Comic Book Of The Month Podcast

Chris, Dylan, Keith & Vicky spent an hour talking with Josh Finney and Kat Rocha about their book Titanium Rain. They talked a little bit about the extensive delay for Volume 2, the audio adaptation by Audio Comics Company. Josh discusses how his political activist history influenced this book and gives a few personal stories that really inform the deeper essence of his work. We are quite proud of this interview and we hope you are able to suffer through the submarine audio on their end.

"Bullet the Blue Sky" performed by U2.

We did not mention the next book in this episode because we have something big planned, and it's going to take a while for the whole crew to read it. There are two ongoing book series about rodents as knights, and it's an unspoken rule that they don't actually exist simultaneously on book shelves today. But here at CBotMP we have decided to tackle it head on! Episode 15 will feature the two full-length graphic novels Mice Templar Vol 1: Prophecy, and Mouse Guard: Fall 1152. We are calling it Rodent Wars!

The band is getting back together for this one, because we want to get as many people to weigh in as varied opinions on these two books.

Listen Now:

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"Stranger In a Strange Land" written & performed by Iron Maiden

The next featured book is Titanium Rain by Josh Finney and Kat Rocha, which we should be recording in the next couple weeks.

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Chris, Dylan, Keith, Nicole and our special guest Derek gather around the laptop for an interview session with Justin Peterson, the creator of Very Near Mint! We ask him about his experience as an animator, experiences with antiquated video technology, and convention hygiene.

Then after he went back to his drawing table to finish up Very Near Mint vol 2, the crew talked for another hour about how much we loved this book and how it could easily make an amazing TV show.

Music: "All the Kids Are Right" by Local H, and "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" by Iron Butterfly

This episode was certainly worth the wait for us. Justin Peterson's Very Near Mint is something really special that transcends the generic Scott Pilgrim comparisons. (though that doesn't stop us from making them) Head on over to VeryNearMint.com and buy yourself a copy of vol 1 and pre-order vol 2. We know you will love it.

The next indie-spotlight is going to be awesome! We are going to have reviews of Holli Hoxxx and Dr Muscles #2 from Bogus Publishing, and a few other surprises as well.

Our next featured book is going to be Titanium Rain by Josh Finney and Kat Rocha, published through 01 Publishing & Archaia. Keith and Chris have been excited to talk about this book for quite some time as well. Should be a great episode as always.

Keep coming back here for more spontaneous updates throughout the month. And thank you all for your continued support. This has been a really good month for the Crew, and they just keep getting better and better.

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CBotMP: Especially the last couple episodes! Thank you for your time, Rich. And we can't wait to see all the twists and turns, and kinetic pencil work on Werewolf DA as it continues.

Be sure to check out new pages of Werewolf DA every Wednesday at firetowerstudios.com. We have two more interviews lined up in this series, we are just waiting on their responses. The Very Near Mint episode is in the can, and being edited as we speak. Should be up a little later than anticipated, but it is worth the wait!

Thank you to everyone for all your continued support. If you have the time, check out the store, and click on our sponsors. We hope you're having as much fun reading these books as we are!

French artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud has passed. He was a master of stippling, wordless storytelling, and inspiration to countless comic artists the world over. His use of negative space and scale gave his otherworldly characters weight within their truly alien surroundings.

Yet his style was ever changing. He always tried to challenge and reinvent himself. Yet his work always had a seemingly unseen signature.

Courtesy of Streets of Beige blog

he even worked at Marvel, drawing 2 issues of Silver Surfer with Stan Lee himself

One of the few sequential artists to cross over into the world of fine art, his designs can be seen in films like Alien, TRON, Willow, Little Nemo in Slumberland, The Abyss, and Fifth Element.

some of his Alien concept art courtesy of Sci-Fi-O-Rama

more Alien art

costume designs for Mad Martigan

concept art for The King of the Nelwyns (what a different film it could have been)

the island prison of Fin Razel

Take some time out of your busy schedule and check out the Quenched Consciousness blog, because the majority of his work is out of print and rather difficult to come by.

Hopefully, wherever he is, he traversing the cosmos traveling to all the incredible worlds that were trapped inside his head.

Here is the second installment of our Firetower Studios interviews. We managed to get Jason Strutz to take some time out of his busy schedule to talk about his influences, how his art style has changed over time, and the many varied projects he's working on at the moment.

CBotMP: What is your comics origin story?

Jason Strutz: I had been doing paintings and art for years, but had trouble developing stories until I met Jeremy Whitley and he took care of that part. We started developing the story for The Order of Dagonet soon after we met when he saw a character design I had for Queen Titania and Bottom of A Midsummer Night's Dream. So while I was reading comics, it took finding a writer to get me into making them myself.

CBotMP: You started out with a fine art background. That seems to be rare for a lot of comic creators. Do you have any artists that inspire you?

JS: For classical painting I like Caravaggio's characters that are hidden in darkness, Whistler's restrained colors, Dali's ideas and painting quality, and Bacon's craziness (I haven't gotten anywhere close to the creepiness of his pope paintings. Mostly I get inspired by illustrators like Phil Hale, Rick Berry, Drew Struzan, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, Norman Rockwell, Brad Holland, Frank Frazetta. I do like art with a purpose. Getting into comics people, Chrissie Zullo, Jeff Smith, James Jean, Simon Bisley are along my lines.

CBotMP: With that arts background, how did you wind up joining the ranks of Firetower Studios?

JS: Jeremy Whitley, Charlie Harper, and myself started the group with Dagonet and a story the Charlie and Jeremy were working on. We have continued Dagonet and branched out into other projects and webcomics at Firetower Studios and have added Werewolf D.A. artist Rich Lombardi, and artist/editor Alicia Whitley.

CBotMP: Your art is amazingly vibrant! What is your process? It seems like it must take you quite a while to make.

JS: For Dagonet art, it's not so long. There's a full pencil drawing, then airbrush basic colors and the tighten up the color with colored pencils. I would say a page all together would take about 4-5 hours if I worked straight through, but I do each step to all the pages at once before moving on to ensure some sort of consistency. I have been doing some pencilling and inking for Action Lab Entertainment on their Glob World series that shows some cartooning chops (hopefully), and pencils and inks on DeathCurse, a horror book from Lost Story Studios for some gooier black & white art. I feel I have a wide variety of styles to work in depending on the theme of the material.

CBotMP: Seeing some of your work in progress pages at StrutzIllustration.com was really insightful. That final pass with pencils adds an interesting weight to your art. How did this style develop?

JS: When I started working out how to adapt my painting and drawing style to doing comics, I remembered a sketchbook class I took in college working with toned papers, markers and colored pencils and I hadn't seen that done long-form in comics. I started Dagonet before I got on to airbrush, and also started by doing digital inking before the colors. So the art in 1-3 is a bit different and harder edged than the art in 4-now. Its been a learning process for me, but I like where that style has ended up. Mostly I think I was trying a bit hard to find something different in the beginning and have calmed down a bit now.

CBotMP: Your layouts are very expressive yet very readable. I can’t think of many other creators who do anything quite like it. How did you create that look?

JS: For the most part, I make it up as I go. I feel I have reigned it in a bit as the series has gone on. I try to identify the important beats on a page in the script form, and work from there. I have nothing against a strict grid page though, if the story calls for it. Its probably harder even.

CBotMP: You draw an awful lot of faeries and mythical creatures for Dagonet and its “sister” comic. Where did you come up with the character designs?

JS: I like creatures, monsters and such, and tried to bring in nature and vegetation aspects to the characters and creatures we create. A lot of my designs start from nature and plant based creatures with hopefully some grace and grandeur. I wanted to make the faeries more modern when in their human size form, thus the t-shirts, jeans and dresses.

CBotMP: Dagonet is the only Firetower book with a spin off comic, why did you two create the Faerie Sisters comic?

JS: We liked the characters of Bella and Lunessa, and thought they could have some good adventures within the world we had created. It also gives us a chance to show the faerie world from their perspective, especially coming in about the time in the series when you discover that not all faeries are bad.

CBotMP: Are there any good books (graphic novels or otherwise) that you have been reading lately?

JS: I really haven't been reading much lately, too much going on. I follow the Fables series, Princeless by Jeremy Whitley and will pick up anything by Doug TenNapel, Eddie Campbell, and Craig Thompson. I want to get into Orc Stain, some 2000 A.D. stories and read Unwritten to talk about it with my wife. Hopefully some life changes are coming up soon that will allow some more time for work and reading.

CBotMP: Wow. Thanks for pointing out Doug TenNapel. His art looks amazing. Thank you for your time Jason. The crew can't wait to see what you work on next.

We have a few more interviews with the Firetower creators to come, and we are going to be recording the VERY NEAR MINT podcast tomorrow so expect it up in the next week. Thank you to everyone for all your continued support. If you have the time, check out the store, and click on our sponsors. We hope you're having as much fun reading these books as we are!

Some of the crew went over the bridge last weekend to Image Expo, and much fun was had by all!

Last year, Wonder Con announced that they would be leaving San Francisco for the wonders of Anaheim, and it seemed as though there would be a very large gap in the Bay Area convention year. But the people at Image (whose offices are actually located in Berkley) stepped up and put together a convention at the Oakland Convention Center that is sure to grow in popularity as time goes on.

Keith muttered to himself about how hard it might be to find the convention hall in the Marriott hotel, but when the elevator doors opened, we were greeted with the most conveniently placed sign imaginable.

Christian stoically looks to the future, while Corey "Internet's Casey" thinks about pie.

We talked to the Action Lab Entertainment crew for quite a bit. Even a bit of thanks for our constructive criticism on Snowed In. Dave Dwonch showed us some preview pages from their upcoming book Double Jumpers, or as Dave continually referred to it "The Anti-Princeless." And Tony Guaraldi-Brown showed us pages from his animal zombie apocalypse book The Rabid. Which is written by J. D. Arnold, and should show up in the June Diamond solicits. We also watched him paint a sketch of a zombie nun while he was just sitting around. Really great stuff! Dylan picked up all four issues of Princeless and a copy of Space Time Condominium. Unfortunately, we forgot to grab a group photo when we were first at the booth, and when we went back Dave was on lunch. So you will have to make due with a candid shot of Tony.

Paul Roman Martinez sporting a truly dapper vest.

We caught up with our pals Josh Finney and Kat Rocha from Zero 1 Publishing as they continue to put the finishing touches on the Utopiates re-coloring (which should be out by the end of this year) and they keep working on Titanium Rain vol 2. Josh was kind enough to show us some upcoming pages in Titanium Rain that made Keith so excited he couldn't stop talking about them for the rest of the day. We may be doing a somewhat lengthy audio interview with them at some point as well to help promote all of their projects because there are just too many to go into.

It's a constant struggle for Nicole to find a graphic novel she enjoys. Her art tastes are pretty far off the beaten path and conventions like these are usually the only chance she has to find books that catch her eye. And Bryan J. L. Glass and Michael Avon Oeming's Mice Templar seems to have done just that. You can purchase it here. Bryan was a really sweet guy that was still beaming with joy that he had just completed the latest arc of Mice Templar and has only one arc left before his epic tale of sword wielding rodents comes to a close.

Dylan met Steve T. Seagle which has been a dream of his since he started attending conventions. Which is proof you should be careful what you wish for, because Steve promptly strangled Dylan for having lesser facial hair. But seriously, he was really nice and put up with Dylan's awkward praise for House of Secrets. And gave Dylan a copy of his graphic novel Solstice, which you can bet is going to be featured on the podcast at some point. Do yourself a favor and check out any of his books.

The snapping of Dylan's neck was heard on the other end of the convention hall.

All in all, for a first year convention, the people at Image put on a pretty good show. It was perfectly manageable crowd-wise. Although they had a huge space in front of the Image booth that was rather empty most of the time, and squashed artist's alley into a really small area. It was hard to get two people in the aisles. Much less two people with a backpack. Hopefully, They will correct it for next year.

Thanks for reading the blog, we have more Firetower interviews coming, and the Very Near Mint feature episode is on the way as well. Thank you all for your continued support, and we hope you're enjoying these books as much as we are!

Chris, Dylan, & Keith gather around the laptop for a little over an hour to talk about the smorgasbord of webcomics produced by Firetower Studios. Listen to Chris spew good-natured bile!

New updates every weekday!

Mondays: Jeremy Whitley and Jason on "Faerie Sisters", a webcomic tie in to The Order of Dagonet

Every other Tuesday: Jeremy and Alicia on "Hot Interracial Marriage" a diary comic on interracial relationships, parenting, and life.

Every other Tuesday: Charlie's "Crazy Normal" a commentary and satire cartoon in one panel

Wednesdays: Jeremy and Rich's "Werewolf D.A." a supernatural legal thriller

Thursdays: Jeremy and Charlie's "Ennui of the Dead" a look at the lives, times, and melancholy of the long undead.

Fridays: Postings of pages from the "Order of Dagonet"

Both the Crew and you the listeners are rather lucky it took this long for us to review their work. All of these web comics have finished up their first storyline, so there is a wealth of strips to get you into their crazy world. The comics Firetower Studios produces are very unique, and we look forward to seeing this group as they continue to develop. If you would like to purchase the first trade paperback of "The Order of Dagonet" (which if you're in the mood for crazy fantasy adventure in a modern setting with psychedelic coloring, you really should!), you can buy it from their store.

We also discuss the wonderful world of comics litigation for about 15 minutes towards the end. The song is Feuer Frei by Rammstein.

We will be back in two weeks time with our Book of the Month Episode featuring VERY NEAR MINT by Justin Peterson. Stick around, we know you're all going to love it!

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by Dylan Cassard

As some may be aware, back in 2007, the creator of Ghost Rider sued Marvel and all parties involved with the Ghost Rider movie. The ruling has finally been handed down by the judge, and it is not good.

The public battle over Watchmen has been in everyone's ears lately, and this is just a tiny little pebble in the pond. I could go on and on about Watchmen and Alan Moore and that whole debacle, but this situation between Gary Friedrich and Marvel makes the Watchmen debacle look like an amiable handshake and a parting of ways. I am all for the creation of any new work. Anyone should be aloud to express themselves as they see fit. It's why we have art. Copyright shouldn't factor into it. It's all self expression. But anything that penalizes creativity, and fines a person for doing so is abhorrent. The fact that a corporation is stepping in and telling a creator "they did not create something" that they clearly did, makes no logical sense. And the act of creation should protect them under copyright to begin with. NO JUDGE should be able to take that away from an artist. Gary Friedrich created Ghost Rider and he should be aloud to create derivative works and mass produce them. This makes just as much sense as me telling children in art school they are no longer able to paint with their fingers because I have copyrighted suns with smiley-faces on them.

What makes it worse is that Gary Friedrich has been a silent steward of the Ghost Rider license for decades. He sat on it while Marvel over-saturated the market with his character. Back in the early 90s there wasn't a book on the stands that didn't have Ghost Rider's face on it. And he never decided to sue for a single penny. But after he saw the film, he decided to flex his muscles a little. Marvel's lawyers said, "We can't have that! The creator of Cloak and Dagger might get ideas!" And so they have gone after him full force, when he was doing THEM a favor the whole time. Bad form, Marvel. I'm sure they made plenty off of that character with all of the millions of books he sold for Marvel in the 90s.

I try not to get political on this page, but creator's rights are near and dear to my heart. And what Marvel is doing to Gary Friedrich is appalling. If you can think of any way to help, the medium will be a better place for it. We forever stand on a precipice of corporatocracy in the realm of artistic expression. And comics are fast becoming a job and not art in the eyes of the top brass. It may have always been this way, but now it's going to the courts and these decisions can change the way our culture looks at intellectual property and copyright as a whole. The fact that Marvel is suing to bar Gary Friedrich from saying he created the character in the first place is stunningly absurd. And that they can take $17,000 from him for making figures of his creation is also trying and terrifying. This is a dangerous precedent. And should Friedrich not win the appeal, it's going to be tough from some artists to make a living doing sketches of characters they have worked on. Hopefully, Friedrich will appeal this. Raise awareness about this cause. Show him, and the world how important this is. Try and make a stand where and however you can. I really hope Friedrich wins ultimately and he makes an example out of Marvel instead of the other way around.