Obscure Comic of the Month - The Gatecrashers: A Night of Gatecrashing

Obscure Comic of the Month takes a detailed look at a little known entry from my personal comic book collection. Some will be from major publishers, others self published projects, Original Graphic Novels, issues and Manga. What they'll all have in common though, is that I've rarely, if ever, seen anybody talk about them.

                                                  

The Gatecrashers: A Night of Gatecrashing by Zachary Mortensen and Sutu – Ghost Robot 2014

When a bomb explodes in the center of a densely packed protest rally, Gatecrasher Hex Spencer is the first on the scene and what begins as a routine call shifts into a life-threatening chase through choked streets of Palomar City. Hex's only concern is saving her patient and collecting her fee but with each turn she is drawn further into a complex web of power that will destroy anything – or anyone – that gets in their way.

Welcome to Palomar City, a tightly packed, overpopulated American mega-city. Over the last sixty years, a series of traffic control devices known as Gates have transformed this thriving metropolis into a pressure cooker of political and socio-ethnic tension that is on the verge of exploding. One of the only groups with unrestricted passage through the gates are the emergency medical teams, nicknamed “The Gatecrashers,” who find themselves in the middle of a building conflict that threatens to tear Palomar City apart once and for all.

Spoiler Free

I picked up Book One of The Gatecrashers while I was at New York Comic Con in 2014. I was on the lookout for independent comics that seemed interesting. I had walked past Zachary Mortensen plugging his work a couple of times over the weekend, and his comic kept catching my eye. I'm glad I checked it out, because The Gatecrashers has a lot going for it in it's own unique way.

It's not uncommon to see fiction celebrate the actions of law enforcers and soldiers but we don't often see many of the real everyday heroes get the focus in our space operas or dystopian cyberpunk worlds quite as much. The Gatecrashers is different because it focuses on characters who are basically Ambulance Drivers. Hex Spencer isn't a gun slinging maverick in a dirty world, she's just an employee trying to do a respectable job in the face of bureaucracy and bullshit.

The Gatecrashers feels very timely. While it doesn't target any specific political issues it does focus on a lot of areas that affect the working class in the current western world. Healthcare, civic unrest, questions of police jurisdiction and corporate corruption are all touched upon in the world of The Gatecrashers.

In a week where the UK saw a Junior Doctors strike, reading The Gatecrashers feels that little bit more personal.

Sutu's artwork really brings the world of Palomar city to life too. The use of colour really helps to set the scene of a dirty and run down city, with warm oranges and neon blues used to particular effect. His style takes a little getting used to and has a certain warped quality to it, but it really suits the setting of a corrupt and tired world. It reminded me a lot of Peter Chung's work on Aeon Flux.

The book's plot gets going thick and fast, essentially serving as a day in the life of a Gatecrasher, with reporter Archie McAlester serving as the audience surrogate. It's a great framing device, and sets up the conflict to be genuinely intriguing. The characters are all warm and relatable, if being a little one-note this early in the plot. Hex is an engaging protagonist and is given enough time to suggest there may be a few different sides to her personality.

Where the comic does stumble is in its sense of world building. There's a lot going on in the first volume of The Gatecrashers and what back-story we're given is told in passing just a little bit too casually. There's a big conspiracy surrounding one district in the city being annexed by another but a lot of the fine details are easy to miss, and you might find yourself struggling to understand character motivations when the action gets going.

Not helping is a lot of world building being left to bonus portions at the back of the book. It's obvious that Zachary Mortensen has taken a lot of time and put a great deal of thought into the fictional world of Palomar City, but far too much time is spent telling it in the margins, rather than showing it during the story. 

The whole thing could have done with just a little bit more time spent introducing us to the fictional world. Just a short sequence or a page or two would have done.

It's also worth mentioning that The Gatecrashers release schedule has been slow going, only issue five has been released since Book One in 2014, but issue six is due to be out this month. Here's hoping the series continues from it's strong opening.

Beyond that though, A Night of Gatecrashing is otherwise a great introduction to the series. It's hook is different, it's art is striking and the story ends with a lot of interesting places to go. If you like your cyberpunk, but would like to see the genre from a different perspective, then I highly recommend you check the series out.

                                        

Jack Harvey 2016. The Gatecrashers (c) 2014 Zachary Mortensen and Sutu. Images used under Fair Use.

Tales of the Modern Realms is Coming to Print

I've been meaning to get this to print for a while now and it's finally coming around. The complete collection of my Tales of the Modern Realms short stories, remastered, expanded and extended with bonus material. I'm currently going over the proof as we speak. It still needs a few tweaks (formatting is a pain in the backside) but hopefully those should be ironed out soon, and you'll see the book available to buy very shortly.

Thanks for sticking with me.

Obscure Comic of the Month - Necessary Monsters

Obscure Comic of the Month takes a detailed look at a little known entry from my personal comic book collection. Some will be from major publishers, others self published projects, Original Graphic Novels, issues and Manga. What they'll all have in common though, is that I've rarely, if ever, seen anybody talk about them.

                                          

Necessary Monsters by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey and Sean Azzopardi – First Comics 2011

There exists a world of horrors beneath the one we know. Where creatures of our nightmares stalk amongst humanity and play their games of vengeance, murder and intrigue. To police this world there is The Chain; a covert agency of monsters and killers, charged with keeping the human herd from ever growing too thin.

Contains Mild Spoilers

I picked up the first book of Necessary Monsters when I was at Leeds Thought Bubble a couple of years ago. The creators were promoting their second run of the series (sadly still uncollected) and It was pitched to me as 'Oceans Eleven with movie monsters,”. Suffice it to say, the pitch was unique enough that I couldn't possibly refuse.

It's important to note that I'm not a fan of horror films, at least not the slasher genre anyway, and that colours my experience with Necessary Monsters to a large degree. The cast is heavily populated with ersatz versions of horror icons. Cowboy 13 is a reference to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Charlotte Hatred a reference to The Ring and Creeping Tuesday to Nightmare on Elm treet. If you're a fan of those films, you'll probably love the comic unconditionally on those grounds alone.

But I'm not a fan of those films, and so I'm left to look at Necessary Monsters on its own merits. Fortunately for me, despite all of it's horror references, the comic is very much a hard boiled spy story, with much more in common with a Bond tale than Friday the 13^th. 

The story follows Tuesday Jones, daughter of a killer who could walk into dreams. She's inducted into The Chain, a secret organisation of monsters and killers who police the other monsters and killers. The Chain are not good guys, but they are less bad than the bad guys, or so we are led to believe. As the story goes on it starts to show that the villain, Harps Bane, may have more noble intentions than it initially appears.

Azzopardi's art is just perfect for the story, the stark black and white keeps the story grounded even as body parts begin to fly, and it walks just the right line between serious and ridiculous. His art does become a little ropey at times, with quite a few character looking a little off model, and his guns look really... odd. Most of the visuals are great though, and a battle between two elderich abominations at the climax is particularly inspired.

As for the plot itself, it doesn't waste any time in getting to the good stuff. The use of pop cultural touchstones allows for the reader to fill in the blanks of the world building all on their own. The cast are all thoroughly likeable, no mean feat considering they are mostly indiscriminate murderers. They're all appropriately grotesque too, setting the tone for the plot and leaving you wondering how it's going to end.

The comic throughout makes the most of the visual medium to create what is essentially a form of American folklore. Both Lady Liberty and the Hollywood sign play an important role in the plot and combined with the horror symbolism it takes a wry look at the concept of American personal identity.

As the plot unfolds, Tuesday is presented with a choice, embrace what she is as a monster, or turn away and return to the mundane world. It's good allegorical storytelling, essentially using movie monster tropes to tell a modern fable about being true to your identity. It's no accident Goodbrey cast Tuesday as a young black American in a story about personal identity, and her story arc is particularly touching.

Now the comic is not without it's problems. As mentioned earlier, the cast are likeable for a bunch of murderers, but that doesn't change the fact that they are, ultimately, murderers. It makes it hard to keep the reader sympathetic to The Chain's cause, but it also causes a massive headache in the dissonance between characters. Tuesday and, to a degree, Hatred are more like vigilantes in the use of their powers, taking down killers and gangsters in a form of warped justice.

Cowboy 13 on the other hand is an actual serial killer, who we see murdering teenagers at both the beginning and the end of the book. If Tuesday is, at least to some degree, empathic towards the plight of victims then it seems odd that we're supposed to just accepter her working alongside 13. Perhaps this is something that gets addressed in a later story, but for now just leaves things feeling a little off kilter.

Maybe it's just because I'm not a horror movie fan though. Most slasher villains become figures of fun eventually and the audience cheers along as they murder people in progressively more ridiculous ways. Maybe we're supposed to cheers along with Cowboy 13 retuning to his murderous roots, but for me, somebody reading this as more of a pulp spy story with a twist, It doesn't ring true.

I suppose that is emblematic of Necessary Monsters problems as a whole. The comic has one foot in one genre and one foot in another and never fully reconciles the two. It's a fun book, and a unique premise, and finishes at an excellent point that leaves you wanting more. It's best enjoyed quickly, and not thought about too much. For horror movie fans, It's probably perfect, but for everyone else, it might leave you feeling as though something is missing.

                                                 

Jack Harvey 2016. Necessary Monsters (c) 2011 Daniel Merlin Goodbrey and Sean Azzopardi. Images used under Fair Use.

Sea of Spheres FAQ

So some of you may have noticed that I've been talking about starting a webcomic for a while. Well gears are finally turning in the right direction for that (Though the whole idea of running a site is still a little daunting, so if anyone has any advice on that side of things feel free to PM me.)

A couple weeks ago I wrote about some of the characters, but now is the time to give you a better idea of what the comic will be like. Here's an FAQ.

So what is Sea of Spheres?

It's a fantasy story with elements of science fiction and steampunk in there. The first story arc is primarily a murder mystery.

Okay, what's the comic about more specifically?

The setting of Sea of Spheres is a cluster of small planetoids in a crack between dimensions. A breathable atmosphere connects these small worlds and people travel between them in air balloons and sky ships.

Occasionally travellers from other realities will pass through this crack, leaving behind magic and technology that the inhabitants adopt.

Most of the Spheres are ruled over by a large city called Icon (pronounced Eye-son) that hangs above them. Their biggest rivals are the largest Sphere, called Arcadia, and a tecnologically advanced Sphere called Gemini. Beneath the Spheres is a large concave desert called the basin.

Sea of Spheres is the story of these inhabitants, and the societies they form on the spheres themselves. To begin with though, we'll be following a couple of detectives call 'Justices' investigating a murder on one of these worlds.

 So what format is is going to take?

Each page will be about three to four panels. The artwork will be black and white, but I'll try and fit some colour in now and again. I'm trying to stick to the feel of old 'newspaper' style serials.

What's the planned update schedule?

One strip per week is what I'm aiming at. I hope to upload the prologue in full (about five pages) to start with.

I'm planning the main arc to last about three acts, at about fifty two pages each, not counting interludes. I'm writing it to be self contained so that it's concluded after about three years, and if it's picked up enough interest I have a larger story to tell after that.

How soon can we expect it to start?

I'm hoping some time during March, but more realistically it'll probably be April/May time.

Is this based on any of your other works?

It's not connected to the Modern Realms stories, and it's not connected to Cummings either.

It shares the same fictional universe as a bunch of Carnack short stories I'm writing, though they do not themselves take place in the spheres. Some of the characters might cross paths though.

What are your major influences for the comic?

Sea of Spheres actually started as an idea for a Planescape comic, so you'll see a lot of similarities both in the setting and the visuals. However, my original plot was playing fast and loose with the Planescape setting anyway, and became much more interesting once I changed it to an original universe.

Other than that you'll also see elements from things like The Wire, Judge Dredd, Doctor Who and the works of David Lynch and Terry Gilliam.

Hang on a moment, haven't I seen some of those characters from your old Dungeons and Dragons campaigns?

Yes! A few characters are re-worked from ideas that came about during a couple of our Dnd campaigns a few years back.

However, even though you might see some of those characters and events mentioned, you can consider any of the old Dnd stuff non-canon. The comic has no connection to Dungeons and Dragons or any of it's fictional settings.

Any other questions, feel free to get in touch.

So Hey, About that Webcomic Finally

As I mentioned a couple of times previously, I'm starting work on a webcomic. It's called Sea of Spheres, and it's a bit of a swashbuckling mystery story.

For now I'll be keeping things simple, with a short, relatively self contained, black and white story that might expand out into colour depending how successful it is and how it impacts my other projects.

I'll be discussing the setting in a later update, but right now I just thought I'd introduce the main characters of the first arc. It getting me into the swing of things and hopefully I'll only improve as time goes on. 

I've been sitting on ideas for a comic for years and in the grand scheme of things see no downside in doing it so... here we go I guess.

You'll know here first what the plan is when it starts. I'm hoping to get a dedicated site for it an all that kind of pro looking stuff.

In the mean time thoughts, questions and feedback are greatly appreciated.

Obscure Comic of the Month - Dragondove: Young Liars

Obscure Comic of the Month takes a detailed look at a little known entry from my personal comic book collection. Some will be from major publishers, others self published projects, Original Graphic Novels, issues and Manga. What they'll all have in common though, is that I've rarely, if ever, seen anybody talk about them.

                                                   

Dragondove Volume 1: Young Liars by Les Valiant

Dragons wander the wasteland, seeking the souls of sinners, or so they say. A girl called Lucky doesn't believe that's the whole story, so she skips town, looking to wrangle herself some adventure, mystery, and a dragon of her own. What she finds is a world far richer than most could fathom, and romance she never knew her young heart needed.

Contains mild spoilers

 

Should you read the webcomic Dragondove? Yes. Its a fun little fantasy western with colourful art that you could read through in a couple of sittings, and it won't cost you a penny.

However, we're not here to talk about Dragondove as a free webcomic. We're here to look at it's merits as a body of work, specifically regarding it's first printed collection. Dragondove is worth your time, sure, but is it worth your money?

The story follow a talented, if naïve, young woman called Lucky, who gets pulled into a cross country quest with an unwilling tag along, the courier Primrose. Lucky originally has the simple task of returning an ancient relic, but her and Primrose both are quickly drawn into the conspiracies and schemes of competing forces, culminating in Lucky finally taming a dragon of her own.

As I mentioned, the story is a fantasy western, which is a setting that still feels genuinely untapped but is often tainted by being far too closely tied to the steampunk genre. I love Westerns, but the lone, outlaw life gets somewhat diminished the moment you start introducing airships and clockwork robots.

Fortunately Dragondove mostly eschews the trappings of steampunk. There are steam trains and the like, but the world's technology is pretty much grounded, instead it draws its fantastical elements from the dragons themselves, giving more depth than most fantasy stories that feature the scaled creatures normally do. Here Valiant draws inspiration from beasts of the old frontier, such as bison, stallions and grizzly bears, breathing new life into an otherwise overplayed mythological beast.

So anyway, the world building works exceedingly well, and the use of Western tropes lets the reader fill in the blanks themselves rather than being subjected to info-dumps, and the drip feed of information about the wider world helps fuel that lonesome feeling that's critical to an old west setting.

But a great setting is only as good as the characters you populate it with, and it's here where Dragondove really shines. It would have been easy to populate the story with stock characters, but Valiant decides to have a bit of fun with them instead. Lucky herself is a great lead, eager and enthusiastic in the face of a dangerous world, in that she's far too curious for her own good. She's more Herge's Tintin than Annie Oakley.

Primrose is a perfect foil for Lucky. She's a mysterious, charismatic courier with a past that hinted at being more important than it originally seems. It's Lucky's curiosity that keeps breaking past Primrose's aloof demeanour and shows her to be more human than she'd care to admit. The chemistry between the two of them is perfect, and it's genuinely distressing when it looks as though the two may part ways.

Likewise, the plot's focus on LGBTQ characters is presented with a supreme confidence.

If there's criticisms to be levelled at Dragondove then they are fairly minor. The art in some of the early sections is a little scrappy and it's more obvious on the printed page than it is on screen. Likewise, the first volume wraps itself up a little too quickly, making it feel less of a coherent whole.

But the art has a charm all of it's own, and Valiant's style itself truly feels one of a kind. The visual design of the costumes and the landscapes can only be described as sumptuous, and the action flows from page to page so easily that you'll be surprised you got through the book so quickly.

If all this sounds as though I'm going easy on Dragondove, you can trust me, I'm not. Most webcomics can take a while to get going. Many start with incomplete characters, or unsure of their own world. Les Valiant has built the foundations for the world that she's writing. Primrose and Lucky are complete characters from the get go. It's certainly one of the strongest openings I've seen from a first time strip.

So Dragondove is worth reading online, sure, but it's also damn well worth reading in print. Myself, I can't wait to re-read the next act in book form. It's a comic that puts a new spin on combining old genres, in both it's setting and it's characters, and Valiant's art is perfectly suited to the dusty plains populated with an oasis of colour.

Read it for free, pay for the print version, but either way I think you should give it a go.

                                                       

Jack Harvey 2016. Dragondove (c) 2015 Les Valiant. Images used under Fair Use.

Just Another Quick Update

Gears are turning this February on a few projects so I just thought I'd put you in the picture, as it were.

• Obscure Comic of the Month is returning. You should see the column in the next couple of days. Maybe even today!
• The short story is still coming, haven't had an update on the commercial side of things yet, but you'll know the detail as soon as I do.
• I'm hoping to get the ebook/print version of my remastered Tales of the Modern Realms out some time over the next couple of months. All the formatting is pretty much done, so It's just a matter of getting it submitted for retail.
• Plans are moving ahead on that webcomic idea, hoping to have something up by late Feb to mid March. I want to have a full prologue ready to go before weekly updates. In the meantime, here's some WIPs on the characters.

And that's all for now, have a good February. Toodle bye!