How I misspent my youth (and adulthood)

I am an avid fan of comics in general and superhero comics in particular. Reading a good superhero story turns me back into a 10 year-old that owned exactly two comics of his own and read them over and over (X-men Classics, by the way. I can recite them from memory). It reminds me of my first experiences as a storyteller, running sessions of the Marvel Super Heroes: Advanced Set RPG. Collaborative storytelling at its finest. That being said, I have to admit that there are far more passable superhero comics hitting the shelves today than truly good ones. But that’s turn of any popular entertainment. The more demand there is for something, the easier it is for mediocre talents to find a following. But let’s not worry about that right now. I’m here to talk about the good stuff, the writers and artist that astound me. The creators that influence me as a writer and push me to tell better stories.

Comic Update!

I’ll be honest. Right now I’m sitting here, writing to everyone who has been so generous to spend their time with us on our site, wondering why I’m taking this short break and not getting further along on this comic that we’ve proposed to start in June. I have panels to draw, script to go over, characters and vehicles to design,…yadda yadda yadda. Not to mention the already five month construction faze on my apartment has made it damn near impossible to concentrate on anything other than loud hammering or buzz saws. Will there be any end in sight for this construction? It’s also incredibly difficult to get any comic work done when I’m working forty hours a week and only have one day to do about a weeks worth of work, and then some! This is the world we live in here at “Unbroken Skies” and you want to know something?…

WE LOVE IT!

Sure this is hard work, but its that challenge that makes this project so great and worthwhile for us. We really care about quality in our storytelling, be it in script or illustration and we want to give you the best story we can possible give. Perhaps this is why it’s taken us a bit to get this thing out.

Well I’m here to tell you that June is right around the corner and we are on par to release the very first comic for “Unbroken Skies” titled “The Treasure of the Seven Gods”. In a way, this is our homage to the Saturday morning cartoons of our youth, but also the adventure and spirit of some of our favorite films such as “Raiders of the Lost Ark” or “Empire Strike Back”.

It seems right to introduce these characters through the course of a massive treasure hunt, and this story will take the Rogue Winds across the sky, to uncharted territories and undiscovered civilizations. The story is pretty dense, but exciting and character driven.

As it stands right now, we plan on releasing the comic online in stages. Each portion of the comic will be published online, be it bi-weekly or sooner. We’re writing “Treasure of the Seven Gods” almost like a television series, thinking of it as a twelve to thirteen episode season. Each “episode” will be about as long as an average comic, however that “episode” will be divided up and published across a two to three month period on our site. We’ll be releasing three to five pages of comic every couple of weeks or so. We’ll also post new artwork and the like as it comes forth and talk about our process. Sound confusing, I know. It’ll be easier to understand when the comic gets rolling. A lot of this has to do with the time frame in which the three of us can work.

In the mean time, I hope you’ve been enjoying the essays we’ve been posting lately. That’s really our way of giving you a bit of information about us as creators before we start running with the comic. We’ll have some more essays coming up so look out for that and stay tuned for “Unbroken Skies: Treasure of the Seven Gods”. The great treasure hunt of Caelum will be upon us soon! : )

On Influences

by dave shapiro

I.

The first comic book I remember reading was a large-format Conan comic that I begged my dad to buy for me when I was seven years old. Neither he nor my mom knew anything about the Comics Code Authority or how the magazine-sized comics were a way of getting around its content restrictions, so the idea that there would be a huge, detailed drawing of a character holding up a recently-severed head was probably not even within the realm of possibility for them. Comics were for kids, after all. I sat and stared at the image for a long time; I’d never seen such an thing in my life. Well, I suppose if you take into account the imagery of the Catholic Church, that’s not entirely true, but it was certainly the first time I’d been alone with such an image, and had the time to ponder its ramifications. It rendered the rest of the story immaterial. I had been introduced to the concept of the human body as fleshy, soon-to-be worm food, and the notion that your face would still show the pain and agony of a violent death even after your head had been severed. A few new ideas were now understood, as much as my brain was able to understand them: the futility of struggle against forces of brutality; the absurdity of the human organism; the terrifying, unyielding logic of the world’s closing door, which might leave part (or all) of you behind if you got caught in it.

The second comic book I owned was Muppet Babies.

Welcome to my life as a writer.

Men in Black: Past, Present, Past?

by Paul Dodson

During the Christmas season of 1997, I worked at Montgomery Ward in their Holiday Department. I was stationed about ten feet from the TV displays of the electronic department on which they played an endless Will Smith double feature: Independence Day and Men in Black. I think MIB must have just come out on DVD/VHS because it was getting the hard sell. I went home and had nightmares about those movies. If I had died during that two month period, I would have ended up in hell, strapped to a chair Clockwork Orange-style, watching those movies for the rest of eternity. Time has passed, I’ve gotten distance from that traumatic time in my life, and I’ve come to two conclusions: I hate Independence Day, and Men in Black is a pretty solid flick.