I have been fortunate to work on a couple of indie comic projects with some very talented people. My contributions are solely in the writing department, with the exception of a few forays into lettering, due to my lack of drawing, inking and coloring skills. I have worked on pencil sketches while drawing with my kids and think that if I sat down and applied myself I could maybe illustrate a middle-grade fiction book as long as all of the characters were stick figures. ‘Nuff said.
My work on Lords of the Cosmos came out of one of those serendipitous occurrences that make life so interesting. Jason Lenox came to my house as part of his day job and through chit-chat found out that I loved anime and Mad Max and wrote sci-fi and fantasy stories. I found out he had done an anime-style cover for the local paper and published independent comics. He asked me if I’d be interested in writing on his latest project and I said, “yes”.
Jason’s idea was to create a dark, adult take on Masters of the Universe, rolling all of the crazy 1980s science-fantasy vibes of that show and others, such as Thundarr, into it. It would draw on the stylized art of heavy metal rock posters and the movie Heavy Metal itself and would feature a whole cast of original characters, complete with their own backstories. He was thinking of calling it Lords of the Cosmos (LotC for short)
I loved the name, it was perfect for the 1980s camp of the thing, but I wasn’t a huge He-Man fan. I watched the show, of course, because in the 80s you watched whatever was on or you didn’t watch at all, but it became apparent to me early on that I was at a disadvantage in writing for this because of my lack of super-fandom. However, it just so happened I knew of someone who was a huge He-Man fan and also a writer: Dennis Fallon. After getting the okay from Jason I contacted Dennis and he came on board.
The three of us hashed out an entire epic story, complete with a huge cast of characters, most of which were just a name and three line description. When it came time to draw, Jason wanted to start earlier in the timeline than what we’d laid out, so the main story was tossed in favor of a “prequel” story, but most of the characters remained. Over the course of the next few years Jason doggedly put out issues of Lords of the Cosmos through Kickstarter campaigns but found his time was too limited to do all of the drawing. He began inviting guest artists to create backstory shorts that would tag onto the main story, which resulted in LotC becoming somewhat of a sandbox world where other artists and writers could add in their own styles and voices. To date, Jason has put out four issues of LotC and has had some of the shorts featured in Planet Comics. Not a bad run!
Plague
While we were co-writing screenplays together, Dennis Fallon pitched an idea about the Bubonic Plague of the 1370s being a biological weapon created by the Catholic Church to kill off the last of the legendary creatures and fey. He had presented it along with a couple other movie ideas, but this one stood out for the sheer “What the?” factor of it. I was a little concerned about the religious implications of it, but Dennis was like, “This is Hollywood!”
I conceded his point, mostly on the grounds that spec scripts were supposed to get you noticed and this one sure had a zinger of a premise. Plus, that religious aspect ended up being a major theme of the work and an important part of the character arcs we developed. We started writing and finished it fairly quickly, but, like most screenplays, it didn’t find any traction. It sat around for a bit while we worked on other projects.
Enter Lords of the Cosmos. Dennis and I had been working on the Plague script and LotC at the same time and had gotten a fairly good handle on how independent comics were made. A few months after finishing the Plague script Dennis called me up and said, “I think we should make a graphic novel out of Plague”. We knew of a letterer from LotC and we already had a script. All we needed was an artist. Dennis had run across a couple and once we saw some samples we knew who we wanted: Zachary Brunner.
Zach was a colorist, professionally, at that point, and his vivid contrasts instantly drew me to his art. I love stuff with bold colors and lots of flash, like old muscle cars with Grabber Green or Competition Orange paint, bisected by some sweet hood stripes. Zach could lay down colors like that and make them sing. His pencils were great, too, and what Dennis and I both found amazing was that Zach would draw the scenes we had written exactly as we saw them in our heads almost every time. And this was from a movie script, not a traditional comic script. To have found an artist that simply gets you from the get-go was awesome and made the long process of getting Plague onto paper a joy.
Prior to starting on actual issues, Dennis had us create a “look book” with a summary of the plot, the story broken out into issues and a character bibliography, complete with colored art by Zach. Zach did a great job of putting this all together despite not being a graphic artist by trade. Dennis sent it out to a bunch of comic houses and Markosia wanted to sign us immediately.
That said, creating a story in visual form takes a lot longer than writing it in words. The results, however, were fantastic. Zach produced some of the greatest fantasy images I have ever seen and the colors in the two-page spreads of the final battles are otherworldly. It was good timing, too, because shortly after finishing Plague Zach got a job drawing movie posters in Hollywood and all his free time dried up. Life’s serendipity had struck again. We found the right artist at the right time and produced something great.
You can get the two volumes that make up the graphic novel of Plague in physical form from Markosia press here (volume 1 and volume 2).
Or you can buy the twelve individual issues that make up Plague on Comixology.
That’s it for me and comics, so far. I’ll keep you posted when new Lords of the Cosmos Kickstarters go live.