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.

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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