In case you were wondering

I do need a penciller and/or inker for Battle Royal MX. Peter is working dilligently on his own book, the genre defying Solace Moon, so I only got him for one issue and one issue only. So drop me a line here or via email and we'll talk.

All around the world

Battle Royal MX is being seen in half a dozen countries! That's just mind boggling!! I do cringe from time to time on how dated the script feels. Dated in the sense that I understand the format so much better than I did when I wrote it. Peter did a fantastic job on the art, I just feel the story could have used one or two more edits. Well, the best advice I ever got was "Finish it and wince about how much better it could have been later." That was from Neil Gaiman himself and since he's not done too bad for himself, I think it's safe to take his advice.
Also in the news today, the print version of Battle Royal MX is going to press! I received an email this morning from Comixpress. They were very courteous and apologetic and have made amends more graciously. I am very pleased how they recovered. Hopefully I will get a print date on that soon.
I have decided to start posting Xrox on WCN, probably this week. It is a magic and adventure story, so is quite different than BRMX. Plus there are only four characters as opposed to fourteen. The first two installments are penciled and inked by James West who does a fantastic job with this sort of thing. You may know him from such books as Random Order Comics and Games and Pan-Gea. You can see his own work here .

The Golden Age of Silver

As I said I was recently shocked by how banal many of the mainstream comics in collection seemed. This prompted me to reexamine the comics in the superhero/action/science fiction genre that I still think are awesome, and what made them so.
Take for example the early Fantastic Four, and I don't know, maybe even the Byrne era FF (I do like Byrne quite a bit, or did when he was really on top of his game). The FF drew as much on early pulp traditions of scientific adventure and exploration like Jules Verne and Alan Quatermain. They were discovering new civilizations, new dimensions, rare elements and fighting monsters. There was a sense of wonder and discovery to these stories, much as found in Dr. Who or Star Trek. Plus, they were a family as much as a team; their relationships were intensified by the dynamic. They weren't just in it for the glory or the paycheck, they were in it together.
Early Spider-Man was also unique. He was weird looking, with the red and blue spider pajamas that covered his head completely, jumping around and cracking jokes. Not to mention the unique abstraction of even the most pedestrian Ditko pages. Spider-Man was also Everyman; struggling, poor, rarely got the girl, lived with his Aunt. He was no playboy with a secret lab and unlimited bankroll for his war on crime, nor did he have a satellite or a secret station beneath the North Pole.
There are other books through out history that bring us these fresh approaches to the genre, often reinventing what worked before, often coming up with something completely unheard of before; The Authority, Planetary, The Invisibles, The Atomics. There have even been, in my opinion, some really great mainstream books by Marvel and DC in the last 10 or so years; X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, JLA, X-Factor/X-Static, which is why I don't dismiss the genre completely.
However, I must admit, one doesn't have to look far or hard to see a great frothy sea full of deadwood, detritus, algae-slicked lumps of putrid waste, and vast chunks of tepid, banal clumps, all floating listlessly about in fetid green water, chocked of all it's refreshing or nurturing qualities, the air shimmering with the repugnant odor of stagnation.

Memory Lane

I went through my old comics today and roughly inventory the ones I am going to get rid of. Strange experience. I'm the sentimental type, you know, and I've loved comics as long as I can remember (literally: as far back as I have memory in this incarnation as a human being I have a memory of loving comics), yet looking at 32 issues of Alpha Flight was...disconcerting. I don't even feel the ephemeral thrill of pop culture from those comics. I don't have any inclination to peruse the art again, even the John Byrne issues, and I can't even remember what it was I liked about them in the first place. They just seem silly, superficial, shallow stories with minimal entertainment value. They don't have the whimsy and stylization of old Fantastic Four's or Spider-Man or contemporary 80's books like DNAgents or The Elementals. It's sad to think that not only an art form but a genre could not only produce but subsist on such banal tripe for so long. It's not just that particular title, it's the bulk of the comics in my collection; Avengers, Defenders, X-men, West Coast Avengers. It seems it only brand loyalty and habit that motivated me to buy some of these titles. I mean, the West Coast Avengers? What did I see the West Coast Avengers?
I have no qualms about chucking so much of it.
What I'm keeping is the Marvel Universe's and Who's Who (DC), Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Power Pack (natch), but that's it, I think.
I'm even getting rid of tons of issues of Transformers. Sure, the first 12 or so issues were good, but I haven't had the urge to reread them in 15 years.