Tales of Syzpense #43
A sweeping Epic co-starring Steve Niles, tales of 7174, and a spinner rack tribute to Trina and Mark
Writer Steve Niles and I started talking in earnest about working on a new project together. A new version of an older project. Which I think is gonna be a lot of fun. But since I can’t talk more about that just yet, the idea of collaborating with Niles in this way reminds me one of the earliest things we did together.
And it felt appropriate to relay it this week, the week IDW Publishing turned 25. As a creative-services company, anyway, not yet as a comic publisher. A part of me wonders if anyone left at that company knows the date or the particulars but that’s a newsletter (or tell-all) for another day. For now, in its early days, Steve Niles was a key part of IDW’s early years.
As the co-creator of 30 Days of Night and other titles, Niles had already established himself as a horror writer of note. We got to know each other as a result of another comic he was writing around that same time, Spawn: The Dark Ages. I wasn’t yet officially working in comics, whatever the word “officially” means in this regard. I was writing comic reviews, think-pieces, columns, interviews and other such early-blog-like things.
Around this time, in the Bill Jemas era of Marvel, the company was looking to relaunch its Epic Comics imprint. In the 1980s, Epic was one of the early creator-owned imprints, home to titles like Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar. But now, in the early 2000s, the plan was to use Epic as a way to launch some Marvel comics using lesser-seen characters created by comic-adjacent creators. We wouldn’t own anything, and the initial rate was, I guess you could say, commensurate with the fledgling creators’ lack of published credits. I was one of the people they reached out to to pitch for this line.
Now, prior to this, Niles and I had been working on a possible project together already, a spin-off of his title Fused called Fard-Bot. The artist was this amazing Malaysian kid named Milx, who had previously drawn Steve’s Wake the Dead comic. But something about working on a series with tech in it brought out even more precision in Milx’s work. The sample Fard-Bot pages he did for us, involving a Jocasta-looking robot, were stunning.
So much so that our thought was to bring Milx along for the Epic ride and do a Machine Man series for that line. We pitched the project and showed Milx’s samples, and got the gig. In fact, we were told that we were slated to be the lead title in this line, and Wizard Magazine was brought in to document the series’ development.
And then… I don’t really remember the specifics behind it but the whole thing kind of… imploded. A couple Epic titles were released (Mike Sangiacomo’s Phantom Jack was one of them, I think?) but the line just sorta died on the vine. Our book went away, and Marvel hired Milx to do a Silver Surfer series for them instead. So we lost our book and our artist in one fell swoop. Then again, so did Marvel, since Milx likewise didn’t go the distance at the time. He left the miniseries halfway through and that was effectively that.
But man, what could have been. Just as the details of how this all unfolded escape me at this point, so too is the complete Machine Man pitch missing from the various hard drives I checked. I did find one of the sample pages (still pretty great), and I also included Milx’s Fard-Bot samples to show a bit more of his work, too.
Anyway, it was a mostly fun and also eye-opening learning experience, so it was valuable for many reasons. And I’ve had other opportunities to work with Niles on a great many things over the years, which has also been great. Speaking of IDW before, Steve is the reason I landed the EIC gig there in the first place, and I’ll forever be indebted to him for that. For a lot of years, that was a really special place, and Steve was a huge part of the reason why, both for the company itself and for me personally. So it’s great to still have a chance to do something good together even now. And who knows, maybe we’ll be able to somehow bring Milx back into the fold in some way, too.
Speaking of Milx — before he left for Marvel’s greener pastures, he did also create the first Transformers image for IDW. I brought him in to work up an “I Want You!” poster with Optimus prime, which was part of my initial pitch to Hasbro when we were bidding on the comic license. And it worked. He did a few other TF covers for me before he disappeared, and I always appreciated the level of detail his work had , although I thought then and I still think now that him coloring his own work wasn’t the best choice. Hindsight and all being what it is. In the moment, I was just happy to have a talented artist who could get the work done on his own while I was still working on establishing a proper talent pool to draw from.
The Week(s) In Syzygy
Yesterday, I got advance copies of Ash Wood’s latest, 7174AD, an anthology comic, and for this one, we thought we’d experiment with that great newsprint paper that the Enfield Gang Massacre team used on their series (also available as a trade paperback—on newsprint and with a new short story—this week), and the results look and feel so nice. This paper and Ash’s art seem perfectly suited for each other. Issue 1 will be in stores next week so you can see and feel for yourself.
In stores this week!
Issue 3 of our 5-issue series The Cabinet is in stores right now! Look for either of these pieces of art, by series co-creator Chiara Raimondi & Jordan Hart and also Marguerite Sauvage.
And catching you up on where we’re at so far with the series covers, because they’re too pretty not to show repeatedly, here are issues 1-3 covers from Chiara and the connected images from Marguerite, too. The series, co-written by Jordan and David Ebeltoft, remains a high-adventure, Technicolor blast, and we all hope you’ll give it a look.
In stores in May and June!
Finally, there’s still time to place initial orders for our two latest series, Lore and Self Help, launching in May and June, respectively. Both of these series benefit greatly from anyone who places an advance order for them at your local comic shop.
Finally, the trade paperback for our acclaimed series A Haunted Girl has its Final Order Cut-Off this Monday so if you intend to order the book from a comic-book shop, please make sure you do so by Monday. It’ll be in stores on May 22.
We lost comic legend — in every sense of the word, even though the word itself doesn’t do her life and legacy justice — Trina Robbins at age 85 this week. Anywhere you can seek out her work, or even stories about her life and legacy, like this obituary in Forbes, I recommend it. Trina was something special, and her work and activism made the industry so much better. She was a special person and this was a special kind of loss.
The Beat also featured a nice write-up on Trina, and also on artist Mark Bright, whose work I also greatly enjoyed.
And Francis Ford Coppola, born a year after Trina, celebrated a birthday this week, and he posted these words, which I think apply well to all three people mentioned here.
Spinner Rack of Trina & Mark
I’ll forego the usual theme this week and instead just populate this space with work by Trina Robbins and Mark Bright, both of whose work in general brightens any spinner rack or comic collection.
First up, Trina (even more images of her work are available in this piece at 13th Dimension, where I pulled some of these covers). The last image isn’t a comic at all but rather a recent autobio of hers that is totally worth the read. She was at the epicenter of so many scenes, and the book is a captivating read.
Milx. Wow, there's a blast from the past! I didn't know you were going to have a book in Epic v2.0. I was in the middle of pulling together a pitch with a friend when that whole debacle imploded. The only other creator I knew personally who had a pitch accepted was Cleveland zine and indie comix artist John G (https://www.instagram.com/shinercomics/) who had a reimagining of Ghost Rider as a BMX bike kid, drawing on his own life and experiences (a BMX accident as a kid left him paralyzed below the waist). At the time he was doing mini-comix and a ton of concert posters for local bands, and I loved (and still do) his gritty, grimy, punk rock art style, and think the comics world is poorer for not having such a wild take on Ghost Rider on the stands.