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** follow Ed Salazar on twitter and tumbler **

** stalk Jenny on facebook (but not in person, please) **

** see Jenny dance **

** follow Jenny on twitter **

** stalk Jenny on facebook (but not in person, please) **

** see Jenny dance **

** follow Jenny on twitter **

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** see Jenny dance **

By Jason Vaughn

As we lead up to our “35 Days with Kevin Eastman” event (Nov. 30^th-Jan. 4^th), it seems only right that we take some time to spotlight the next generation of independent creators out there who are following in the footsteps of such greats as Kevin, Peter Laird, Jeff Smith, Dave Sim, Eric Powell, Bryan Lee O’Malley and others. Two upcoming indie creators, Kyle Winters and Mike Andersen from Grass Valley, California are on the verge of a “big hit” and have “taken aim” (OK, I’ll stop with the puns) at the “big three” with their self-published title “Trigger Men.” Given the growing popularity of digital comics, it’s refreshing to see new creators with the courage to publish their own books in a market dominated by force-fed multiple Wolverine and Batman titles. Produced and published out of their shingle Triptych Books, Winters and Andersen (with the help of another future superstar, artist Heather Brinesh) have crafted a dark comedic bromance of a story. The plot revolves around the misadventures of two guys, friends since childhood who grew up to be contract killers in high school.  Now, adults who’ve gone their separate ways, they come together for what they believe will be one final job.  Think “Grosse Point Blank” meets “Justified.” I had the opportunity to talk to Mike and Kyle about “Trigger Men”, Triptych books, and what’s coming around the corner in the near future for both.

Guys, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions. I’m digging the story of “Trigger Men” and not just because I’m a narcissist and there’s a lead named Jason in it.

M: We’ll take that.

Also, I was an assassin for hire at one point as well.

(Laughs)

I like the bromance between Matt and Jason you guys have come up with, it’s a lot of fun. Let’s start out with an easy one. What kind of comics were you guys in to growing up and what do you currently read?

M: “I’m really big in to indie comics in general, which is actually kind of a big motivation for us to create comics. We would go to conventions and only be able to find the first few issues of a run. It’s hard trying to find indie comics because a lot of them ended very early. The one I’m really enjoying now is “The Walking Dead.”

K: “I grew up with ‘Spiderman,’ that was a very integral part of my childhood. A lot of ‘Spiderman,’ some ‘Batman’ titles, comics that a traditional reader would pick up when they’re young. Then I basically got out of reading comics from about seventh grade through high school. Right after high school, we all started going to the San Diego Comic Con and that kind of got me back into comics. At that point, I found myself more interested in the independent stuff, the creator owned comics. Right now the things I’ve been into actually are more journalistic comics.”

M: “I’m also a huge fan of “The Tick.”

Spoon! (The Tick’s battle cry, I’d explain but it’d take too long. Hit Meltdown and grab a trade instead.)

(Laughs)

M: “We actually picked up like a five hundred page collection of ‘The Tick’ when we were down at the Long Beach Comic Con.”

Nice, I was a fan of the animated series. So, what was your inspiration for “Trigger Men?”

M: “I think it was an idea that the genesis stemmed from the fact that I like hit men, assassin based stories. But frequently the stories don’t go where I want them to go, and this particular story I like because it’s more personal. “

K: “More realistic I think.”

M: “Exactly, so I think it was more that I wanted to write not just in the genre, but the way I wanted to read the genre.”

When did you guys start collaborating together?

K: “We met in a high school creative writing class and we were the only ones in the class not writing ‘boy meets girl, girl meets boy, they break up, they get back together again and fall in love forever’ stories. Our stuff was a little dark, but that’s high school. From that we became friends, and within six months of knowing each other, we knew that we wanted to write something together. For five years we’ve been working on what we wanted to do and created our own company, Triptych Books. Finally in the last two years things have started to move forward, and a little over a year ago we debuted with ‘Trigger Men.’”

So tell me, which of you was bullied so bad in high school that you wanted to kill the jerk? (Read the book.)

(Laughs)

K: “I never had issues with bullying in high school. In our high school, everyone was big enough and pretty well accepted. In my school, the nerds were in charge.”

M: “I saw a bit of bullying, but I was never personally bullied. It was something that I felt  was definitely there, that type of favoritism, and I think that was something I wanted to use in the series because it’s very relatable to a lot of people. Plus it’s always fun to watch an @$$h*le get his comeupins. It’s a good plot point in the story, because you can have a character do something that is objectively bad and still find yourself rooting for them.”

Right, it’s a great engine for the first arc. What made you guys decide to publish your own title instead of going the much cheaper digital comic route?

K: “We really liked the idea of trying to attack the whole thing professionally. One thing we noticed with a lot of indie comics when we were going to conventions and kind of learning about what the comic world really was is that their presentation was one of the things holding them back. They weren’t thinking about this as trying to future prove it, they weren’t thinking about it as a business.  We wanted to do something for the long run. Our goal is to create a publishing company that not only creates a large body of work but good work, but the editorial meddling isn’t there. One thing about going to a bigger publisher, which we kind of toyed with after we started poking around a little bit, is that after they promise to make it, you get, ‘We love Matt and Jason, but what if there was a talking dog? And instead of them being hitmen maybe they could be cops. One of them is a cop and the other is a police dog.”

Welcome to Hollywood.

K: “Exactly, and we didn’t want that so we kind of felt like we could make a better product if we did it professionally, of high quality, and under our own guidance.”

I hear you guys were approached to potentially develop for television. How did that come about?

K: “The rep from the production company was going to her husband’s panel at Wonder Con and we were the first booth she saw as she was walking across the floor. She saw our book, picked it up, and a few months later called us and basically said ‘we really like this, we’re really interested.’ It was basically just a really happy accident. One thing though that’s kind of been interesting, before we were approached to pitch, Mike and I would go to a panel at these conventions called ‘Hollywood Horror Stories.’ The whole thing is these comic creators talking about their horrible experiences in Hollywood. So, when we got our first call, we were initially worried about becoming like the guys at those panels in a couple of years, but we’ve had nothing but positive interactions with them. ”

M: “We’re incredibly lucky. We send them material and apparently everyone in the office eats it up. We’re told every time they get ‘Trigger Men’ in, every copy is quickly snatched up. It’s a pretty gratifying feeling.”

Can you share some of that luck this way?

(Laughs)

K: “You know, that’s kind of one of our guiding principles, that ‘we all succeed when we all do better.’ The comics world needs more diversity, and it needs more people to succeed, not just the big three. Now don’t get me wrong I love ‘Spiderman,’ I love ‘Green Lantern,’ but I really think the industry needs more people like all the other creators out there who are trying to show their own work, trying to do something different. So we try to get books out whenever we can.”

What’s in store for the future of Triptych Books Publishing? Are there any other titles in the works?

K: “Mike is the main creative force on “Trigger Men” as the writer, and I do the production side of it, help with ideas, edit, I think they call it ‘touch-up’ in Hollywood. I’m also writing a couple of series that are currently under production. Mike has a few other things that are going on. We also have a friend of ours who is an absolutely fantastic writer; she’s working on a series for us. So we have a number of projects that are currently in different levels of production. We’re hoping that soon enough these series will start coming down the pipeline. We’re going to start expanding out. ‘Trigger Men’ is our first pillar in what we hope is going to be a foundation of awesome comics.”

What type of genres are you looking to publish? Or is it just anything goes as long as it’s good storytelling?

K: “We really want to go the wide spectrum, but we also do like to write in a certain area. We both really enjoy stories that have a fair amount of action in them, so a lot of our projects have leaned toward the action genre. We’ve got everything from scifi to supernatural to very, very dark humor coming out. We want to balance things accordingly, but eventually end up with a wide spectrum of books.”

M: “I’d say the only real strong trend to our stuff is that it leans towards older readers. A lot of it tends to be for a more mature audience.”

K: “Like sixteen and up.”

M: “Yeah, but other than that, the three main books I’m working on right now are ‘Trigger Men,’ a goofier comedy, and a much more serious and somber story. We’re really trying to hit as many notes as we can.”

K: “It helps us, I think, to market our company also by saying that we don’t want to be just an indie publisher. Our interest is in well told stories.”

The famed American novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler once said, “A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.” Well, whatever the guys at Triptych Books have brewing up next, count me in. And if you would like to drink the kool-aid as well, click on the link to their website below and pick up a copy of “Trigger Men.”

www.triptychbooks.com

Go ahead and follow me on Twitter: @GoTodash

by Jason Vaughn

“Evil isn’t a force…it’s a choice…I’m weighing my options.”

- Jack Springheel

Digital comics have exploded on to the internet at such an exponential rate, it’s no surprise when top industry creators collaborate to craft passion projects online. Artist Dennis Calero, who is best known for his work in Platinum Comics’ “Cowboys and Aliens” as well as his Harvey Award-nominated run in Marvel’s “X-Factor,” has teamed up with writer/actor Todd Stashwick (“Heroes,” “Men of a Certain Age,” “The Riches”) to create one hell of a story about the Devil questioning his own role in the grand scheme of the universe. The “Devil Inside” has become such an underground cult hit that the web comic is vastly approaching eight hundred thousand hits in just its first year. The log line on Todd’s website describes the series better than I could:

“A guns blazing, white knuckled, preternatural joy ride to hell and back. Go on the road with the Devil himself, Jack Springheel. A man with a bounty on his head, Jack is running from a past, searching for a new truth and trying to keep the Devil inside.”

I had the fortunate opportunity to speak with Todd and Dennis (albeit through several interruptions due to technical difficulties, thank you very much AT&T) about the inception of their successful indie strip, “Devil Inside.”

Thanks for taking the time guys; I’m a big fan of both of your work. Todd, I still have your “Scarpulla rap” on my DVR (“Men of a Certain Age”), I think you missed your calling.

T: I apologize for that posthumous.

And, Dennis, your run on X-Factor is still one of the best in the series so far.

D: Thank you so much!

You guys are professionally from two different worlds, how did you end up collaborating on this web series?

T: Well, it sort of happened on Twitter actually. I was on “Heroes” and they introduced the character in a web comic before the TV show, and Dennis was the artist on that comic. I’m a comic book fan myself, so when I saw a promo of the online book, I immediately ran to check out how I was being represented, and I was being well represented. So I started using Twitter, and I made my avatar on Twitter one of his drawings. Then I contacted Dennis just to touch base and also that I dug this (the avatar pic), and he was a fan of the show I was on called “The Riches,” and so we built a friendship that way. He said that he was coming in to L.A. and wanted to meet up for coffee. We started discussing all the things we were  into, our favorite video games, comic books, movies, all assorted types of geekery. I had a germ of an idea about the Devil having a crisis of conscience and he said ‘Hey, let’s do that as a web comic.’

That was actually my next question. How did you come up with the idea?

T: Well, I play villains all the time, so I’m often fascinated with the idea of the occult. Sort of getting into the psyche of a villain, and I’m always trying to find the layers on the other side. There’s just too many to deal with. So all in all, almost everything I play on TV is a lot like the guy with a bullet in his head. My objective basically was to make a protagonist by extenuating circumstances into this space. And so I thought who is the ultimate villain, and obviously the Devil, so I went “what if the Devil was having a crisis of conscience, and started questioning his own path?” Then I turned to Dennis and he and I created a whole cosmology as well a series bible for the first arc of the story.

I’m sure parallels will be drawn with Vertigo’s “Lucifer” title that focused on the same anti-hero, what makes this particular incarnation unique?

T: Let me tell you this that I myself was weaned on those early Vertigo comics like Hellblazer or Sandman. In regards to “Lucifer”  in a log line only that the “Devil quits” is the only similarity. It’s like comparing “True Blood” and “Buffy.” They both have a blonde lead in love with a vampire, but that’s about where the similarities end. “Lucifer” had a lead that was a slick night club owner, our guy is more of a beat-up cop at the end of his career.

Are you hoping to use the series as pitch material for outlets like TV and film, or is your intent to try and bring “Devil Inside” to a more traditional publisher like Marvel or DC?

D: The “Devil Inside” is very representative; we considered bringing it to Archaia or Radical, one that would allow us the freedom to do what we wanted with the story. And we thought really if we wanted to do something that was one hundred percent ours, the value for us was going to be in generating interest, so going with an independent book, we felt didn’t merit the pace and direction we wanted to take it.

T: We realized we could reach with Dennis’ presence in the comic world and my presence in the sort of genre world through stuff like “Supernatural,” “Terminator,” “Buffy” and what not; we were able to reach many more people than we ever would if we were to print. It’s going to be instant and it’s going to be free. So our currency in spec’ing this online comic endeavor was a little. It’s now getting twenty thousand views a week, and we’re approaching eight hundred thousand views since the launch of the series last year. You want to keep growing that audience.

D: You know how the comic book market is right now. We were interested in making our property pervasive. We thought about charging but if Batman, Superman, and Spiderman are having trouble racking up sales, we’re not going to get our unknown character to do well in today’s market. Beyond that, it’s a horror character so where are we going to go with that? So we thought free was the way to go. But we thought what could we do that would be free, and have value, but still maintain possession of our careers? And that’s why the web comic format came up.

How did you go about launching the web series?

T: I had put in some thought about re-doing my website, so I basically just had my web master and my web designer build into the website itself an entire page solely devoted to “Devil Inside.” Upon the re-launch of my current website I was able to use that as a springboard to announce the online comic “Devil Inside.” We went to Comic-Con and put the first strip up on boards and we just hawked and hawked. We were interviewed by G4 online, we were interviewed by Fear Net, Sony TV came by, and people just started asking us questions because they were fascinated with the product. So basically it’s all been word of mouth and on the back of the fans who have been following Dennis and I in our other pursuits. It shortly turned into this fever pitch, I enjoy those things, and Dennis enjoys those things so we were already creating something that we wanted to read that they enjoyed as well. The fans are the ones spreading it around, we only use Facebook and Twitter, that’s our only advertising.

It’s a new world order with social media these days.

T: It really is. Considering we initially met because of the “Heroes” web comic, we connected through Twitter, and ninety percentage of our collaboration is done through email since he lives in New York and I live in Los Angeles. We’re texting each other ideas, we’ll send each other layouts, which really means it’s all on social media.

 How far out do you have the story boarded?

D: We have a vague idea of where the story is going to go years out. We know how the story ends; we could go five, ten, twenty years. We could go as long as we like. There is certainly a regard to precedence for that in the adventure strip market.  Comic strips like “James Bond” went for forty years or more before they stop generating new strips.

T: What we do is we literally sit down from week to week and create an outline of stories from which we map out like a year’s worth of strips. That way we know which scenes we want to do each week.  We sort of map it out a year in advance. So we’re finishing up the first year of the strip, and we know what the next year is going to be. That way we kind of know where it’s going from year to year.

If the series went to TV or film how would it deviate from the source material?

D: It all depends on where it was taken. Certainly if we were in Nickelodeon it would be an entirely different story. But if we were on SyFy, FX, or AMC I could see where it would remain really loyal to what it was we created.

T: If it wasn’t on a major network it would be much easier. We definitely have created something dark. Having come from the cable world with “The Riches” I like the freedom that you are allowed. I like the idea of keeping the writing strong with the amount of freedom you have to go dark.

The “Devil Inside” is definitely dark, and currently on its 53^rd week. Click the link below to check out the entire sinful story from the very beginning. And for all of you coming down to “Nerdvana” (also known as the San Diego Comic-Con) this week, keep an eye out for Todd and Dennis as they’ll both be in attendance. Dennis will be at the “Immortals” panel on Thursday from 1-2 in room 32AB, and both Todd and Dennis will be down in Artist Alley “FF-05″ off and on throughout the week.

http://www.toddstashwick.com/comic.asp?E=22

Follow me on Twitter: @GoTodash

Hey ladies, ever wonder what “the man your man could smell like” would look like if he were Luke Cage? Well, wonder no more because the Old Spice peddler Isaiah Mustafa is putting his own special brand of swagger on the popular Marvel property in a unique bid to play the role. For those of you who don’t know, comic book-obsessed Nic Cage’s stage name is taken from the popular “Luke Cage” character.

While Marvel contemplates the future of Luke, Isaiah, along with friend writer/director Jason Markarian, devised an idea to show the Marvel brass just how cool it would be to greenlight a project based on him.  So they produced their own take on what a Luke Cage film would look like with Isaiah obviously in the title role giving Marvel/Disney something to think about if they ever get around to the long rumored project which, at one point, had John Singleton (“Abduction”) set to direct and Tyrese Gibson (“Transformers”) in the titular part. The video below is a short teaser to a longer trailer that was leaked earlier in the week and has since been taken down.  Fortunately for us, Jason Markarian has sent over the teaser and a few production stills to see what we all think. The trailer is essentially a big budget audition reel, along the lines of the one we all saw of a beefed up Tobey McGuire during his bid for Spiderman back in the day. I don’t know about you guys, but I think Isaiah has enough on-screen charisma to pull it off. Looks like we’ve got ourselves an old school “Cage match” with Tyrese vs. Isaiah! Take a peek at the teaser by clicking on the link below and tell us who you think should play the part.

Luke Cage Teaser!

Follow us on twitter!

Jason Vaughn - @GoTodash!

Stacey Levin –  @TVStaceyLevin

When I first heard Boom! Studios would be releasing a new Planet of the Apes series, I was instantly hit with wonderful nostalgic memories.  Planet of the Apes holds a special place in my heart because I can vividly remember watching the old movies with my father on local television in the 70′s.  I can definitely credit my father for my early love of genre since our Sundays were mostly comprised of rerun Apes and Godzilla movies.  I even owned all of the Planet of the Apes dolls complete with the treehouse playset.  What I wouldn’t give to still have those toys today!

Now Boom! is cashing in on the Planet of the Apes craze which has already begun with the release of the trailer for the upcoming feature “Rise of the Planet of theApes” hitting theaters on August 5.  Once the trailer hit the internet, comic retailers nationwide suddenly made an unprecedented amount of late-breaking advanced re-orders leading to an early sell out of the title.

The official description of the comic series tells us the first issue begins before the original 1968 PLANET OF THE APES movie , but true to the continuity of the first five films.   Although Ape society has reached a new golden age,  there are ripples of dissent amongst both the ape and human ranks.  Tensions will rise and soon all will be caught in chaos, and amidst all this uncertainty, the the fate of The Lawgiver remains an unknown.

Written by Daryl Gregory with art by Carlos Magno, Planet of the Apes #1 will be in stores this Wednesday, April 27.  Better get one while you can!

Peace, love and all that jazz.

Follow me on twitter: @TVStaceyLevin

Awards season is coming to a close with the grand finale of the Oscars this Sunday.  But not to be outdone, we present last, but certainly not least, the esteemed nominees for the 2010 Meltdown Comic Awards!

It’s been an amazing year for our favorite genre and choosing the best of the best was no easy task.  This year’s Golden Melty list was comprised from multiple “Best of” lists, sell-through numbers, reviews, Publisher’s Weekly lists and combing through dozens of message boards to hear what true comic fans are saying.  So, without further ado, the nominees are:

Best Indie Comic Series

by: Jason Vaughn

If you’re not already a fan of what the Guinness World Records has deemed the most successful and longest running sci-fi series of all time, allow me to introduce you to the “Doctor.”  I think the 10^th Doctor, David Tenant, said it best:

“I’m the Doctor. I’m a Time Lord. I’m from the planet Gallifrey in the Constellation of Kasterborous. I’m 903 years old and I’m the man who is gonna save your lives and all 6 billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?”

Unless you’re slow, you’ve already caught on to the fact the Doctor is an alien, and the last of one of the most powerful races in the galaxy, the Time Lords. The Doctor travels through time and space armed with only his wit, a sonic screw driver, a time traveling spacecraft in the shape of a 1950’s style London police call box, and the occasional traveling companion (a.k.a. the obligatory damsel in distress.) As you’d expect, an entity as old and as powerful as the Doctor amasses a vast collection of enemies as he travels the universe fighting for the little people (which more often than not is the planet Earth.) Oh, and his being burdened with constant guardianship over the time stream is kind of a pain in the ass, too.

Terms like “it’s bigger on the inside” and “behind the sofa” entered into my childhood lexicon at an early age as I fell in love with the classic series played on Saturday mornings after my cartoon faves “Dragon’s Lair” and “The Real Ghostbusters.” So needless to say, I was completely stoked when I heard in 2005 that a new season of the hit BBC series was going to be airing on the Sci-Fi Channel. I was equally as thrilled to learn there would be an accompanying comic series as well.

IDW continues their current series based on the show with the first issue of “Doctor Who” arriving on the shelves this Wednesday. But hold on a sec, I bet you’re saying to yourself, “Wait a minute, how can this be the first issue of a series that’s been ongoing for years?”  Ah, now see, that’s because the Doctor has changed over the years and the creators of the show had the forethought to instill a little bit of mythology into the Doctor’s physiology to cover their own rear-ends in case their lead ever left the show, or started to develop an ego the size of the Tardis’ interior. It’s fairly ingenious because if the Doctor is ever gravely injured, he can regenerate, but it results in his appearance and personality changing. It’s one of these types of regenerations that has lead us from IDW’s previous book starring the much beloved 10^th Doctor, exuberantly performed by the talented thespian David Tenant, to our current 11^th Doctor played by newcomer Matt Smith.

In this inaugural issue, we catch up with the Doctor and his two current companions from the show Amy Pond and her fiancé Rory Williams (who we all know is just an obstacle the writers put in between the attractive “damsel” Amy and the newly young Doctor) as they’re forced to land on an alien planet after the Tardis is infected with spam like holographic images and phisher like emails personified. But as is par for the course when traveling with the Doctor, the trio find themselves in the midst of an invasion by intergalactic mercenaries. Scribe Tony Lee’s story feels like it was lifted straight from the show, as if somehow the idea was pitched and the powers that be turned it down for budget issues but said, “That’d make a good graphic novel though.” And I’m digging how artist Andrew Currie has managed to capture the likeness of the leads so accurately, the panels feel as if he had the cast stand in as models while he was working. Currie seems to have duplicated Matt Smith’s wide gamut of emotions from that of an exasperated baby sitter, to contemplative scholar, to mischievous alien, with what appears to be great ease.

My only problem with the issue, and the series before it as well, is there are certain elements in the show which are naturally lost in print translation, and their loss lessen my enjoyment of the book as a “Dr. Who” property. To me, one of the reasons “Dr. Who” is such a time honored property is due, in large part, to the “cheese factor” of the show. You just don’t get the same effect in print as you do on film when it comes to low budget effects. Nothing can replicate watching a grown man walk around in a tin can screaming “Exxteerrrminaaate!” (I don’t know. How would you make special effects in a comic book seem cheesy? Put glitter on the paper?) Another small issue is the absence of the Doctor’s delivery. We can all agree that 90% of the time we have no idea what the hell the Doctor is talking about. It’s not so much the incomprehensible techno babble which tickles our inner nerd as it is the delivery of those lines from Tenant and now Smith. They both have their own unrestrained way of piping us like the Piper himself into the Doctor’s outlandish adventures keeping us coming back for more.

But with my completely unreasonable complaints aside, I’m sure long time fans of both the book and the show will describe this first issue in one word, “brilliant!”

Follow me on Twitter: @GoTodash.