

Great Art: Mantis and Mantis by Darryl Banks

Darryl Banks was a great talent that didn't get nearly enough work after his Green Lantern run. But he still does commissions now and then. This one that features, Marvel's Mantis teaming with the  superhero (played by Carl "Martian Manhunter" Lumbly) from the failed early 90s FOX series MANTIS.

As always, you can check out a lot more Great Art over on the Tumblr. And after you're done admiring some great art here, don’t forget to check out some of the other great stuff from me this week!

Influential 9: Future Imperfect

It's hard to believe it's been two years since I posted the last new Influential column. But today it's time to take a look back at a great work and how it helped shape my mindset of my writing.

Today, I'm talking about Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect.

Maestro by George Perez. All images owned by Marvel. 

Originally published as two prestige format issues outside the regular continuity of the current Hulk title, it was still written by then current Hulk scribe Peter David with art by George Perez. The two previously worked together on Sachs & Violens at Epic and this was a chance for the two to pair up for a second time.

The book featured the Pantheon era Hulk, one with the mind of Bruce Banner, the edge of Joe Fixit and the body of the classic jade giant. Because this Hulk was so similar to the current comic Hulk, after Future Imperfect's success it proved little trouble for David to integrate it into the mainstream character's history. But really that's all a lot of background material. The focus here is on those two great over-sized issues.

The entire saga takes place in the distance future, where the Earth has been ravaged by nuclear war  and only a few city-states still remain on the planet. The most powerful is ruled by the Maestro and the rebels know only one hero of the past has a chance to stop him. The book starts with the arrival of that hero, none other than Hulk. He quickly learns about the destruction that caused this future and agrees to help the heroes fight the villain, because only he can understand the villain.

For the Maestro is the Hulk himself.

The radiation released into the atmosphere fed the Hulk's strength but also drove him mad. The Maestro rejected his humanity, instead subjugating the people beneath him and declaring himself absolute ruler of all he could see.

What comes next plays with the typical tropes of time travel in comics as the hero confronts his own future and the nature of fate. Ultimately, Hulk realizes the Maestro is a threat he cannot let live. In the end, he uses the time travel to deliver Maestro to the one point in time and space that can end his threat.

Perez is always at his best when he gets to design, such as he does for Rick Jones' collection of heroic relics.

Future Imperfect is a concise tale that gives a peak at a potential future while also working to define the character as we know him. Perez's luscious art brings the future to evocative life while David loads the tale with twists and turns.

Ultimately, the book serves for me as an example of how to do a time lost hero story to its maximum effect. As I continue to craft new tales of the Quadrant Universe, the importance of time will come into more and more clarity in the weeks and months ahead. Time travel will play an essential part in that expansion, though it might be saying too much to tell exactly where and when.

Future Imperfect stands as one of the best Hulk stories ever told. It's been almost perpetually in print since its original collection in the mid-1990s. If you haven't checked this one out, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

A little more Lightweight and a whole lot of Werewolf! (WIP Wednesday)

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

My goal of 30,000 words for September is well in grasp as I type this. I've wrapped another chapter of the ongoing saga of Lightweight. Book Four takes him to several locations as he makes his way back to Earth in a big way. I'm so excited to share these stories with everyone starting in January.

Atomic Werewolf continues at a healthy pace. I've got a rough outline I'm working from here, as I develop some different ideas into this one. It's been a fun ride and I hope it makes for a unique book in my repertoire.

I'm moving right into my next chapter of the super secret local hero story, one that I hope to share more details on fairly soon. I'm also working towards developing the two books I've mentioned before as possible side projects, even as I plan a third concept to be my focus for NaNoWriMo in November. Much like previous National Novel Writing Months, I suspect I'll have one main novel and a secondary project going towards my total, but I've got to iron out how those things will flow in the next few weeks.

I've already mapped much of November and December for my writing plans, but we will see where things fall for October. But for now, I'll keep writing and I hope you'll keep reading. Don't forget to check out the Patreon where this week Lightweight 2: Ronin, will drop.

Now leave me be! I've got writing to do!

Looking back at Lulubelle Rose Jensen and Big Top Tales

Every Tuesday we look back at a great post from the previous years of this blog. This time around we go back to a character not quite in my regular wheelhouse, yet the star of one of my favorite stories. 

I am incredibly proud of the work I did as part of Flinch Books' Big Top Tales, now available on Amazon in print and Kindle formats.

Co-editor Jim Beard developed basic characters based around the various occupations of the Henderson & Ross Royal Circus, and based on choices and the time people joined the project, assignments were made. While I had ideas in my head for both the Human Skeleton (scored by the amazing Rocko Jerome) and the Knife Thrower (written by the always great Frank Schildiner), it was my third and final pick that Jim assigned to me. I got to write the Trapeze Artist.

Part of me suspects I might have received my writing assignment because no one else wanted to spend the amount of time I spent researching the trapeze before I started to write. I must have visited a half dozen websites and watched a couple dozen Youtube videos, before I stumbled upon a biography that helped me really get into the head of a trapeze artist in the days before television regularly brought amazing performances to the screen. Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus by Dean Jensen helped get me into the mind of the strange mix of isolation and adulation being a star of the trapeze might bring. The true story of Lillian Leitzel isn't exactly a happy one, but it was one that could help me get inside the head of my own Jensen: Lulabelle Rose Jensen.

From Jim's two paragraph description and Leitzel's story, I created a far more modern woman than one might expect from a story set in the mid-1950s. Rose is a woman more than willing to take what she wants, including a man to bed for a one night stand. But it is just that action that embroils her in a murder mystery from the very first page of my tale “Deadly Triangle”. As the story continues, she must balance the fine line of her circus career, her own wants and desires, and a serial murderer that may just want her as his next victim!

And while I think Rose's tale is more than worth the $12.99 print price and the $3.99 Kindle price, the best part of Big Top Tales is it is not alone. In addition to the talented Mr. Jerome and Mr. Shildiner, it also features tales from Ralph Angelo, Jr., John A. McColley and Sam Gafford. Together it makes one complete collection telling the tale of one amazing summer for the Henderson & Ross Royal Circus that cannot and should not be missed.

Jon Sable! Madman! Dragon! Nexus! A new line of Amazing Heroes! (Kickstart the Week 66)

It's been awhile since I focused on a Kickstarter over in these parts. I've cooled a bit on the platform as I've forced myself into a bit more financial frugality over the last year or so. But when I see something that's just really cool, I still want to share it with you.

I supported the previous incarnation of Amazing Heroes, where they produced several figures in the style of the old school Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars. They were fun figures, but they were limited with few joints and with a majority of the figures being classic public domain characters.

A swath of characters are available for the new line.

This time around, they're taking the opposite route. Proper 1/18 scale (a la G.I. Joe and classic Star Wars) figures featuring a variety of licensed properties with names like Savage Dragon, Madman, Jon Sable, Nexus, E-Man and Stray in the initial wave. If the Kickstarter proves wildly successful, they have several additional figures planned as stretch goals including the Red Hook, Jack Staff, Flaming Carrot and the Destroyer himself, Remo Williams. It's an impressive array of figures.

Unfortunately, it's currently in danger of missing its funding goal. This is a superb line of toys featuring a ton of indie favorites, so if you've ever loved superhero toys, now is the time to show some support with a few shekels. Check out the Kickstarter for full details on how to back.

Cosplay Friday: She-Hulk

She-Hulk is one of those characters that takes a lot of dedication to cosplay. AZPowerGirl did not play making this look work for her!

As always, you can check out a lot more great Cosplay pictures over on the Tumblr. And while you are admiring some great cosplay here, don’t forget to check out some of the other great stuff from yours truly this week!

Obscure Heroes 4: Wildstreak

The original trading card art.
All art owned by Marvel. 

Back in 1993, both Marvel and DC built their Annual around a gimmick of new characters. While DC used this to give us the Bloodlines crossover, Marvel stopped crossing over their annuals for the first time in years to let each book tell its own tale. Most of the characters introduced were not destined for greatness (see the Battling Bantam and Khaos, literally someone's over-powered D&D character), while a few had decent lifespans as characters (Genis-Vell then known as Legacy, Adam-X the X-Treme.) But one character I really liked and thought had a lot of potential went literally nowhere.

Her name was Wildstreak.

Tamika Bowden was a promising gymnast with a huge future ahead of her. But her engineer father refused to work for New York mobster Big John Buscelli. The crime boss arranged for an "accident" that would cost Tamika the use of her legs. Dennis Bowden would throw himself into helping his injured daughter. He created an exoskeleton that when activated increased her strength, speed and agility beyond human levels. Coupled with the skills she learned before her injury, she took to helping others as the vigilante Wildstreak.

Herb Trimpe wasn't afraid to go maximum Liefeld.

It's a solid basic street level vigilante origin, right? The thing is, it came in the middle of Fantastic Four Annual 26. Written by Tom DeFalco and drawn by Herb Trimpe in his 90s style, things come to a head when she traces Big John's money to Florida. There the mobster had his own problems with a symbiotic monster known as Dreadface. Wildstreak barely escaped her first encounter with the villain, all thanks to the intervention of the then-masked Thing. Alongside Ben Grimm and Psi-Lord (the fully grown Franklin Richards from the future), she fought back Dreadface and saved the day.

She would make one other appearance, nearly a year later, in the pages of DeFalco's Thunderstrike (another criminally under-rated title.) She teamed with the title hero to face down a gunrunner that was also her former classmate. Her exoskeleton's batteries ran low as the gunrunner recognized her. Only the appearance of the murderous Sangre saved her identity from being exposed.

Keith Pollard's Wildstreak in action!

Wildstreak wouldn't surface for over a decade, again in the pages of Fantastic Four. As a captured rogue hero during "Civil War" she's used by Mister Fantastic to test out a prototype cell. But Invisible Woman uses her own abilities to help free Wildstreak and cause her to break free. Why a character whose powers are all technologically based even needed a special cell, I cannot explain. Nor do I suspect J. Michael Straczynski and Mike McKone did the research to explain why such an appearance made little sense.

After her escape, Tamika disappeared from comics forever. Or at least for over another ten years.

Like so many creations of the 90s, it feels like Wildstreak gets shorted because of her origins in an insanely drawn special event annual complete with trading card. But at her core, she's a solid character with an interesting background and a power set designed for high energy comic stories.

I was taken enough to throw her into a Hawkeye series pitch I designed many years ago. Though most of the story is lost to the sands of time, it revolved around Hawkeye coming to terms with his independence from various super-teams, even as he started a new relationship with Wildstreak as crime-fighting partners.

Wildstreak by Mike McKone. The FF issue
was a mess, but he drew the heck out of her costume.

Look, even now, Marvel has a severe lack of strong female and strong black characters (though it does better than DC at the second at least.) Wildstreak fits both those bills and has a fun simple design as well. She's a character waiting for someone to dust off and bring to the forefront.

But until then, she'll just be that obscure character with appearances I can count on one hand.

The Atomic adventures of Lightweight! (WIP Wednesday)

Most of my first week of my 30,000 word September was actually spent building upcoming posts for this blog. As part of my commitment to regular writing, I also plan to do some regular blog posting as well, although perhaps a bit more esoteric than in the past. I will add a few more personal anecdotes here and there or sometimes just talk about something I'm really enjoying. But I want to have this blog and Newer Gods with a regular recurring number of posts, while The Wrestling Deep End will continue to show new posts two or three times a month.

While I'm also looking at a few long form non-fiction ideas, my focus outside of many, many blogs has been on the two projects I've been working on for several weeks now: the eighteenth chapter of the ongoing Lightweight saga and my new Atomic Werewolf tale. I'm nearing the wrap on this chapter of Lightweight which will continue to alternate with the local hero concept I'm currently developing the first years worth of stories on.

If I can continue at my increased pace, I hope to have both near completion by November. That will leave time in that month for my focus to be on NaNoWriMo and one of several new projects I'm developing. I still haven't decided which project I will focus on in November, but I've been doing research on all three, waiting to see how the muse strikes.

The new Atomic Werewolf tale is a jumble of ideas all flowing out right now. It started as a conglomeration of a couple ideas and I expect to weave in a half dozen more before the book ends. While I originally thought of this one as a novella, I have a sneaking suspicion it will be much larger than that when I finish.

Alright, enough blogging. I have more words to write and more wolves to were!

Pulpsploitation returns with The Gunmaster: Fear of the Reaper!

Over at Metahuman Press, I made the announcement a few days ago. But the good news is that October 26th will see the launch of the first new title I've published in a year. The Gunmaster: Fear of the Reaper by Teel James Glenn continues the Pulpsploitation series of books with an all new full length adventure of the Buddhist monk sent out to stop the misuse of guns by the world at large!

The tale takes the Gunmaster around the world as he seeks the mysterious Reaper, an enigmatic figure murdering his way through a loose conglomerate of arms manufacturers and dealers. The figure has evil intentions, but his desires go far past simple business! The new adventure brings Darian Poe to wonderful life, plus it introduces the character find of 2018, Majesty Blayde!

T.J. outdid himself with this one, but as a bonus to this and every upcoming Pulpsploitation solo novel, it will also come with a bonus short story. In this case, you will find in the back pages my very first story in The Second Life of DB Cooper, "Back in Business." For anyone that hasn't collected his appearances in the second and fourth The Good Fight collections from the Pen & Cape Society and in Legends of New Pulp Fiction, this is your chance to get in on the ground floor with the character. When I first set his earliest adventures in the dawn of the 80s, I always planned for Coop to have a relationship with the Pulpsploitation line. Now you can start to see the connections build after you've read the amazing new adventure of the Gunmaster.


The book launches October 26th, but head over to Amazon to pre-order your copy ASAP!

Great art: Daredevil by Charles Forsman

One of these days, I will write a much longer treatise about why D.G. Chichester and Scott McDaniel's "Fall From Grace" is one of the three or four top Daredevil stories of all time. With smart changes, clever guest stars and just a dang cool new costume, I can sing its praises regularly. But until I do that, I will happily share art based on that era, such as this piece by Charles Forsman. The art is owned by the equally talented Michel Fiffe, and you should check out both men's work.

As always, you can check out a lot more Great Art over on the Tumblr. And after you're done admiring some great art here, don’t forget to check out some of the other great stuff from me this week!

Writing at not-nearly-pulp speed

Dean Wesley Smith has made a name for himself by producing interesting new content at a fast pace, often in huge chunks. He's taken that idea into the concept of Pulp Speed levels, not unlike Warp Speed levels in Star Trek. Pulp Speed Level One is 1,000,000 words a year or about 83,000 a month.

Starting on the 9th, he plans to start work on his next non-fiction work, Living at Pulp Speed Five, where he will chronicle his quest to write ten novels and that non-fiction book over the course of 100 days, for a grand total of about half a million words in less than four months. It's a lofty goal, but Smith has produced crazy large amounts of work on a monthly basis for years, so if anyone can do it, is certainly him. He helps himself along by including the count for every blog post he writes as well, several of which will then be the content of the book.

I look at that challenge and have to say it intrigues the hell out of me. Now, I know that with a full time job and a family, I'm not getting close to his 150,000 words a month. But my current output is somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 words in a good month by the same standards. I want to push that to 30,000 in September, 40,000 in October and 50,000 (of course) in time for that regular goal for NaNoWriMo in November. If I can succeed I'll have written the equivalent of about two full length books.

Can I do it? Heck if I know. But we don't grow if we don't challenge ourselves. So wish me luck as I start down the path of increased content creation. I'll keep updates coming every couple weeks right here on the site, much as I have always done with my WIP Wednesday updates. I'll also talk a bit more about my plans and goals over at the Patreon. So stay tuned as the writing gets crazy as I look to go above and beyond anything I've done in the last few years. First up: a whole heck of a lot of Lightweight!

Take a deep dive with Deischer!

Jeff Deischer is one of the most prolific writers of super powered fiction I know. So it's no surprise when I chose him for my next Medium interview, we dove deep into his writing, superheroes and the creative process. You can read the whole thing at Medium. Here's some highlights:

Your love of golden age and public domain heroes seems apparent in your work. What drew you to those classic figures?

I actually don’t have a great love of “public domain characters” — superheroes, I mean. I have a great love for certain characters or groups of characters, and superheroes in general. The golden age superheroes I used in my The Golden Age series, I chose for specific practical reasons, not for any particular love of them. I do have a great affection of classical public domain characters. I think this is due to their fame in some cases, and otherwise because of my fondness for them from my childhood. This would include the Invisible Man and Frankenstein, for example, but not Captain Nemo or Sherlock Holmes, both of whom I discovered later, in my late teens. How can you read a series like John Carter (and love it) and not want to write a Carter novel? The stories and characters are so inspirational. The same is true of certain superheroes, public domain or not. What is there sparks ideas that were not used for these characters, unlike pantheons I create wholly from my own imagination. These obviously take more work to develop, although there’s greater satisfaction, I think, in those types of projects.

If it wasn’t love, what was your motivation for choosing the characters in The Golden Age?

Practicality. I felt there would be a built-in audience for public domain superheroes. The response to my first superhero book (The Overman Paradigm, written under the Kim Williamson pen name) was discouraging (though those who read it liked it, it didn’t sell many copies), so I wanted to give my next superhero book the best chance I could. That meant using characters that readers already knew. I chose Standard/Better/Nedor — not knowing that Alan Moore had done the same for his Terra Obscura — because there were so many characters to use. There was something like 22 in the first book in the series (also named The Golden Age), all the SBN characters who were superheroes, and a few who weren’t.

Your take on the characters is decidedly different than the one by Alan Moore, Chris Sprouse and Yanick Paquette. Did you ever read Terra Obscura after writing your novel to see how it compares? What did you think of it?

No. Once I learned of it while I was more than halfway through with writing The Golden Age, I glanced at a timeline of it I found online to make sure my ideas weren’t close to Moore’s, but I never read any of it.

What comics do you regularly read then? You said nothing too modern, but are there runs you love to read again and again?

I stopped collecting comics years ago. The last series I collected — I couldn’t tell you what it was — was 2007, probably, and there were only a handful of titles. Comic books went off the rails in the ’90s when it became about money and changing things for the sake of change rather than character and continuity. All I read these days are old comics. My favorites, the ones that I re-read over and over are Stan Lee and Steve Englehart comics. I re-read other comics sometimes, I have favorite series like Haywire, Marshall Law, and Watchmen (to name just three) that I go back to every so often, but when I’m in a comic mood, it’s usually Stan and Romita’s Spider-Man, Stan and Jack’s Fantastic Four, or Steve’s Captain America or The Avengers. Those are my standbys.

Haywire is an interesting pick. Not a lot of people know the series as it came and went in under two years at DC, an out of continuity (maybe) superhero book about a guy in a giant suit of armor with some questions about his actual identity. Can you give a brief rundown of the series and tell what draws you back to it after all these years?

I bought it new at the comics shop every month. The series is about a loser who has blackouts, and this giant armored being who fights the Combine (mob). It’s unclear for most of the series what’s going on. Who is the armored guy? Why is he fighting the mob? Why doesn’t he talk? Why is the loser the main character? Lots and lots of interesting questions. Okay, so SPOILER ALERT. It turns out that the main character is able to summon a sophisticated suit of armor, subconsciously, and become this unstoppable juggernaut. He doesn’t know that he’s able to do this. He has these blackouts — during which he’s the armored character, it turns out — that he goes to a therapist to find understanding. Eventually pieces start falling into place. I’ll resist revealing the loser’s actual identity and his motives for fighting the mob. The story would make a great movie if they could keep the tone of the series, and not Hollywoodize it. What I like about the series is the not “polished” superhero art, the intriguing characters, and the mystery of what’s going on. It was so well wrapped up that I didn’t realize it was supposed to be an ongoing series until much later. It seemed like a limited series to me.

We talk about a whole lot more, from role-playing to "pantsing" to the merits of DC's Millennium. Read it all over at Medium.

Welcome to the new era of the Quadrant Universe!

I'm proud to have launched the Quadrant Universe over ten years ago now. I have stated time and again that 2018 is a rebuilding year for me. As part of that re-building, I decided I needed to make sure I had an infrastructure to deliver serialized super powered fiction to everyone through some kind of easy subscription format.

The easiest answer is Patreon.

A preview of what you will see at Patreon.

If you're unfamiliar with Patreon, the service is designed to allow fans of creators to directly support their work. Usually this comes in exchange for some kind of exclusive content. This will definitely be true for me as I go forward with my work. Starting in 2019, I plan to launch the new chapters of Lightweight and Quadrant as regular monthly releases to Patreon subscribers. Additionally, I'll debut new stories, such as a third series featuring a new continuing super-character I've developed over the last year. I plan to drop some short stories and novellas featuring other characters in there as well.

Of course, that launches in January. I'd personally love to see you sign up today however. You see, my plan for the rest of the year is to serialize every already published chapter of Lightweight and Quadrant over the next four months. Backers at higher levels will also see other bonus stories.

So if you love great super powered fiction or just want to support my work, this will be the direct line to do so and get all of my work faster than anyone else. Even if you don't have any interest in deep early content from yours truly, you can get exclusive thoughts, ideas and interviews over at the Patreon as well. Later this month, I will debut the first installment of BLOGGO, THE BLOG THAT WALKS LIKE A MAN! This feature will bring exclusive content from yours truly, sometimes in the form of articles like you see here (such as Influential, Best Character Ever, etc.) or as new content choices, such as deep dives into various things I just really, really love.

Learn more about all of this over at Patreon.

With the success of this project, I can guarantee years of content to come. Let's make new super powered fiction happen!