Off Registration
TM
February/March 2014
Antony Johnston off-Background
KRANTZ
Horacio Lalia & Jorge Claudio Morhain
RED ICE
Scott O. Brown & Horacio Lalia
Off Registration February/March 2014
Contents
Off-Background: Antony Johnston pg 6
Comics: Excerpt from The
Fuse
pg 12 Excerpt from The
Umbral
pg 18 Krantz, “The Incubus” pg 24 Red Ice, part 1 pg 40
Eagle’s Eye Review by Paul pg 51
Hanna
Founder & Publisher April Brown
Editor in Chief Scott O. Brown Reviews Paul Hanna Photography & Design April Brown Digital Content April Brown Cover Art Daniel Govar Contributors: Antony Johnston & Justin Greenwood Excerpt from The Fuse
Antony Johnston & Christopher Mitten Excerpt from Umbral
Horacio Lalia & Jorge Claudio Morhain Krantz, “The Incubus”
Scott O. Brown & Horacio Lalia Red Ice, part 1
OFF-REGISTRATION is trademark and copyright © 2014, Bronco Ink Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. Free pdf subscriptions are available by contacting subscribe@off-registration.com with the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. For permission to reprint any portion of this magazine, please write Bronco Ink Publishing, LLC at publisher@off-registration.com. “The Fuse” copyright © 2014, Antony Johnston & Justin Greenwood, “The Fuse” copyright © 2014, Antony Johnston & Christopher Mitten ,“Krantz” copyright © 2011 Horacio Lalia & Jorge Claudio Morhain, “Red Ice” copyright © 2012, Scott O. Brown.
Dear Loyal Readers, Welcome to Year Two of Off Registration! Scott, Paul, Dan, and I have a lot of great new comics, reviews, and art coming your way this year! Antony Johnsotn was gracious enough to start things off for us this month. He talks in depth about his career and his new series UMBRAL, and THE FUSE and provided us with previews of both. We are also celebrating our second year with a new line of Original Graphic Novels! We start off with the time travel epic KRANTZ by Horacio Lalia and Jorge Morhain. Check out the first chapter in this very issue, and pledge to get your copy today. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/acbrown/krantz-bannedby-the-catholic-church-and-now-in-en Thank you for downloading this issue! We hope you enjoy reading it as much we did putting it together. And don’t forget to visit our advertisers! Sincerely, April Brown Publisher/Owner
by: Scott O. Brown
Off-Background: Antony Johnston 2) You’ve adapted Alan Moore’s work on several occasions, most recently FASHION BEAST. How did you come into that opportunity? What is the process like? Do you have any more collaboration in the pipeline? Back in 2001, Avatar publisher William Christensen suggested me as an adapter for THE COURTYARD, a Lovecraftian prose piece by Alan to which Willian had obtained the rights. I did some tryout pages, Alan liked them, and that was that.
Antony Johnston is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of graphic novels, video games and books, with titles including Wasteland, Umbral, The Fuse, Shadow of Mordor, Dead Space, Daredevil, The Coldest City, and ZombiU. He has also adapted books by bestselling novelist Anthony Horowitz, collaborated with comics legend Alan Moore, and reinvented Marvel’s flagship character Wolverine for manga. His titles have been translated throughout the world and optioned for film. He lives and works in England. He was generous enough with his time to sit down and discuss his career and upcoming work with Off Registration.
So I adapted THE COURTYARD in full, it went down very well, and Alan was very happy with the end result. It all snowballed from there, and eventually, after I’d adapted something like a dozen of Alan’s prose and poetry works into comics, William asked if I wanted to do “the big one” — FASHION BEAST. Now, FASHION BEAST has always been a shibboleth for Moore fans; an obscure screenplay, co-written with Malcolm McLaren, impossible to film, incredibly dense, rejected by every studio in Hollywood, languishing in obscurity... it’s the stuff of legend, and after I read a poor-quality braided xerox of the script, FedEx’d to me in great secrecy, I realised most of it is actually true.
1) For our readers who aren’t familiar with you or your work, what’s the “elevator pitch” for Ant- But I do love a good challenge, so I said yes. Yes, I will adapt this “impossible” story. Yes, I will design ony Johnston? One paragraph or less. Go. it to look like a movie on paper. Yes, I will make it read like one of Alan’s own comics. I will do these I write comics and videogames. Some of them are well known, like DAREDEVIL, FASHION BEAST, impossible things, because I love a good chalDEAD SPACE, and SHADOW OF MORDOR. Some of lenge. them are less well known, like WASTELAND, UMBRAL, and THE COLDEST CITY. Some of them have (Not to mention how much I love people literally ignoring me when reviewing the book, or inevitawon awards, some have been bestsellers, some bly misspelling my name if they do mention me. have been optioned for film, some have been Ah, the press.) translated all over the world. It’s fun. Adapting Alan’s work for Avatar is unusual, com-
pared to stuff like ALEX RIDER adaptations, in that Avatar expressly want me to keep as much as possible of Alan’s story and original text. Which is why some of these comics are insanely long, of course. Alan’s hardly known for his brevity.
So I’ve never been convinced you can tell an artist’s influence from their own work. I think any good writer is influenced by literally everything, both in fiction and real life, and subsequently it’s impossible to quantify.
So it was hard work — it took me the best part of a year to script all ten issues, and I finished in 2005. That gives you an idea of how long it took to find a suitable artist, and I’ve got to say that FASHION BEAST simply wouldn’t have happened without Facundo Percio, whose talent is matched only by his dedication.
It’s also why writers need to get out and live, rather than just reading one another’s work. That way lies an industry that only ever reflects itself, and... well, we already do a lot of that in comics. The last thing we need is more of it.
And it was worth it. Now that the book is finally out there, I’m very proud of it. It was also my last adaptation of Alan’s work, and I think it’s a fitting cap on that part of my career. I look back on it with fondness and enormous pride, but what else is there to do, after FASHION BEAST? Where else could we go? Besides, I don’t like to repeat myself. 3) You have a very distinct style in your writing. Who or what has been the greatest influence overall in your style? I’m almost surprised to hear you say that. Maybe it’s like accents — everyone thinks other people have an accent, while their own voice is neutral. I don’t really think of myself as having a recognisable style, at all. But if I do, then it would have to be down to the writers I most closely read as I was growing up and learning to write, which would include all the usual 2000AD and UK suspects like Moore, Wagner, Morrison, Gaiman, Mills, Ennis. Not that I think much of that shows through in my work. For example, take Greg Rucka; I admire his work enormously, I study his work, and I’m lucky enough to count Greg as a good friend. But I don’t write like him at all. Even when I wrote an arc of QUEEN & COUNTRY for Greg, it was nothing like his work.
4) How did you break into the comics industry? Was it right place at the right time or was it the old fashioned way by not taking no for an answer? Well, you know exactly how it happened, because you were there! But for the benefit of your readers, the short version: I’ve been reading comics since before I could actually read. I’ve been telling stories since I could talk. And I’d been a professional writer for six years — but mostly of RPG stuff, I hadn’t yet plunged into outright fiction — when I met the artist Aman Chaudhary on the WEF. (That’s the fabled “Warren Ellis Forum” which you hear
old-timers like me go on about all the time.)
bloody-mindedness and a refusal to lie down.
Aman and I created an illustrated prose horror story called FRIGHTENING CURVES, serialised online. About halfway through, a young upstart by the name of Scott O Brown emailed to say he was setting up as an indie publisher, and wanted to publish FC if we’d get round to finishing it.
5) Can you give our readers and overview of WASTELAND? With it coming to an end, is the story done, or do you plan on revisiting it in the future? (SOB: I’m only on the second trade myself, so if there’s stuff you’d like to talk about that I’m not asking, feel free! I’m spoiler immune.)
So, in 2000, FRIGHTENING CURVES became the debut book — not just for me and Aman, but also for Cyberosia Publishing. It... didn’t exactly set the sales charts on fire! But it did serve as a calling card, and I used it to help me approach other publishers, like Oni and Avatar.
WASTELAND will end at issue #60. It was always intended to be a finite series, and we originally estimated it would take between 50-60 issues. That I butted right up against that limit will surprise no-one who’s ever worked with me.
Hmmm, not so short after all... But that was the “right time, right place” part. Next came the “not taking no for an answer” part, because from that moment on I basically just kept pushing, kept pitching, kept writing.
But #60 will be the end, where questions are answered and mysteries resolved. So if we do decide to do anything after that (and we have no plans to) it certainly won’t revolve around the central puzzle...
And for any young writers out there reading this, believe me when I say that’s the only real advice anyone can give you. Everyone’s route to their first book, and indeed everyone’s whole career path, is different. But the one thing they all have in common, without exception, is tenacity. Persistence. Sheer
...Which is discovering what the “Big Wet” was, and how it happened. WASTELAND is set 100 years after the Big Wet, an event that destroyed civilisation as we know it. It follows a “ruin runner” called Michael, who salvages a strange talking machine that claims it can lead him to A-Ree-Yass-I, the fabled land where the Big Wet began. Frankly, Michael isn’t very interested, but then he meets a sheriff called Abi, a woman with strange powers... just like the weird powers Michael has, too. And neither of them has ever met anyone else like themselves. So begins a massive epic, following them across the desert and through this strange new world. 6) Let’s get to the good stuff. What can you tell us about UMBRAL and THE FUSE? Well, they’re both new ongoing series from Image Comics, and both are drawn by artists I’ve worked with previously on WASTELAND; Chris Mitten and Justin Greenwood.
UMBRAL is a dark fantasy; it’s the story of Rascal, a young thief who breaks into the royal palace to steal a precious jewel, but ends up witnessing the horrific murder of the king and queen in a dark magic ritual. Turns out she’s stumbled upon a stealth invasion by the Umbral, shadow creatures that everyone thought were just a legend. But the Umbral are very real, very dangerous, and now Rascal holds the key to stopping them. A key the Umbral want back... THE FUSE, on the other hand, is a sci-fi murder mystery with a serious attitude. It follows detectives Ristovych and Dietrich of Midway City Homicide, whose jurisdiction is a solar energy station... orbiting 22,000 miles above the earth. Permanently understaffed and overworked, being a murder police on board “The Fuse” means working a new frontier where the law struggles just to be heard, let alone obeyed. As they say in the MCPD, “22,000 miles up, there is no backup.” 7) What influences are you drawing on for those projects? Now, see, influences on a *work* are much
easier to pin down... UMBRAL is most directly influenced by THE DARK CRYSTAL, which Chris and I both love; and from my own background in role-playing games, which I spent literally years of my life playing and running when I was younger, and as I mentioned earlier, even spent some years writing for and about. It’s also born of a desire to showcase Chris’ work; he has a real taste for the strange and grotesque, in the classical sense, and people who only know his work from WASTELAND, or the BATMAN shorts he did, probably don’t realise that. WASTELAND was very much about Chris drawing what I wanted to see; UMBRAL is more about me writing the kind of thing Chris loves to draw. THE FUSE, meanwhile. is a big melting pot of influences from all kinds of media. It’s an homage to US cop procedurals like LAW & ORDER and HOMICIDE, which I’m a sucker for. It’s also inspired by various “dirty sci-fi” works, ranging from JUDGE DREDD to ALIEN to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. And then there’s a dash of classic English detective stories, from SHERLOCK HOLMES to INSPECTOR MORSE. Basically, THE FUSE is aimed squarely at me. I am the audience. 8) Personally, I’m most excited for THE FUSE. What can we expect as the story moves forward? More murder. That’s always a safe bet. It’s essentially a procedural. Each arc will be a case (or two) for Klem and Ralph to solve; a murderer to uncover. Along the way we’ll visit lots of different aspects of the Fuse itself. From the wealthiest Residents on the upper floors, to the junkies hanging around by the gravity generators in the station base, and everything in between. We may even go to the Moon, or Mars. And there’s an overall story running through
the background, too, about Ralph and why he volunteered for transfer to Midway Homicide. I’ll say no more, but that will play out through the series. 9) One last question, and I’ll leave you to your word processor: If you had only one story left to tell, what would it be, and who would you want to draw it? If you’d asked me this ten years ago, I would have said WASTELAND. But I’ve had the chance to tell that one, now, and with the ideal artist to boot. (One thing that’s hard to explain about writing a long-running “closed” comic series is just how exhausting it is. Not many writers do it even once, even fewer do it more than once, and there’s a damn good reason for that...) I’ve been very lucky, in that I’ve worked with editors and publishers who’ve pretty much allowed me to do whatever I wanted, no matter how crazy or un-commercial that might be. There have been several books — like WASTELAND, THE COLDEST CITY, and now THE FUSE — that I’ve written purely for myself, convinced that nobody else will care about them. And I’ve been wrong, every time, which is nice. But there’s plenty more I still want to do, of course! I’m planning a webcomic, my own videogame, more books in the COLDEST CITY series, a transmedia YA project, a series of interweaving WWII adventure bandes dessinées albums, and god knows what else that I can’t even remember right now. There’s plenty of mileage in this old noggin yet. Thank you, Antony! We appreciate your time as well as these sneak peeks of both THE FUSE and UMBRAL. For more information on THE FUSE and UMBRAL, please visit www.imagecomics.com, and dont’t forget to visit Antony Johnston at www. antonyjohnston.com
The Fuse #1 (excerpt)
Writer: Antony Johnston Artist: Justin Greenwood Colorist: Shari Chankhamma Letterer: Ed Brissons
Umbral #1 (excerpt)
Writer: Antony Johnston Artist: Christopher Mitten Colorist: John Rauch Letterer: Thomas Mauer
Krantz “The Incubus”
Writer: Jorge Claudio Morhain Artist: Horacio Lalia Translation: Michael Sacal Letters: Scott O. Brown
Red Ice, part 1
Writer: Scott O. Brown Artist: Horacio Lalia Colors: Andrew Elder & Stu Chaifetz Letters: Scott O. Brown
TO BE CONTINUED...
Eagle’s Eye Review By: Paul Hanna Paul Hanna is a cartoonist who lives in Massachusetts. His interests include basketball, baseball, and finding a bigger role for comics in academic libraries. Follow him on Twitter at @paulhanna.
UMBRAL #1 Writer: Antony Johnston Artist: Christopher Mitten Colorist: John Rauch Letterer: Thomas Mauer Image Comics Cover Price: $2.99
sary every few pages just because I did not know what CHOAM stood for, or what a gom jabbar was; it took me out of the experience of reading. When creating a fantasy comic that involves a lot of world-building, one of the challenges seems to be avoiding getting bogged down in the details of backstory. For a story to transcend this, the content itself has to either be timeless on its own merits, or just very plot-heavy and dynamic in form. The new series Umbral is certainly the latter; time will tell if it is the former as well. There’s a lot of plot, here. A lot. We don’t really know what the Umbral are or what their ultimate goal is, exactly. They are huge, shadowy, amorphous monsters that kill humans and want to rule over them. The story moves quickly once they appear. The protagonist, a girl named Rascal, has a thing/MacGuffin/Object of Great Importance that the Umbral covet. That is mostly all the reader needs to know. While there are character moments, Umbral, for the reader, is largely about keeping abreast of the plot (so far). Johnston deftly escapes the trap of utilizing an aggressive amount of narration captions as a means to explicate the rules and background of this fantasy land, the kingdom of Fendin. There is no Star Wars screencrawl; no Morgan Freeman-esque narrator to give the lowdown; not even a town crier archetype used as a plot device for exposition. All we really get is a map. The story details are in the dialogue and action, and Johnston and Mitten have a knack for alluding to or divulging lots of information using a single panel and few words. There is no Dune glossary, here.
Before I learned to love Frank Herbert’s Dune, I tried (and failed) to read it numerous times, mainly because I hated flipping back to the glos-
The main cause of all the chaos in the story, the creatures known as the Umbral, are pretty mysterious in origin to the reader. Yet it appears Rascal has equally mysterious origins; she appears partway through the first issue; we do not immediately know much about her origins, other
than that she is part of the Thieves’ Guild. What that entails in the fantastical kingdom of Fendin is a little challenging to parse, at least off the bat. This makes the protagonist a little more difficult to identify with. However, as the story progresses, we discover a little more about her, as we do the Umbral. While this is an ambitious storytelling strategy, it is an approach that does not pay dividends right away. Johnston and Mitten manage to skillfully offset this with a lot of action and plot twists and turns, along with a strongly visualized, high-tempo story.
Timeless or not, Umbral already has the marks of fine, quality comics storytelling. - FURTHER INFORMATION including the book trailer, other images, and links to interviews can be found at http://theumbral.com/ - SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS: http://theumbral.tumblr. com/ + http://twitter.com/umbralcomic
THE FUSE #1 Writer: Antony Johnston Artist: Justin Greenwood Colorist: Shari Chankhamma Letterer: Ed Brisson
Umbral’s first issue is especially fun in that it starts to give the impression that the story will follow a young prince along a noble, avenging quest – a familiar trope, a by-the-numbers fantasy Image Comics tale. But it takes a sharp left turn by the issue’s Cover Price: $3.50 end, becoming a tale of sheer, skin-of-your-teeth survival, one that is well-sustained over the next couple issues. Mitten’s linework is honest in detail and has the fluidity of an artist with a keen sense for visual storytelling. Each character has a distinct appearance, which is no mean feat, especially when dealing with multiple characters who are old white males with shaggy, gray beards and long, gray hair. The backgrounds are almost like characters unto themselves, allowing the story to utilize a lot of long-distance shots of the characters in action. It is difficult not to admire the overall craft and creative process that makes Umbral. With each issue, it seems more and more inevitable that Johnston is simply going to acquiesce to doing a flashback of expository narration, yet he manages to evade this storytelling crutch each time. Is Dalone, the Old Guy who Knows Stuff, finally going to buckle and give Rascal (and the reader) a full-on monologue about the history of everything he knows about the Umbral? How long can Johnston and Mitten keep the story moving organically in this way? By the third issue, I started thinking, “Okay, issue three. It has to be in this one, right?” Wrong.
“Dirty Sci-Fi” is a phrase that’s been used to describe Antony Johnston and Justin Greenwood’s The Fuse, which is probably a reasonably close equivalent to “low fantasy” in the fantasy genre.
Difficult to accurately describe, “dirty sci-fi” seems to have elements of “soft” science fiction coupled with the general feeling of misery espoused by post-industrial cyberpunk. Look at the atmosphere or tone films like Alien, Children of Men, or even Total Recall (the 1990 one). There is a certain hopelessness to these movie settings, a real sense that they could carelessly swallow their inhabitants whole without skipping a beat. But The Fuse is not only science fiction – it is a detective story, a futuristic police procedural or detective show. In a way, it is the bizarro Miami Vice – nobody has a car, and most people are pale from lack of sunlight. Oh, and the police work in homicide, not vice. Dietrich, the main character, is a new resident of Midway City, part of a giant space station orbiting Earth. The newest member of the Midway City Police Department (MCPD), the story immediately throws him into an investigation of the mysterious death of a cabler, presumably one of Midway City’s transient population. With his partner, MCPD veteran Klem Ristoyvich, Dietrich begins uncovering the finer details that make the circumstances of the death unusual. The art in itself is quite strong, the storytelling fluid and the lines simple. But after reading the first issue, the art could benefit from a little dirtying up, perhaps embracing a Ridley Scott-like dirtiness and haziness. Midway City feels like a place that should be darker and dingier than its portrayal. The story is a successful marriage of the two genres it aspires to. Only one issue in, and The Fuse looks quite promising. I am hopeful for a cop/suspect chase scene, either on foot or using some commandeered mode of space station transportation. ]- FURTHER INFORMATION including the book trailer, other images, and links to interviews can be found at http://fusecomic.com/ ]- SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS: http://thefusecomic.tumblr.com/ + http://twitter.com/fusecomic
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