Great Art: Ash by Michel Fiffe!

 As a backer of Copra artist Michel Fiffe over on his Patreon, I am signed up for a tier that gets original art on an annual basis. With everything I've been diving into as a celebration of 1990s independent comics, it seemed only fitting to use this year's headshot for a rendition of one of the pre-eminent figures of that movement. 

Looking through my stack of comics, I realized only one hero really stood out for a great visual as a simple profile shot. Though he hasn't appeared for over twenty years, Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti's Ash was a character and comic with a ton of unrealized potential brought to an end by Quesada's path to the Marvel editor-in-chief position. Yet I still have a ton of love for the character so he won out as my top choice for new art.

And I couldn't be happier with the result! 

If you're interested in getting your own Fiffe art, sign up for his Patreon on January 1st! With a full year as a backer at the higher tiers, you can get superb work like this to enjoy! 

The Man Called Claus: Celebrate Christmas with the world's first superhero!

I've made no secret that I'm a fan of fun Christmas tales or silly comic tropes. And that's why over the years I've edited an entire volume of pulp hero Doc Claus and his adventure team made of holiday heroes. It's also why I've written a couple Christmas tales of my own. 

Both of those stories are on Medium right now, but normally they are locked behind the Medium pay-wall. For you dear readers on this festive holiday though, I'm bringing both of these tales to you with "friends links" that allow free reading of both these stupendous tales filled with holiday cheer! 

Doc Claus by Teel James Glenn.

The Phantom Krampus was my holiday story from last year as an extradimensional issue goes awry and leaves Santa "Doc" Claus in a dangerous situation which threatens Christmas itself as he fights a dark manifestation of pure evil! 

Claus vs. Kong is my original holiday tale as the North Pole comes under the threat of a giant ape unleashed on the North Pole! It's got all the giant monster fighting action you could ask for in your holiday stories! 

If you like either of these tales, you might also want to check out the further adventures of Doc Claus with five stories by five stellar writers! 

I'm certainly not one to write a holiday tale every year, but I'm overjoyed to share this one with you and yours this holiday season. Have a wonderful and safe Christmas! 

The weird history of America: Virginia Dare

The first white settler ever born in colonial America was a young girl named Virginia Dare. Last seen by anyone in recorded history as just a baby, her name is put to record during the time period after her grandfather John White returned to England for supplies. Upon his return to her home in the Roanoke Colony, she and every other member of the one hundred plus member village were gone. 

Marvel 1602's Virginia Dare,
illustrated by Andy Kubert.

To this day, no one knows what happened to Virginia or any other member of the Roanoke Colony. Both the baby and the colony have entered popular culture as the first great mystery of American history. 

Over the 530 years since the Roanoke Colony vanished, Virginia has appeared across multiple media forms from Neil Gaiman's Marvel 1602 to the Adrian Paul SciFi Channel film Wraiths of Roanoke. She's portrayed as an often tragic figure, the tiny girl that doesn't really get a chance at life. Often she ends up the only survivor of her colony by some fate and is brought elsewhere to learn and grow. 

Yet as I look at her as a character from folklore, my immediate thought is very different. Why would the first white settler born in the nascent United States be good and pure? What if she's the literal representation of the corruptions of colonization? If Virginia Dare survived, why wouldn't she serve to show the inescapability of that corruption, or even become the bearer of it herself. 

This is the two hundred twenty-five year old woman that plays a central role in The Hidden War. She makes her debut next month on Patreon, in Book Two of that feature. I hope you'll come see. 

The Ultimate Crossover Pin-up Book!

We're just days away from my celebration of 90s independent comics in the form of Bad Girls: X-Over. And with that I've revisited a bunch of fun bits of 90s comic history over the last couple months. As a fan of several of the young and short universes of the time, the Ultraverse always stuck out to me. After the purchase of the line by Marvel, it was mostly gutted. But an interesting thing happened in the pages of two volumes of Dream Team, a book designed for superstar artists to draw great crossover shots between heroes and villains of both universes. Something strange happened though as they recruited talent...

That's the Fantastic Four versus Ultraverse's Sludge by artist Michael Allred, but it also features another character out of place in either universe. Allred's creator owned Madman made an appearance in this book and he wouldn't be alone! 

William (then Billy) Tucci gave us his own Shi posing with Shuriken and Psylocke: 

NaNoWriMo is upon us!

Dear readers, it is November. Outside of Election Day and Thanksgiving, the thing I know most about this month is the advent of National Novel Writing Month! Every year, tens of thousands of writers challenge themselves to produce 50,000 words in the thirty days of this month. 

This year I'm diving into a long in gestation project, a book called Century! The new novel will follow a family of heroes from the beginning of the 1900s to the end. Each arc will cover one year in each decade as the story of the Century family develops! It's big, epic and will help define the world of the Quadrant Universe more than any book before or since!

I'm writing this and most of the other posts this month well ahead of starting the project, but as you're reading this I should be knee deep in the opening of the book, set in 1901. And while you won't see the adventures of M.M. Century and his descendants for some time to come, be prepared for the next great epic in the history of the Quadrant Universe! 

And don't forget to get in on the Patreon, because I have two new series starting in just a few days!