Mister Crimson: The Mayor

Meet the Mayor!
This week Seth and Diego present the low down on The Mayor.

Check it out here .:

No Free Comics Today

Sorry no new comics today.

Caine's Digital Comics Must Haves

Comic book fans are often divided about fully digital comic books. The Paper Comic Fans sing praises to the portability and aesthetic properties of paper comics. The Digital Comic Fans argue in favor of cheaper comics and easier distribution models.

What we need are a few comic books so amazing, so cool that they would be next to impossible for any fan NOT to go out and purchase them. Even the fan who swears they'll never buy digital while they can still get books printed on paper.

Here are five in no particular order:

The Team Up

Sure these days when two characters with solo books find their way into one another's book it can conform a bit to closely to a formula for it to be any fun at all. We've all seen it and know it well: characters meet, they disagree, they fight, they get over it and join up forces in the end.



There was a time when team up books, whether it was "Marvel Team Up", "The Brave and The Bold", or another book was the backbone of the large comic book publishing companies monthly releases.

Month after month the reader could find powerful partnerships formed by characters that would never actually find their way into each others books. These books were also often times used to tell stories a little "out there" for main stream continuity using up and coming artists who didn't have a monthly title of their own.

Batman Kills Joker

Call it a "what if" story if you want. Have it be someone other than Bruce Wayne as Batman but this book would sell like hot cakes! Knowing that time has finally caught up with him Batman decides that he's but one last thing to do on this earth: Kill JOKER!

He uses his considerable resources and finances to update his gear, leave his estates all settled up and sets out on a one man quest against the crown prince of crime that will end in the Thunderdome: Two men enter, one man leaves.

Robin, Nightwing, Catwoman, Commissioner Gordon, The Question, Superman and more all have a moderate to large roll but it will suprise you who thinks that the Jokers death is a good thing helping Batman and who tries to get in his way. No matter what happens, Joker ends up DEAD! This wouldn't be a gimick story.

The George Perez show

I hesitate to call it "JLA vs AVENGERS" because it may not be that at all. George is given any "team" project he wants and is allowed to run with it. The publisher backs him up with a team of digital producers who assist in helping George structure his amazing artwork to fit best on the computer screen. Thats it, we could debate and salivate all day but it wouldn't matter because anything GP did would sell, sell, sell!

Licensed Motion Comics

Many comic book publishers have done comic adaptions of Star Wars, Star Trek, Highlander, Escape From New York, Aliens, Predator and more. Many of these properties don't often do as well in a flat platform like the printed page as they did on the small and large scree. Those listed above would be perfect for Motion Comics with limited sound effects and a big animation piece in the middle in loo of a "pin up".

This book is the only book distributed free to all of us as there's a commercial that goes with it for revenue.



Kids Comics

Books like Teeny Titans, Super Girl, and young versions of Spiderman, Hulk, and Iron Man have kept "kid comics" alive and kicking. A Digital comic book delivery systems seems the perfect vehicle for more. Some could be animated, some not. These books will be half as many "pages" long as full page books and a new one would be posted every day like clock work for at least the first year.

The company that really needs to get in the game to make kids turn to Digital Comics is Disney. Currenly the Disney Princess franchise makes up about $4 Billion in global revenue (almost 20% of Disney's overall revenue.) Why there aren't a ton of Disney Princess Comics on every Wal-Mart Checkout line is a mystery to me.

These books would, in this blogger's opinion, go a long away to position digital comic books in a "must have" position in any future market place.

Have a nice weekend.

Pierre Speaks: Making Covers

As you guys know now, we had a comic at Zuda.com last month called “Kharon: Scourge of Atlantis” - while we didn't win the contest, we are going to complete the comic and will present the finished version here on Flashback Universe! :)

When we started making our Zuda proposal… there is one thing that we could not help but think that was missing from some Zuda comics…… a cover.

I may be misremembering… but I can’t recall seeing any Zuda project with a cover.

So we were all set to submit our comic with this cover.

But at some point, Jim decided to split one of the pages I had drawn into two pages. So we had one page too many for our proposal. We could either take out the cover…. Or take out page 08 and end our proposal on page 07.

We decided to take out the cover and use it as a promo piece instead.

Splitting a page and making two pages with it is something that we often do in our Flashback Universe comics.

Sometimes it is me who will take something that was scripted as one page and will split it in two pages if I feel there is too much material for a single page.

Or sometimes it is Jim who will take a page that I drew, and he will take it apart and make multiple pages with it. Sometimes he will make more then two pages with one page that I have drawn.

That is one of the advantages when we are making our Flashback Universe comics. We can add or remove as many pages as we see fit.

Here is a rough Kharon drawing for when I was looking for a pose for him for the cover.

Also sometimes, I will make a rough drawing and play with it in Photoshop.

And very rarely,….. rarely enough that what I really mean is pretty much never do I draw directly in Photoshop. I have no idea how some people can do it. I have a lot of respect for those who can do that because I find it extremely frustrating when I try to draw directly in Photoshop.

So the following sketch will be an obvious example of why I never draw directly in Photoshop.

Ouch!

I can tweak an already existing drawing with Photoshop. But drawing from scratch in Photoshop is beyond me at this point.

So I will keep on drawing by hand and scanning/editing my drawings in Photoshop for the near future. ;)

Until next time.

Mister Crimson: The Leader Bio Page

Today Seth and Diego present another great Bio Page on one of our Mister Crimson cast members. This time we feature The Leader!

See it here .:

Free Comics Monday: Kid Eternity

Today, I present a character I've always thought was very cool, Kid Eternity!

From Wikipedia...

Hit Comics, prior to issue #25, had a series of rotating cover features, including Hercules, the Red Bee, Stormy Foster and Neon the Unknown. However, December 1942 saw the entire line-up of comics at Quality change their features (if not always the cover feature). Kid Eternity was brought in from the start as the new cover feature for Hit.

The character proved to be popular enough that when Quality Comics began expanding their post-war line, the Kid got his own self-titled comic book, Kid Eternity, in the Spring of 1946. Further illustrating the popularity of the character, his antagonists, Her Highness and Silk were given their own strip in Hit Comics #29 through #57.

[ download Kid Eternity 06 ]

More from Wikipedia -

The Kid was originally a nameless boy (who only ever remembered being called 'Kid' by his 'Gran'pa') who was killed when a U-Boat sank his grandfather's fishing boat during World War II. Due to a supernatural mix-up, however, he was killed seventy-five years too soon (similar to the plot of the 1941 film Here Comes Mr. Jordan) at the time.

To rectify the error, the Kid was brought back to life for another seventy-five years with the mission of upholding good in the world. He was given the power to summon any good historical or mythological figure by saying the word "Eternity" as well as to use the same word to make himself material or immaterial. Kid Eternity was further assisted on his duties by the clerk who'd made the error, Mr. Keeper.

[ download Kid Eternity 07 ]


Have a great day!

- Jim

Bronze Age Spotlight Presents: Bronze Age Two-in-One: “If this be Bronze…”

Know, O Reader, that between the years when the rocket-ship gleam of the Silver Age tarnished, and the years of the rise of iron-girt modernity with its grittiness and situations so adult, there existed an Age of Bronze…

Because no one demanded it, in this installment of Bronze Age Spotlight, we’ll turn our analysis to defining the elements and innovations of that bygone era. A topic of such importance demanded not one, but two pundits to opine. So for the first time in the Spotlight, Jim Shelley, Flashback overmind and editor-in-chief, joins forces with me in one epic column.

Follow us back now, to a time—scant months ago, wherein Jim and I first began to wrestle with the eternal question: Just what is the deal with the Bronze Age?

Part 1: The Argument is Posed

October 21 2008. In the subterranean fastness of the Flashback Bunker, Jim Shelley types furiously, the satisified “clak-clak” of his vintage keyboard mixing with Iron Maiden played at a low, but incessant volume. What he types is this:

Trey,

This morning I was thinking about Deadman [ This is not, in and of itself, unusual, as Jim is forever thinking of Deadman] and whether or not I thought that series/arc reflected any of the traits I think define a Bronze age comic. I've never tried to specifically distinguish between Silver age and Bronze Age before, (always relying on my own gut feelings) so I found the exercise sort of interesting... Here's what I came up with...

• Use of 70's counter culture ideology or symbolism/style.
  
• Advanced use of continuing storylines/ongoing plots.
  
• Greater exploration of anti-heroic type of characters.

Think I'm missing anything or wrong about any of these?

Then Jim leans back in his egg-chair, tents his fingers, and waits. For reasons now obscure, he will have to wait until 7:58 AM the following morning for my reply:

I think that's about right.

I don't think the ideology is so much 70s counter-culture though, as it’s 60s ideology filtered through the 70s disappointment that the 60s had failed. Sixties ideas of equality took a while to get into comics, but when they did they jumped immediately to 70s conceptions thereof.

While there are more anti-heroes in the Bronze Age, I think the number is still fairly small (though I suppose it depends on exactly how you define anti-hero). Dracula, Satana, and Jonah Hex are the anti-heroes I can think of. Compared to standard superhero comics, the Punisher might be called one, but I think he's actually a hero, just not one of the standard comic book variety. I suppose comics with a villain as the star (The Joker, Super-villain Team-Up, Secret Society of Super-Villains) might qualify.

Part 2: Riposte

Now Jim has hooked me…as he knew he would. Having laid that groundwork now was the time to advance my own theories:

This is how I would define the Bronze Age:

1) Longer arcs and more moves to completely serial storytelling;

2) Increasing numbers of minority characters;

3) Concern with social relevance (race issues, drug issues, environmentalism)--and a recognition that superheroic violence is not a viable solution to when problems, and sometimes may worsen them;

4) More horror elements;

5) More common use of a sardonic or tongue-in-cheek tone (though not camp mostly);

6) More influence of film storytelling conventions and style;

7) Fewer "pat" endings and a move to more ambiguity;

8) Early exploration of more "adult" versions of concepts, i.e. Marvel's black and white magazines.

And then there are all those superheroes suddenly deciding to sleep in the nude… Seriously, what was that about?

Jim takes all of this in. It crawls through the labyrinthine recesses of his mind. One solitary point emerges from those unknowable depths, and he replies at 10:25 AM :

Good point about the nudes! :D

Part 3: Denouncement

So there you have it, gentle reader. It turns out the Bronze Age was about superhero nudity. All that other stuff was just filler, window-dressing, white noise. Sleeping Naked.

Who’d have thought, huh?

[ I’d like to point out that Deathlok never once slept in the nude, and Woodgod was, in fact, always nude. – Jim ]