Interview with The Damned

Creators, that is. My latest Baker's Dozen for RevolutionSF is with The Damned writer Cullen Bunn and artist Brian Hurtt.

It's been said the in order to get anything published, you must sell your soul. How much of Eddie comes from your personal and professional life experiences?

BH: The process of doing this comic has been entirely painless. We have a great relationship with Oni (I’d done several projects with them prior to this) and when they said yes to the pitch they more or less cut us loose on the book. Their input has been minimal and always put forth as questions rather than edicts. The Oni philosophy has always been to hire the creators they like and trust and then let them do what they do. It’s a great way to work.

Eddie is a bitter, tired, and pessimistic soul. He’s entirely based on Cullen.

CB: I tried to sell Brian’s soul on eBay, but the highest bidder failed to pay. I didn’t get a single bite on it when posted to Craigslist, either. I finally gave his soul away on Freecycle so it wouldn’t clutter my garage.

Working on The Damned seems a bit surreal, because it has been so easy, and I’m grateful every day for the experience. Brian and Oni Press are great to work with. My only fear is that I’ve been spoiled by how well this has gone. I can only hope that all the other projects I work on will be as rewarding.

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A Dark Forces Double Team

Peggy Hailey and I double teamed for the RevolutionSF coverage of Terry Moore's latest series Echo.

I interviewed Terry about life after the very popular Strangers in Paradise (which ended last year), his new series Echo, and science fiction.

What new themes has the science fiction setting allowed you to explore that you were unable to tackle in your previous works? Do you approach the writing of an sf concept different than a super hero or slice of life story?

The imagination is liberated, yet spawned from the practical laws of physics and life. I think it's advanced stuff to try and pull off, because you have to be good at the other genres to incorporate them into your sci fi story in order to establish setting and sense of place.

You could specialize in slice-of-life and be lousy at everything else, but you can't write good sci fi without being good at other genres as well.

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Peggy had the task of reviewing the first two issues of the new series.

A lot of this comic is vintage Moore: a female protagonist with some personal issues gets caught up in a much larger story and has to deal with the fallout. But it’s new, too.

Julie Martin isn’t Francine or Katchoo; she comes from a different background and has different issues to deal with. And while SiP could occasionally bust out into full on spy thriller mode, it was essentially the story of Francine and Katchoo: their day-to-day story was the heart of the piece, not the theatrics around them.

Echo is a science fiction comic, and while I’m sure we’ll spend a lot of time with Julie and her daily life, I suspect that the bigger outside story will have more prominence.

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Justice League: The New Frontier review

My review of the much anticipated The New Frontier animated movie based on Darwyn Cooke's award-winning graphic novel is now available at RevolutionSF.

The excellent, near-perfect graphical look creates a quality to the project that far exceeds other direct-to-dvd animated movies. As evident from the viewing and the discussions between the contributors on the commentary tracks, the staff carefully deliberated every image and shot, even going as far as bringing in Darwyn Cooke to create new bridging sequences and consult on many story elements. In the 75 minute feature, nary a shot is wasted and most are beautifully crafted, especially the iconic 1950s-style credits sequence.
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My Fantastic Fest 3 blog

I am contributing a blog about Fantastic Fest 3 over at RevolutionSF, where I will be writing reviews of the festival films and other happenings.

From the FF3 site:

Fantastic Fest is a week-long festival featuring the best in new science-fiction, fantasy, horror, animation, crime, Asian, and all around badass cinema. The event was created to offer exposure to genre films which are often overlooked by the traditional festival circuit. We strive to offer acquisition, media and exhibition opportunities for undistributed films as well as to spotlight upcoming genre theatrical releases and give audiences a chance to see 35mm prints of repertory classics.

Until the festival starts on Sept. 20, I'm previewing the Festival.