New Pulp

I've tended to describe the kinds of stories I love to write and talk about as "adventure fiction," but another way of labeling them is Pulp. In fact, I've pretty much abandoned the more-encompassing Sci-Fi as a genre that I like. I dig Space Pulp: robots, aliens, rayguns; that kind of thing. Jungle adventure stories started in the pulps too. As of course did Robert E Howard's Conan, and Lovecraftian horror. So many of the stories I've enjoyed my entire life fall under the Pulp umbrella. Depending on how broadly you define Pulp, maybe all of them do.

At SpringCon a couple of weeks ago I got to sit next to Mike Bullock (The Phantom, Lions Tigers and Bears), someone I've known for a long time, but didn't know that well. Mike's one of the major writers in the current Pulp revival and one of the best things about that weekend was getting to know him better and just chatting about Pulp for a couple of days. I left the weekend excited about the genre (or, more accurately, the collection of genres) and determined to do more writing in it. Especially prose, which I've been neglecting for comics projects the last few years. Comics projects are fun and I'm going to keep doing them (especially Kill All Monsters, of course), but they take a while to get going and there's no reason I couldn't be cranking out some short stories at the same time.

Something else that came from my conversation with Mike was the discovery that he and Tommy Hancock (another long-time acquaintance and current Pulp revivalist) have started a New Pulp blog dedicated to talking about today's Pulp fiction. So of course I asked if I could chip in. Mike and Tommy graciously accepted and my first post (part of a new column called "Pulptacular") went up at the end of last week. It's about some of the new Pulp TV shows coming out next season and there are some good ones. So check out the post and if you like adventure fiction, follow the site. It's going to be a great place to stay caught up on this stuff.

Read My Stuff: Panels for Primates

For those who aren't familiar with it, Panels for Primates is a charity anthology webcomic on the act-i-vate site that's meant to raise money for the Primate Rescue Center in Kentucky. It's entirely free to read, but if the ape and monkey stories move or entertain you at all, you're invited - but not obligated - to contribute.

I'm a huge fan of these animals, so I was thrilled when editor Troy Wilson invited me to contribute a short, two-page story. And even more thrilled when he told me I'd be working with the awesome Simon Roy. Between the two of us, we packed a ton of action into two pages including giant cephalopods, tiki-men, a sinister elephant, a mad tortoise, slime-monsters, werewolves, mummies, and I'm self-indulgent enough to have thrown in giant monsters, giant robots, and yes, gorillas riding dinosaurs. It also features that most famous of Kentucky primates, Daniel Baboon. Please go check it out.

Savage Beauty #1 now on sale!

I'm embarrassed, but I totally whiffed on mentioning last week that you could've bought a comic with writing by me in it. I didn't write the comic itself, but in the back of Savage Beauty #1 is a text piece I wrote about jungle fiction in general and jungle girl stories in particular. 

The reason I forgot to bring it up here was that I was busy getting my interview with Savage Beauty's real writer, Mike Bullock, ready to go for Robot 6. Part of my fascination with modern jungle comics is how writers avoid the offensiveness of some of the genre's tropes. I talked to Mike about how he balances fun adventure with the horrific, real-world elements that he weaved into The Phantom and now Savage Beauty.

Check and see if your store has a copy of Savage Beauty #1. It promises to be a cool, interesting series.

The Cownt in "Get Outta Town"

An announcement about Tumblr doesn't feel like enough content today, so what follows is the complete first appearance of the Cownt from Tales from the Inner Sanctum, Volume 1. The book was a collection of horror stories inspired by the work of Steve Niles and was the first published work of both myself and artist Gavin Spence.

You can see that we were brand new to this whole Making Comics thing. I know I cringe at some of the text. I still like Gav's early stuff, but - as you'll see if you click that link above - he's improved a lot too since we did this. Still, it was a lot of fun and I'm proud of us for making it. Also of Jason Hanley for the lettering. He's awesome.













Incidentally, Tales from the Inner Sanctum, Volume 1 also featured a story by me and Jessica Hickman, who would go on to become one of the Cownt's strongest supporters and an artist on the Cownt Tales one-shot.

Elsewhere...Kill All Monsters!: The Ashcan

A few cool things happened this past week.

As announced on the Kill All Monsters! blog and Jason Copland's blog, we’re printing a very limited edition KAM ashcan. Depending on how quickly the printer works, Jason will be taking copies to ECCC in early March and I’ll have some a couple of weeks later at C2E2. If there are any still left, I’ll take some to SpringCon in May as well. If you’re not going to be at either of the March shows and don’t want to take your chances about SpringCon, the best way to get yours is to contact Jason either at j(dot)copland(at)telus(dot)net or through Twitter.

The ashcan will have 28 pages (the entire first chapter of the story) of black-and-white interior art and a full colour cover, all in a landscape format. Again, this is going to have an extremely limited print run. Once they’re gone, they’re gone and Jason’s even going to include a small KAM ink drawing if you order from him. Price is only $10, which is a steal for Copland art.

And speaking of Kill All Monsters!,  I think it's been a couple of weeks since I mentioned that the webcomic is still updating with three new pages every Friday. If you haven't checked in for a bit, we've now seen some of the giant robots’ base and the Paris and Africa scenes are starting to connect.

This week I also had a story accepted to a prose anthology that I'm pretty excited about. More details as I'm allowed to reveal them, but the theme of the anthology will be a lot of fun. And in equally mysterious news, I was also invited last week to participate in a webcomic anthology that's going to be a blast.

Over at Robot 6, the latest Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs column was about the recent hullabaloo over creator-owned comics. I didn't mention Eric Powell's video, because while I agreed with a lot of what he was saying, I didn't think it was particularly helpful in the sense of offering any solutions for fixing the problems it identifies. As Tom Spurgeon says, that doesn't make it valueless, but I much prefer the thoughts of guys like Steve Niles and Skottie Young who have an approach they want to try.

...In with the new

I think I've figured out why I'm not feeling the Newness this year. For me, the New Year started back in November when I went back to work and Kill All Monsters! launched. But it's still a time for goal-setting, so I feel like I should be doing that even if I don't feel like doing it, if that makes sense.

Fiction-wise, the priority is to finish the Kill All Monsters! script. I'm close enough to the end now that I realize I've got some re-writing to do on the earlier stuff. Nothing that Jason and Ed have already drawn and lettered fortunately, but it's going to be more involved than just completing the current draft and typing, "The End." Lesson learned: even on a webcomic, finish the script before you launch. Frankly, had I had the completed script (instead of just a detailed outline) before we pitched to publishers, we would have had a stronger idea about what we were pitching and might have received a more enthusiastic response. That uncertainty was a casualty of also not knowing what format we were pitching: complete graphic novel or serialized mini-series. In the end, it shouldn't have mattered though. I should have had the script done either way.

I won't make that mistake with the next project, which is going to be the pirate/jungle girl story that Jessica Hickman and I want to do. As soon as I finish Kill All Monsters! it'll be on to that. Hopefully I'll be able to at least get started on it this year because there's a second - though very different - pirate story I want to do with Darla Ecklund right behind it.

On the blogging front, the goal for this year is to be more adventurous and try new things. I have no idea what that will look like, but I've settled into a comfortable niche and I need to step out of it occasionally and see what other possibilities and opportunities are waiting. I'm a planner and it's very difficult to leave this goal vague and open, but I'm going to and will consider doing so my first step towards meeting it.

Buy My Stuff: Savage Beauty #1

Hey! What's that on page 282 of this month's Previews catalog?



I don't mean to be misleading with the title of this post. I didn't write the story in this issue, but I did write a back-up article for it about the history of the jungle girl genre and why it's cool. Even if I hadn't though, I'd be looking forward to this issue. The real writer is Mike Bullock who's fresh off his long run with Moonstone's Phantom comics and has an interesting take on the concept that I'm very curious to read.

Kill All Monsters! Pages 9-11

It's Friday and you know what that means. Catch up with our robot-driving heroes as they try to catch a break and actually kill some monsters.