Alright, here's how I would reboot Doctor Who

 

"For crying out loud, it's just a TV show!" - William Shatner, Saturday Night Live, 1986.

Part One: Baggage.

Let me get this out of the way first; I started watching Doctor Who when I was 6 years old. It was the 1993 Planet of the Daleks broadcast specifically. Obviously I wouldn't be writing a thing like this if I didn't immediately fall in love with the show. I spent the next decade of my life experiencing the show in bits and pieces. A recording from UK Gold here, a boxed set rented from the library there. The show formed a core of my being, of that there is no doubt, even though in the grand scheme of things it was just a TV show.

The 1990s and 2000s were a long crawl for the show's cultural irrelevancy. Being into the Doctor Who was genuinely considered weird. "Cult." Conventions were humble and somewhat offbeat affairs. That being said, we were content in our irrelevancy. The wilderness years brought forth some of the best Doctor Who stories we as fans got to experience. The Doctor Who magazine comic strips. The Big Finish audios. The New Adventures and BBC books.

Yet we always hoped against hope that the show would come back one day. Air on TV. New stories week after week, become truly mainstream again, and like a monkey's paw that wish came true.

I'm not going to waste time airing my grievances here. I never particular cared for the 2005 - 2010 years. There was just something about that era that never really gelled for me. That being said, I can't deny that there were moments that I enjoyed, or even loved. Dalek. Blink. Doomsday. Time Crash. Moments where I could be a fan without reservations. Still, it never really clicked.

The Moffat era was a marked improvement for me, though to be honest it still felt compromised by some of the tonal hangovers from the RTD era. It wouldn't be until Peter Capaldi's final season that I felt like Doctor Who was finally starting to resemble what I originally fell in love with, and, ironically, I would enjoy the Chibnall era without reservations at all. I know that isn't a popular opinion, but I genuinely enjoyed that era.

Hence I was sad to see it go in 2022. I was less than pleased to here RTD was being brought back to revitalise the show, but I was willing to give him a fair shake. We'd both changed over the last 20 years. No reason to come at it with any previous baggage.

Well, anyway, turns out the RTD revival era would be turbo-not-to-my-particular-tastes-3000.

Part Two: Throwing out the baggage.

So, what was the point of all that preamble? Well, as Shatner's maxim denotes, only a fool gets so invested in a TV show that it takes over their entire life. My days of fuming over farting aliens and duplicate David Tennants is long over. People love that era, and for good reason. That it didn't work for me is sour grapes at worse.

There's a part of me that wants to go on a week long rant about how bad The Reality War was, how cynical I feel regenerating The Doctor into Billie Piper is, and how deep RTD's head must be in the sand to produce one of the worst hours of TV I have ever seen, but I'm a 37 year old man and I should not be investing this much emotional energy into a cheap TV show about a time travelling space wizard.

All this is to say... why rant when you can channel the energy into something creative? And let me be clear here, much of the below pitch is an idea I've been mulling over for quite a long period. It's not a direct reaction to The Reality War. Nor is it an attempt to resurrect an idealised version of the classic or Chibnall eras. Everything I choose to pitch below is carefully considered. A clean break. A proposal focussed on winning back fans AND appealing to a brand new audience.

With that in mind, we commence.

Part Three: Where are we now?

The decisions made regarding this pitch are done so assuming the following status quo would be present as of its air date:

- The show would have been off the air for several years.

- The Billie Piper casting would have seen some form of resolution, rather than left hanging.

- The BBC would be willing to fund the show with a modest budget. No DisneyPlus involvement.

With the stage set I would need to open with my first distinct proposal; write the show with a more mature perspective in mind. I know the common consensus is that Doctor Who should appeal to children first and foremost, but I don't think giving the show a more grown-up angle would necessarily jeopardize that. I think stories that appeal more to teenagers and young adults would serve the show better than always dumbing things down for six year olds to get in on the ground floor.

I say this as someone who got into the show at age six, but we have to give up on this ideal that the show is going to be a generational constant that kids will get to experience year after year, decade after decade. The entertainment ecosystem just isn't like that any more. Doctor Who has to compete with Roblox and Fortnite, Youtube and TicToc. The opportunity to be that generational constant may already be long gone.

My proposal is that just making a good TV show that finds an audience would be enough.

To whit, I propose a Doctor Who reboot that skews towards an older audience. A Doctor that drinks alcohol. Stories that can delve into darker areas like drug dealing and historical war crimes. Where relationships between companions can be explored on the sexual level. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about Torchwood here, but just allow the show to get a little more adult than it previously was. To no longer hide stuff behind innuendo.

Meanwhile, I also propose a format that that prioritises longer, multi-part stories. This serves two purposes. It gives writers room to actually explore their stories in greater depth, something the show has been in dire need of late, but also works as a budget conscious creative decision. A nine episode season made up of three stories would be significantly cheaper than eight episodes each needing a fresh location, cast and costumes.

So with the stage and tone set, let's introduce our characters.

Part Four: The Doctor. Mysterious. Intense. Frightening.

Indira Varma is The Doctor. Yes, I know she was in Torchwood and Rogue. No, this will never be acknowledged in-show. Indira is an amazing actress. Dedicated and versatile. Sometimes I forget it is her when I'm watching season one of Rome, such as it is she can blend into the role. I don't think I need to convince anyone of this casting choice. If you know her work then you know she would absolutely nail it.

Personality wise, I want a darker, more intense and less friendly Doctor. Think late-era Sylvester McCoy or Peter Capaldi. This is a Doctor who rarely, if ever, smiles. She's aloof, somewhat above it all. Cold, calculating, but likeable. She's Mr Spock, with a little touch of Gandalf and David Bowie in They Hunger. She'll get mistaken for a vampire on numerous occasions, the way she frequently hangs back in the shadows and calculates her next move.

She's also a physically active Doctor. Like Pertwee, she's not afraid to get her hands dirty and will frequently pull out the Venusian Aikido when her back is against the wall, though as with Mr Spock, she will frequently disable her opponents with as little showmanship as possible, and does not relish the use of violence.

The sonic screwdriver's use and utility will be massively decreased. It can unlock doors, and that's about it. It can't hack into computers, and it can't "read" data about the environment or whatever. The psychic paper is nowhere to be seen. This is a Doctor that has to think their way out of a problem, not bypass it with gadgets or space magic.

Part Five: The Companions. Strong, dysfunctional, distinct.

This reboot will introduce three major companions. Yes, you heard me right. Once again, I want to discard common consensus that we have to be introduced through single, common everyman. Note, the actors I have chose are mainly just for the purposes of giving you a feel for the character. I have no idea if they'd be affordable or even available, but they should give you an image of how the character would be.

Bella Ramsey is Ash. A wanderer, a thief, a vagabond. They've been running their whole life. No home. No parents. Just survival on the streets of 21st Century Britain. They're slow to trust, which makes sense, since Britain isn't exactly a trusting place right now. This is why they are drawn to the Doctor. They're alike in some ways. Travellers without a home. Purpose to be found in turning the next corner.

Dakota Beavers is Tommy. A rez kid who just wants a quiet life. He's a good mechanic, which is more than can be said for his weed dealing cousin who keeps bringing the heat down on them both. Tommy otherwise would be of no concern to The Doctor, if it wasn't for that strange sonic wrench handed down from his grandfather, that seems to contain very Gallifreyan looking technology.

Abigail Lawrie is Princess Ssesler. Heir to the throne of New Mars, Ssesler is an Ice Lady who has no interest in ruling the Martian people, and has run away from home to seek adventure, hunting down the artefacts of Old Mars' glory days. Immature, petulant, yet genuinely fascinated and open minded on cultures from the past, Ssesler's collision course with The Doctor may not go smoothly, but their curious natures are a strong complement.

I know three companions might be seen as stacking the cast, and I get that, but I also think that a broader season, that splits stories over three episodes apiece, will allow the leeway to develop them all and give them room to breathe.

Part Six: The Opening Act.

Season One opens in medias res, where Ash is planning to rob a priceless antique from a high-stakes auction. Also on the scene is The Doctor, who is showing a particular interest in an odd, blue diamond. The two are antagonistic at first, but quickly team up against the villainous Count Jackson, who also wants the diamond. The Doctor reveals that this is a Temporal Lodestone, ancient time manipulation tech that should have been long buried. Count Jackson is actually Jugasar, of the Jagaroth, an ancient race who have had their corporal forms shattered across time. Jugasasr wishes to unite three Temporal Lodestone, which would give him the power to reform on ancient earth and prevent the extinction of his race, at the cost of humanity ever existing. Episode 1 ends with Jugasar successfully getting the first Lodestone and blinking away from Britain and our heroes. The Doctor and Ash run to the Tardis and give chase.

Episode 2 begins with Tommy pulling into the local reservation bar, only to find a new state Police Chief introducing himself to the reservation Sheriff. Chief Jackson lectures Tommy on his authority, admitting that he has no intent to respect the reservation's sovereignty if it gets in his way. Tommy then immediately heads out to his cousin's weed farm to warn him that trouble might be on its way. We discover Tommy has a mysterious, sonic screwdriver-like device, and that his grandfather knew about things on a "Cosmic," level. Jackson ambushes Tommy on his way back to town, only for the Tardis to materialise around Tommy's car. The Doctor, now with Ash in tow, reveals that the next Loadstone is somewhere on the reservation, and together they discover that somehow it is buried in Tommy's grandfather's grave. The story ends with both hero and villain having one Lodestone each.

Episode 3 begins in the ancient ruins of Mars. Princess Ssesler is doing a bit of tomb raiding, while an Ice Warrior security squad, lead by Lord Jassskon, approaches the planet to bring the princess home. The Doctor, Tommy and Ash arrive, cross paths with Ssesler and battle the Ice Warrior security squad. We go through some Indiana Jones style tombs and traps, before having a big showdown at an ancient Martian temple where the final lodestone remains. Jugasar succeeds in finding the Loadstone, overpowers the Tardis team for the second time and activates the three, only for his form to disintegrate into the time vortex.. The final Lodestone was a fake, only figured out by Ssesler, who knew that the ancient Martians would never display such a valuable artefact so prominently, and clocked it as a fake.

With the threat neutralised The Doctor departs, with all three of her new companions choosing to accompany her onto adventures in the Tardis, and they depart for worlds unknown.

Part Seven: Pushing the Boat Out.

From here on out I'd want the series to just focus on strong, straight science fiction concepts. A squad of soldiers on an ice planet locked in a stalemate with clone duplicates who have no way of knowing which are the clones and which are the originals. A story set during the English Civil War where a local preacher imbued with the power of an alien artefact is inadvertently using it to rile up the tempers of the Roundheads. A lone Dalek stalks a deep space salvage ship in an Alien-type horror story.

Have a story that explores the Galactic Federation. Have the Tardis team come across a conspiracy to sabotage two warring civilisations that the Federation is attempting to mediate with (Sontarons/Rutans? Dravens/Bannermen? Dominators/Krotons? Two completely new alien races?) and it is a race against time before the two sides detonate a sun in an attempt to cripple the other's fleet.

If UNIT is to reappear, really just try to take them back to square one. They're a small international force of specialists that is being directed from the European Mainland. Dealing with red tape and dismissive authorities is just as much of a problem as alien infiltrators. If Kate is still around, have her butt heads with an antagonistic (though ultimately well intentioned) bean counter officer from Geneva that keeps hamstringing their operations with budget cuts.

Big idea for the finale. The Doctor crosses paths with another renegade time lord, Praxis, that serves as a Magneto to their Professor X. An extremist who isn't afraid to get their hands dirty to do what they feel is right. Have a story on a planet where in 100 years time the robotic subclass will gain sentience and fight for liberation, but Praxis reveals that their sentience manifested much earlier, and wants to liberate the bots now, even if it will result in a more violent uprising. Will The Doctor condemn a persecuted underclass to 100 years of oppression, or could they justify the deaths of thousands of humans in the crossfire if it means their liberation? Really explore the murky reality of such a choice and have Praxis call The Doctor out over their frequent both-sidesisms. A more anti-heroic adversary than a villain like The Master, and an ending where the Doctor has to choose between the lesser of two evils, without giving the audience a clear answer on what that is.

Some other ideas for companions jumping in later on. A revisit of the Leela concept with a big Red-Sonja type barbarian woman from an aquatic world who has gills. Introductory story involves overthrowing the corporation that is exploiting the planet. Have her butt heads with The Doctor on cultural issues. Maybe introduce a 1930's hard boiled detective to hang around in the Tardis for a while and be friends-with-benefits with the barbarian woman. Lend a time-shifted and alien perspective to stories like we used to get with some of the companions in classic who.

Part Eight: The Bit Where I Just Get Self Indulgent

I envision this all as a three season run, and the power will probably go to my head before Season 3. Before said season launches, we do three specials starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor. I have no pragmatic reason to do this, and in fact it'd probably be a bad idea to do it in the middle of a era that is trying to be a fresh start, but I really want to see Paul McGann on screen again and if I was showrunner I'd do everything in my power to squeeze that in.

In my defence the three specials would be entirely optional for new audiences, but tie in to the overall third season for those watching. The Three Stories would be adaptions of The Chimes of Midnight, Children of the Revolution and Alien Bodies, with McGann back and India Fisher playing Charley. It will be made clear that The Doctor suspects that has already experienced these stories before, which is why they are both older than they should be, and realising during the climax of Alien Bodies that Charley shouldn't be there. This would be revealed to be due to the machinations of Faction Paradox, the Expanded Universe time travelling cult that draws power from paradoxes. This would lead in to featuring them as the arc villains of season 3.

Obviously we'd take care to introduce them properly and don't leave people feeling like they need to go back and read wilderness years novels to get the jist of them. In the final story the Tardis team come across an auction in some grand futuristic space station, mirroring the antiques auction in the first episode. The Doctor discovers that the auction is being held by Faction Paradox, who are selling artefacts from The Doctor's future. The team then has to find a way to put a stop to the auctions, as these items all need to find their proper place in the Doctor's timeline, but the strain of coming into contact with so many artefacts out of sync with her timeline puts enough stress on her to force a regeneration, leaving the new incumbent Doctor, to finally finish the fight.

Alternatively, my other "glup shitto" idea would be to do a final season dubbed "Doctor Who Must Die!" Where the Doctor gets a bounty put on their head and has to spend an entire season outsmarting intergalactic hitmen. Bring back Vinder, now back under the machinations of the Grand Serpent. Bring in Shayde from the DWM comic strips, now reprogrammed to seek vengeance on behalf of the Time Lords. Resurrect Rogue, older and vengeful after his time in the hell dimension. Make it known to the audience the story will end with the Doctor's regeneration and leave them guessing and debating who, exactly, will be the one to pull the trigger.

Part Nine: Kill your darlings.

“A lot of times when you’re working on IP storytelling your impulse is to open the toybox and start playing with all the toys. You should try to resist that. What you should do is leave more toys in the toybox than were there before you got there” - Tony Gilroy, 2025.

So, upon reading the last part back I realised that all that stuff would be an inherently bad idea. Much as I would like to see McGann back in the role, or live action versions of characters from the comics to show up, this is absolutely not the time for all that. This is meant to be a relaunch. A fresh start. In a world where you're inheriting a Doctor Who era that is flying high, you can get away with talking spin-offs and deep lore cuts, but for an era that is coming after a presumed hiatus, you just have to let all that go. Those who fail to learn the lessons of RTD2 are doomed to repeat it.

Kill your darlings. Forget Faction Paradox and The Grand Serpent. Keep the series on the straight and narrow. Just keep up with good, strong, self-contained science fiction stories. Use UNIT sparingly. Use your time to flesh out more of the newly introduced aspects and characters, like Praxis. Heck, I was maybe even a bit too indulgent for the opening episodes, with the inclusion of the Jagaroth and the Ice Warriors. Maybe Lord Jackson ought to be from a brand new alien race. Maybe Princess Ssesler ought to be too.

Part Ten: In Conclusion.

This was mostly just spitballing ideas amongst all the recent talk of the show going on hiatus. It's not perfect. Either way, I hope it's clear that my attempt with this was to show the numerous ways the show could go without going back to the well of the same old shit. We don't need to have the companion be a bubbly young woman from modern day earth every single time. We don't need the series to be bogged down with myth arcs. We don't need to squeeze a monster of the week story into a 45 minute episode every week. Expand your mind. Think outside of the box.

I also hope it goes to show how it isn't so easy to avoid giving in to your baser impulses. There's a "glup shitto," cavalcade in all of us, waiting to break out at a moment's notice. Always keep that in check.

Maybe this little ramble has given some food for thought, and I encourage each and every one of you to have a hard think about how YOU would do a reboot if you ever had the chance. You never know, someone out there completely new may one day be in the big chair. Doctor Who can't stay in the hands of the same creative team forever.

Or at least, I hope it won't.

Jack's March Update

 It has been a while since my last update, and honestly the main reason is that last year took a lot our of me so I've had to have long hard think on what projects I want to work on this year and how much time to devote towards doing conventions and such.

With that in mind, a lot of the stuff I'm working on at the moment I'm undecided on whether to pursue, but I'll be getting back into doing conventions, so here's more details on that.

- On 22nd March I'll have a table at Carlisle Comic Con.

- On 5th April I'll be at the Sheffield Comic and Film Fair.

- On 17th May we'll be having our fourth Whitehaven MiniCon, which has only gotten bigger as each year has gone by.

At each of these conventions I'll be selling art prints and stickers, along with print editions of Sea of Spheres and Scoundrels, Scumbags and Schemers.

I'll also be looking into doing more conventions as the year goes on.

In the meantime you can keep up to date on all of my goings on here, and over on Bsky. Tumblr and Deviantart will have artwork posted there as usual.

Thanks for reading.

In Praise of the Grobusverse - The Cure for the Common Lore-brain.

 

Contains minor spoilers

If there's one thing that the internet has cursed us with it's what I like to refer to as 'Wiki-brain,' though to be more accurate 'Lore-brain,' is probably the more descriptive term. It's the tendency for fan communities to reduce the fictional stories they love down to statistics and backstory. The desire to quantity and record for posterity every piece of information a text provides, no matter how trivial it is.

I think it was Hbomberguy who said something along the lines of "Wookiepedia can tell you Chewbacca's exact height and weight but it can't tell you a thing about the themes of the story he comes from." As such I kind of feel there's been a bit of a backlash of late against excessive world-building and creators constantly trying to over-explain every minor aspect of their fictional universes.

There's probably a whole other essay I could write about how thematic constancy is more important than narrative consistency, but I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's room enough for stories that play fast and loose with their own continuity in order for the story to come first, but I think that there's just a compelling argument to make that the cure for 'Lore-brain," can also be in telling stories where a drip feed of backstory can be so much more compelling than world guides and appendices, or, god forbid, fan wikis and TV Tropes.

This long winded into bring me to Simon Roy's Grobusverse, for want of a better name. A collection of comics set in a fictional, fractured future. I've discussed entries within this universe before, but this essay is going to be less a review of the stories specifically and more about how Roy chooses to communicate this universe to his audience.

Starting with Habitat in 2017, I was immediately drawn towards the visual aesthetic that Roy conjured to depict this techno-barbaric future. Set on board a space habitat in the style of Arthur C Clarke's Rama, the comic tells the story of warring tribes battling for supremacy using mostly long forgotten technology after having been left behind by whatever galactic community exists beyond the habitat's sealed airlocks. The technology itself looks crunchy and believable. The olive green and industrial orange of it's mech-suits, cargo walkers and harpoon guns all look like they have come from some alternate cold-war Europe, bastard children of Aliens' power loader and Red Alert 2's Soviet Super tech, rather than some far future space utopia.

It's all the more surprising then to find that the habitat also once played host to some kind of dormant god-like creature who seems biological in nature but is otherwise intricately connected to the populace's lost technology.

Habitat is for the most part a completely self contained story. By the end characters have completed both their narrative arcs and completed their stated objectives to bring new life to the habitat's savage world. Yet as a reader so many breadcrumbs are left hanging in the air. Just what is the state of the galaxy beyond the habitat? What cataclysm led to their abandonment? What is the true nature of the colossal creature dormant within the superstructure's depths? Why exactly are the combat robots also representatives of the Catholic church?

Habitat is filled with so many tantalising backstory details that go unexplained, but get into the reader's head in such a way that they can't help but speculate. Had the series have seen a continuation these backstory elements may well have been filled out in a understandable, orderly fashion, but Simon Roy's retro-techno-future world would sit dormant for a few years before seeing it's revival in webcomic form. Though the direction it decided to go in was to zig almost certainly where one would expect it to zag.

Griz Grobus, far from taking place on a high-tech space habitat, would instead pull us down to Altamera, a colony world that appears to be just as cut off from the greater universe as their space dwelling cousins were. Instead of a jungle climate filled with warring tribes, we find snowy mountaintops and forest glades, and a frontier-like community of loggers, miners and trappers. The technology is still present, but like in Habitat, poorly understood, with archaeologists and academics doing their best to try and piece together what little even operates.

Griz Grobus delves more into the mysterious robotic priesthood, who still seem to keep the faith with Lord Jesus Christ despite having little concern for their religion's near extinction amongst the populace. Fittingly, this story is told side by side with a folkloric fable of rampaging warlords and magical geese. A reminder that even on the other side of the galaxy strong stories can hold great power.

Like Habitat, Griz Grobus only drip-feeds it's backstory, hinting at possible explanations for the state of the universe here and there. Interestingly, the Kickstarter edition came with a small guidebook to the "Thinking Machines of the Apostolic Congress." Presented as an in-universe artefact, this guide book details the different forms of robo-priest and their intended purposes, but notably gives NO information as to why these machines appear to be specifically Christian in origin.

I hope it's clear by now what it is in Roy's approach I find so appealing here. No doubt he could easily fill the book's back matter with timelines and backstory and faction guides and whatnot, but a huge part of the enjoyment comes from the journey, not the destination. Like the characters within the stories themselves, we often lack context surrounding their discoveries, and like the archaeologists and artefact hunters, we have to analyse and interpret from incomplete data.

As the Grobusverse would continue, so too would we continue to interpret. A short comic, The Envoy and the Warrior, sheds more light on the colossal superbeings we witnessed at the end of Habitat, and only hints at what great cataclysm may have brought down humanity's spacefaring civilisation. Miramar would take us to yet another isolated planet, this time an ocean world to show how the human remnants would adapt differently with their limited technological knowledge when subjected to new environments.

Refugium would return us to Alamira, but this time looking at ecology rather than technology. Refugium would, ironically, contain probably the most significant amount of lore so far but it would be almost entirely be regarding the original flora and fauna of the planet long before it was overwritten by human terraforming. Once again, we are left to infer backstory from information that is most relevant to the characters within the moment.

Critically, this attitude constantly reminds the readers that the people of these worlds come first, not the setting they inhabit. Their human experiences, hopes, fears, losses and gains, are what have and will drive the arc of history we only at times get small glimpses of. I have no doubt Roy could probably explain in fine details the mechanics of how the mech-suits work, but it's just so much more compelling to discover that from a struggling mechanic desperately trying to keep the thing working.

More than anything I think Roy's world reminds us that despite periods that we refer to as "dark ages" human beings are not inherently stupid. People didn't magically forget how everything worked after the Roman Empire fell. Instead language and literature was stratified. Knowledge could not easily be replicated and passed along. Some sciences were maintained unchanged, while others passed into folklore and superstition, while others still were lost.

That so much of what is going on in the Grobusverse is obscured, hinted at, there to be scrutinised by inquisitive readers, is a great example of how we can address that pesky 'lore-brain' without reducing world-building to a big list of stuff that happened. It's a very specific way of trusting the audience and respecting the integrity of the work. It creates not just a fun story but a mystery to be solved with you as the investigator.

Roy has been very clear that there is much more to come, with a guide to "Man-Amplifiers of the Euhumanist League," no doubt giving us only just enough information to lead to more speculation. It's been a wild ride so far, and I'm hoping it's just getting started. I have no idea what little titbit will trickle out of the plot next, but I can't wait to dust the edges and study it's form in the hopes I can glean it's context.

------------------------

Jack Harvey (2024)

Announcing Scoundrels, Scumbags and Schemers

 

It's finally here. The print anthology collecting all the comics I've collaborated on over the last couple of years, along with bonus concept art and behind the scenes stuff, is something you can now hold in your hands.

The whole package has been completed with some outstanding cover art from Flops, and it's so cool to see this motley crew of characters all huddle up into the same cover. As you can see, there's definitely a call back to the days of classic 2000ad and old dime store novels in it's production, and I'm really pleased how it's come out.

The comic contains One Hell of A Night, Precious Resources, Bigger Guns, A Perfect World and Damned Another Day. All tails of horror and suspense with ironic twists at the end. A big thanks to all the artists I worked with on this comic, and with it arriving just in time for Harrogate Thought Bubble, I'm hoping I'll be bringing them to a whole new audience.

Announcing Sea of Spheres - Glory, Gunpowder and Gold

 

You all knew it was coming when I announced my previous Sea of Spheres book, but it's finally official. The second collection of short stories from my skypunk Sea of Spheres setting, rendered unmistakably through amazing illustrations from Windlass, is out now.

The book contains the three stories The Right to Know, The Silent Approach and Choose Your Weapons wisely. As with the previous book, it'll be a convention exclusive for now, but online availability, as well as getting it in the hands of some retailers is something I'll be exploring further down the line.

I will be at Harrogate Thought Bubble THIS WEEKEND, and if you buy both volumes you get them at a discounted price. See you there!

Elegy for a Dying Industry

By the time I'd hit my third year of university I was certain I wanted to be a comic book writer.

It's hard to put into words just how vibrant that land of opportunity looked back then, in 2007. Marvel and DC had bounced back from their near death in the 1990s, with DC's spin off Vertigo leading the way with a tidal wave of adult focussed titles, while Image comics was quickly rising to become an ascendant third party in the previous binary landscape.

Walk into any comic book shop at that time and you'd see shelves filled with literary mainstays. Preacher and Sandman were always in stock. Recent series like Fables and Y: The Last Man would be seeing new volumes every six months. Older titles and obscure series that hadn't been seen in years were getting new print runs. Image itself was willing to take a punt at putting out any number of odd and offbeat titles. Girls. Savage Dragon. Army @ Love. Works like Jack Staff and Strangehaven that had struggled in obscurity for years were finally finding an audience.

Outside the printed page, others were thriving too. Webcomics had become big business, growing fandoms such that they could rival their printed competitors, and it wouldn't be long until Penny Arcade and Gunnerkrigg Court would find themselves sharing shelf space with Superman and Dick Tracy. On the big screen, Sin City had captivated audiences and brought the comic that inspired it a whole new readership, while a big screen adaption of Watchmen was purported to be right around the corner.

The way I saw it, I'd spend my twenties working the small press, making connections before breaking in some time in my thirties, giving me the rest of my life to put together my magnum opus.

What actually happened was I spent a decade dealing with depression, unemployment, a pandemic and an environment of constantly unstable social media sites that scuppered my ability to build a following. Even with that aside though, I discovered that I had severely underestimated how much work it would actually take to get my foot in the door. Now, on the eve of my first time exhibiting at the prestigious Though Bubble convention, I look at the comic book industry and see what looks like an unscaleable wall.

In the run up to Thought Bubble, I messaged Joe Glass, writer and creator of The Pride, to find out if he'd be exhibiting at his usual table there this year. What he told me was that he was basically ready to throw in the towel. Sales were down. Interest was down. He figured he'd have a better chance in the world of literature, and who can blame him to come to that conclusion?

To me, Joe Glass was a known guy. Someone who had been around in comics for a long time. The Pride was constantly praised, as well as considered a landmark in the history of LGBTQ comics. Damn, I thought, if he's struggling to make it, what chance on Earth do I have?

Another anecdote. I was at New York Comic Con in 2011. I sat in on the Image Comics panel where they announced a rebooted run of comics starring characters from Rob Liefeld's Extreme Comics line. (Rob actually got boos from the audience when he came out, which, however you feel about the man, was pretty disrespectful, and now looks like a grim foreshadowing to the state that online comics discourse was heading towards.)

One of the titles announced was Prophet, written by Brandon Graham and illustrated by Simon Roy. The series was met with great acclaim, and praised as one of the best comics coming out at the time. It was Roy's art in particular that was singled out as one of the comic's greatest strengths. There was a sense that Roy had really made a name for himself with Prophet, and that he would ride the wave to mainstream success.

After several years of his work showing up in places as varied as 2000ad and the Halo comics, Roy would go on to create Habitat in 2016 and First Knife in 2020, which should have gotten a bigger readership than they did. The comics were very clearly passion projects, yet didn't really get the promotion, coverage, or widespread release they deserved. It was very clear that there was more to these fictional worlds that Roy wanted to explore, but in the end, it took self publishing to do it. He started a follow up, Griz Grobus, as a webcomic, crowdfunding the physical release, before it was eventually picked up by Image again for a retail market.

It's not that I think Roy feels he got the short end of the stick. He's gone on record about how satisfied he is with the stories he gets to tell, but I look at what the world was like back in 2007 and I think about how by all rights his "Grobusverse," should be a household name, with an animated series and several video games by now.

Just like Joe Glass, whose recent The Miracles I believe could have been this generation's Invincible, I can't help but feel like modern comics, far from cultivating new and exciting talent, is doing nothing but stifling it.

How did it come to this?

It happened in multiple fronts, but the most critical blow came from corporate consolidation of the internet. At the turn of the decade, comic book journalism was bright eyed, popular and vibrant. Comic Book Resources and Comics Alliance both were constantly shining a light on new talent, new stories, as well as branching out towards exploration and analysis of the medium as a whole. I remember Comics Alliance once doing a special "Sex Week" where they released seven days worth of articles exploring the subgenre of erotic comic books.

Such an idea seems unthinkable now, in an age where sites are forbidden from straying from safe, corporate sanitisation. Indeed, both CBR and CA would find themselves stripped of identity and ground to the bone as they were bought out, sold, and bought out again by larger and larger conglomerates. Now CBR is little more than a platform for big industry press releases, while CA has been repurposed as a news aggregate site, the cruellest of fates. Just visiting the site feels like you're looking at a killer wearing the skin of it's victim.

The second blow to comics came from, and I hate to say it, Hollywood. With the booming, relentless success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, many assumed that the comic book industry's ascent to becoming a dominant cultural force was assured. However, in this instance, the rising tide did not lift all boats. As surprising as it is to hear, sales of Marvel comics have not significantly increased since the MCU came onto the scene in 2008. Despite becoming one of the most profitable franchises in history, audiences have not been particularly motivated when it comes to exploring the source material that their favourite films originated from.

And yet, even though the comic book industry has gotten little from Hollywood's success, more and more of their territory and space has been ceded to it. While comic book conventions have always involved partial coverage of film and TV, they have, at their heart, always been COMIC BOOK conventions. You'd get a ticket, head down, meet some writers, watch some announcements of what the next big events comics were going to be, check out some shoe boxes of back issues, sit in the Batmobile and maybe go get Lou Ferrigno's signature.

Now, so much of the floor space at the big conventions have been given over to Hollywood, and only Hollywood. News coverage out of SDCC or NYCC is almost always "Here's what film is coming next. Here's there cast of xyz. Here's some stuff about video games." The heart of the cons, what made them what they are in the first place, is getting pushed further and further aside. Now visitors get their ticket and shove their way though to Hall H to find out that RTD is back to play Doctor Doom, before they put on VR goggles to play the next Call of Duty game and then spend the rest of the money they have on Funkos or ten foot tall Pokémon plushies. If the mood arises, they might consider taking a glance at a self published comic book while they queue for an hour for Lou Ferrigno's signature.

Finally, the coup de grace was delivered by the deadening of online spaces. As we spent a decade migrating from our enthusiast forums over to the shared spaces of Twitter and Instagram we were forced to tailor our output to the broadest audience possible. We were forced to become our own marketers. Our own brand managers. The work could no longer speak for itself, because how on Earth was it possible for people to even find the work?

Yet despite all that, the algorithm crushed us anyway. Flighty and unknowable, as though some kind of special combination of words and images will chart the path to success, writers and artists were left like passengers on a sinking ship, drowning and desperate, stepping on top of each other in just the hopes of staying above water for one more moment.

When I was in a newly opened comic book shop in Chester I picked up a copy of Local Man by Tony Fleecs and Tim Seeley, on a whim. I had frankly never heard of it. I was astounded at how good it was when I had read it, but what stood out to me more was how it needn't have been this way. This is the kind of comic where once upon a time talk of it would have been everywhere. It's the kind of thing Comics Alliance would have been writing think pieces on for like a month. Now, however, it passed completely under the radar.

Where do we even start to solve a problem like this? Corporate media is now more powerful than ever, and social media dominates. If we are to start anywhere, it's got to be with each other. Writers, artists, colourists and letterers are going to have to come together and rebuild things wholesale. Personally, I honestly think we need to see a comics media landscape that's run by creators for creators. An independent, co-owned media that isn't going to sell out to conglomerates or Hollywood. We need a resurgence in sites like Comics Alliance, we need podcasts that garner a strong audience, we need video sites like Nebula that can stand in contrast to YouTube's dominance.

In the end though I'm just some guy, who has yet to even get his foot in the door. Best I can do is speak it, and try and will it into being. Casting out a message in a bottle in the hopes that somebody will find it. There are people like me all over the world with art to create and stories to tell. The next Hellboy, Invincible or Gunnerkrigg Court is out there right now and it's drowning on that sinking ship. If all I can do is shout the alarm in people's face, like Diogenes screaming from his barrel, then hell, that's what I'll keep doing.

Though if you are at Thought Bubble next weekend please consider buying some of my comics, books or artworks. That would be appreciated.

Addendum

Some comics you should check out:

The Miracles by Joe Glass and Vince Underwood

Habitat by Simon Roy (and then read the rest of his Grobusverse comics)

Local Man by Tony Fleecs and Tim Seeley

Strangehaven by Gary Spencer Millidge

O Sarilho by Shizamura

Prism Stalker by Sloane Leong

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Jack Harvey 2024

Announcing Sea of Spheres - Conspiracy, Conflict and Conscience

 

I've been hinting at it here and there for a long time and now I'm finally happy to announce that a print edition of my Sea of Spheres series, with artwork by the ever amazing Windlass, is finally seeing print.

Conspiracy, Conflict and Conscience collects the first three stories in the series. No Route to Guide You, A Question of Conscience and Matter of State, along with the short comic Night Shift. The book includes all of the artwork Windlass produced for those stories, in high detail and full colour.

For now the print editions will be purely for sale at conventions and possibly a couple of local retailers, but depending on interest the possibility of online purchasing may materialise further down the line. A second volume, collecting the other three stories, will also be going into production very soon.

It's a thrill to finally hold this thing in my hand, remastered and fully tightened up. I can't wait to introduce a wider audience to Windlass' art. As mentioned previously, I'll be at the BFS Fantasycon in Chester this coming weekend and Thought Bubble in Harrogate in November, so if you're in the area and want a copy that is hot off the press, you can find me right there, ready to shove it in your face.

Thanks for reading!