Here's the Hexer Dusk interview as it was published. I'm trying to get the link to show, sorry! Try outrightgeekery.com! From my interview, Jan had this to share on moving from Star Wars to her own publishing venture: JD: Somewhere inside most comic book pros is the idea of a doing something indie and creator owned. I'd approached doing something partly creator owned with other companies, but each time the course of the company changed direction and the project fell through. That's why I think that Kickstater and Indiegogo are so important to the pros in the comic book industry. They give creators a platform to put those indie projects out there for the fans and readers to decide on. What I like most about what I am seeing on Kickstarter is that most of the comics looking for funding are outside of the mainstream--you'll see Western, Horror, Sci-fi, Fantasy, Comedy or a mashup of different genres. It's a creative candy store! I think that the ability to b...

The story goes, a motorcycling youth fresh from a stint traveling with the carnival came to New York City, all of 20, 21, hoping to join Marvel Comics Group. David Anthony Kraft arrived with counter-cultural rebellion and a head full of imagination. His high school years spent reading science fiction paper backs in the back of the classroom led straight to a professional status: he took the initiative and inquired about becoming estate executor to pulp writer Otis Adelbert Kline! (I discovered Kline's initials presented as OAK and wondered if that wasn't the inspiration for the "DAK" nomenclature.) Science fiction writer Leigh Brackett (who famously drafted The Empire Strikes Back script) and Marvel's Stan Lee were also formative influences. Fictioneer also published hard back editions of Jack London, Frank Baum, the autobiography of A.E. van Vogt, Robert E. Howard, and E. Hoffmann Price, a colorful ex-soldier and pulp writer who became an early ...

Essential Man-Thing, Vol. 1 by Steve Gerber My rating: 4 of 5 stars Steve Gerber did not always have a very optimistic viewpoint on humanity, but he wrote honestly and believed in our best values. If you want to read a thoughtful- not to mention occasionally horrific- graphic novel, this collection of serialized stories does the job. IF there's one glaring weakness, it is the strength that makes the stories unique: the protagonist is essentially mindless. This means the other random characters are necessary to give dimension to the conflicts, and they change over time. Richard Rory, hippie Everyman, is as close to a constant as the title has, and he's an interesting ordinary guy, never transformed by the usual power fantasy plot twists, but often swept up by them. This volume features his origin by Gerry Conway and Gray Morrow, and with a stop off by Jim Starlin along the way, by FEAR #10 we get to Steve Gerber, with stories about pollution, free spirits, shady developers,...

Hmm, so fans are sending videos of their flaming copies of the new Cap #1 over Twitter to Nick Spenser, writer. Anything could come of a twist; I just happened to read a review stating why the issue wasn't particularly well made. The truly offensive idea here is that Captain America- co-created by a Jewish artist who joined the Army to fight the military oppression of the Nazis- would be a deep cover member of an organization founded, fictitiously,by Nazis (Hydra). Could I ever burn a comic book? I did. When I was a child, I burned a brittle old copy of FEAR #21 my Dad found tattered in the floorboard of a '56 Chevy. My imagination and Morbius the Living Vampire did not play well, lol- I eventually took my object of morbid fascination to the trash fire in the back yard. I'd never burn another comic book, though. Irony? It was written by Steve Gerber, a writer I now really love! In other synchronicities, the issue went on sale the week I was born- as did the issue o...

Marvel Comics Group- in its phase as a slightly anarchic bastion of experimentation and creativity- published the comics reprinted here from 1976 to 1978, Leading off this volume we have the second half of Steve Gerber's run. The Steve Gerber stories are SO creative and smartly-written, with Buscema's competent layouts and nice superhero art. The ideas are so weird and original! The inks vary a bit in their outcome, but overall I like the Buscema/ Janson combo. If anything, a bit more subtlety in the art would better compliment Steve's restless wit and canny observations. These are not standard sorts of stories on the whole- the villains are strange but thought-provoking. Plots are both bizarre and driven by commentary about the modern world and individual struggles for identity in sublime pop form. Steve Gerber continued writing in comics and cartoons; after he authored Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, Man-Thing, and the team-up adventures of the Fantastic Four...

Twin flames: it's a beautiful ideal. The struggles of over a dozen couples to reach one another might offer you some insight as to the type of love you hope to find. Do the people in these stories go on to realize this ideal? The book makes the point, overall, how powerful and mystical the attraction can be. There's a lot of work that nonetheless goes into a marriage/ intimate love relationship; that, too, is addressed by many of these stories. www.amazon.com/Sacred-Fire-Twin-flames-Katrina-Bowlin-MacKenzie/dp/1489560351 The way to build that joy is so personal. I would never say expect only smooth sailing, even when there's sheer poetry in your beginnings together. Yet, you very much must hold on to the magic in those details, and continuously try to re-center yourselves in a joint attraction to those ideals. It's not a conviction to everyone's taste- some people do not find daily romance as strongly in their world of more practical concerns and quotidian inte...

The ultimate test of a work of art, to each individual subjectively, is “how memorable were the impressions this left?” Well, there's no way to forget the fleets of ships, the charge of warriors, the archetype of command from a time when a leader could choose bravely to withstand the threats he takes on alongside the ones he asks to risk sacrifice and chance victory. You felt life and death everywhere, from the brooding scenes of rulers behind the battle front to the absolutely electric warriors themselves, civilization stripped away, fight or flight impulses naked before blades, arrows, cannons, fire, and sea. You can turn the pages at the end and recognize each figure's progress as a character since their montage premiere at the front. Any feeling of confusion is utterly heightened if you have the experience of reading this for the first time broken up. The truth is, there's a LOT going on here! Even with quiet interludes roiling in their more personal tempest, not...