comics – Tessera Guild

John McGuire is at Galactic Quest (Lawrenceville, GA) for Free Comic Book Day May 3, 2025

This coming May 3, 2025 is Free Comic Book Day, and I will be exhibiting my wares with the Galactic Quest Comic Book Store located in Lawrenceville, Ga.

From the website:

“Get ready for an action-packed day at Lawrenceville’s FREE Comic Book Day, presented in partnership with Galactic Quest!

Join us on May 3, 2025, from 10 am to 5 pm, for a celebration of creativity and community. This year’s theme, “Together, We Create,” highlights the collaborative spirit of fandom and the magic of shared imagination. We welcome everyone—whether you’re a seasoned fan or just curious—to join the fun!

Wear your favorite costume or cosplay and embark on the #DTLcomicquest for FREE comic books scattered throughout The DTL. Whether you’re a cosplayer, sci-fi enthusiast, or fantasy lover, this event offers something for everyone to enjoy!

Immerse yourself in the world of comics with expert-led panels and workshops covering comic creation, game development, cosplay, and storytelling. Explore a variety of themed vendors offering unique, character-inspired treasures to enhance your collection.

This isn’t just about free comics—it’s a celebration of creativity, fandom, and connection. Everyone is welcome, and we can’t wait to see the community come together for this unforgettable day.

Mark your calendars and come be part of this incredible adventure. Together, We Create! For a sneak peek at which books will be available visit the Free Comic Book Day catalog.”

So come out for a day full of fun and comics!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

No comments

Negativity

By John McGuire comics, life, television, Uncategorized

When is it OK to just stop?

Stop what, you may ask? Anything. Everything. That group of things which are just pissing you off at this point.

In fandom there is this idea that (and I think I subscribe to it as well) where the longtime love affair you’ve had with comics (or just a singular title) has to come to an end.

Of course, this butts right up against something else. We’re also collectors. To have a title run continous for 20, 30, 40, or 50 years and then be so annoyed by a direction you contemplate dropping it… that is not just an innocent decision but one which must be agonized over.

I’ve written about my love for Spider-Man and how it was basically one of the first comics I ever bought back in 1986. From there until around 1998, I collected the book until all the Clone mess finally left me feeling a certain way. In combination with being a poor college student – the easy solution presented itself in dropping the books.

But it was never supposed to be a forever thing. Creative teams come and go. Editors and Editors-in-Chief come and go. At some point, I would have to come back, and in the end it was J. Michael Straczynski who brought me back. And then One More Day made me leave again.

That was my last straw. At the time, Spidey had been married almost 1/2 of his existence and now they were doing away with it.

And so it has been nearly 20 years where I haven’t bought a Spider-Man title.

Weirdly, now is the time I’m seeing a lot of Editors talking to fans online about if you don’t like something, then drop it. Which… I gotta say, is an odd way to sell more copies of your comic. I’m sure they get tired of the same questions over and over again. Maybe that’s why they say it.

Either way, I would think you’d want to say something a bit more encouraging. Hey, if you don’t like this, you’re in luck because we have a married Peter Parker in the pages of Ultimate Spider-man!

***

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The whole reason I’ve even been thinking about this is due to a conversation with a friend. He is a longtime comic reader (going back to the 70). And very much a Marvel guy than anything else (back in the day they would have called him a Marvel Zombie). That said, he would listen to my recommendations from time to time (Johns’ Flash run being a big one I can recall).

However, sometime after Endgame, I’m not 100% sure what exactly was his breaking point. Maybe it was being unable to watch the Black Widow movie because he didn’t have Disney+. Maybe it was slightly after that, but regardless he declared he was done with the Marvel movies/shows/etc.

And that’s his perogative. I’m certainly not the MCU “Must Watch” police by any means, but what I found interesting is more that he allows himself to be… convinced isn’t the right word, but we’ll go with it… convinced he’s right by only reading the reviews of the movies and shows he’s purposefully not watching.

It’s another oddity to KNOW something sucks that you never ever watched in the first place. And at the same time, we all do this based on trailers or reviews in general. Making decisions on something you’re not planning on seeing.

However, what I think bothers me about his exile from the MCU is that when I tell him a certain show or movie was actually decent or (gasp!) good, he just dismisses me. It’s like he’s more willing to believe total strangers than someone he’s been friends with for 25 years.

And even that, I could probably handle, but then he wants to try and point out flaws in things he never saw to someone who did see them. That not only seems crazy, but I’m not sure that’s how it should work.

***

Which brings me back to Negativity. And Fandom.

I think if we are only ever focused on the things which piss us off… if we only rant and rave about things that suck… then all we are doing is feeding more of that into the world. Instead, maybe we should take those editors’ advice and just let go. Drop the book. Don’t watch the movie or show. Don’t read reviews.

Just disconnect.

At least for a little while. Because like I said above, the creative teams and editors won’t be there forever. If you close yourself off to everything, then you may miss out on something great.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

No comments

March 15-16 – The Atlanta Science Fiction and Fantasy Expo

By John McGuire comics, conventions

This weekend, I will be manning a table at the annual Atlanta Science Fiction and Fantasy Expo (back after a few year hiatus).

The coolest thing s that this event is FREE to attend. Located inside Northlake Mall, you can wander in, walk though the tables, and check out the various wares people are selling. Tons of creative types from artists to writers to cosplayers to comic creators and a bunch of other things I’m certainly forgetting about.

Check out the website to see all who is going to be there. I’ll be set up with my various comics and books… as well as a sneak peek of In Our Dreams Awake #3.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

No comments

Repost – To Become A Super-Villain

By John McGuire comics, humor

Written in the midst of Covid’s shelter in place, I speculate on how my wife might descend into super villainy.

***

I think the shelter in place has pushed my wife over the edge. Much like many people, it is just the two of us in the house (well, plus the two cats). And while we’re both fortunate to be able to do our jobs from home, one of the aspects of that is the close proximity to each other without any real break. We’re in each other’s heads, either guessing or just preemptively saying things the other is currently thinking.

So maybe it is my fault that she’s gone over the edge.

I immediately commented that this is the way super-villains are created. When they can no longer deal with what’s going on around them, the mind seems to go little by little until only plans for grand schemes might remain. I fear I might not be able to stop her when she turns her attention to world domination. But there may be a solution to all of this, I just need to avoid completing her journey to the Dark Side, as it were.

This moment is merely the catalyst, something temporary, fleeting, but it could be the beginning. I consulted my reference tomes, the ones I’ve read for 30 years, in order to see what I must avoid doing to set her off any further.

1 – Avoid large vats of chemicals.

This one is a sure-fire way to push the person into full-on villainy. Now, the Joker is probably the biggest example of showing that falling into the chemical bath messes up your whole world, but I’d argue he was well on his way down this path before the fall. However, his one-time girl, Harley Quiin is another story. She might have come back from his manipulations, but the dive truly tipped the scales too far.

2 – Her Name Doesn’t Translate to Something that could also be a codename.

The Rainbow Raider’s real name was Roy G. Bivolo (he shoots rainbow powers).

The Riddler’s real name is Edward Nigma (E.Nigma).

The DC villain who builds futuristic devices was named Thomas Oscar Morrow (T.O. Morrow).

Hmm… Courtney McGuire doesn’t immediately bring anything to mind, so maybe that’s safe enough.

3 – Don’t allow her to have a fascination for any particular animal.

There is a huge list of animal-based villains: Killer Moth, Vulture, Beetle, Swarm, Catwoman, Doctor Octopus, Cheetah…

Now she does love animals and we do have a pair of cats. She used to do volunteer work for an animal shelter. One night, while working late on a new database-

Wait! Gotta stop myself before I write her origin story into being. OK. I’ll have to keep an eye on that possibility.

4 – Don’t let her go off on a journey of self-discovery only to find out that she is really harnessing some power from a League of Assassins or monks who provide her with battle armor.

Doctor Doom

Ra’s al Ghul

Since we are sheltered-in-place, I suspect any random travels to very remote portions of the world are off the table.

5 – Don’t let her go around changing the past.

Abra Kadabra, Kang the Conqueror, The Reverse Flash… these people all either come from a future to our time in order to cause havoc or play with us because they know what is going to happen, so they can ensure they reap the most benefit out of that.

Now, while I don’t specifically know that she’s not a time traveller from the future, I don’t specifically know she’s not either. Of all the scenarios, this one seems the most plausible. I’ll have to use some of my downtime to thoroughly search the house for her time platform or cosmic tradmill.

***

Overall, she’s not checking any of the boxes… yet… so maybe this is just an isolated incident. But I’ll continue to keep the situation monitored. As long as she doesn’t realize she’s being watched, she may trip up yet.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

No comments

Behind the Comic – 3 Brothers Comic Script

By John McGuire comics, writing

The company I do a lot of my comic related work with is Terminus Media. Early on, before the money and the fame (ok, maybe I’m still waiting on that), we met in the back of a comic book shop in Stone Mountain, Georgia. These were open meetings where any number of creatives were welcomed to listen in, discuss their own ideas, and even contribute to the anthology comics if they had the desire.

Each time new writers or artists came in they had the same questions I had when I walked through those doors. When I sat down to write my very first comic script I had no idea of how to go about setting it up. It’s a weird thing, this product we read on a weekly basis, but how in the world does it get from the writer’s brain to the artist’s fingertips? How does the script work?

In the comics industry there are basically two main forms that comics take: Full Script and Marvel Method.

Full Script – This is the one most people might be familiar with. In a full script the writer typically is going to break the comic down into pages and then those pages are broken down further into panels. Then within each panel would be a description of what you want the artist to draw (perhaps painting a general idea of the scene all the way to “camera placement”). Finally there will be any dialogue or narration needed. And so on and so forth until all 20-24 pages have been scripted out.

Yet, even among the Full Scripts there are those who give a small amount of description and those who give tons. Do yourself a favor and try to find a copy of an Alan Moore script… that man writes tons of description and analysis for each panel (some might say too much, but he is one of the greatest comic writers of all time so what do they know, huh?).

Marvel Method was something that developed from Stan Lee’s early days at Marvel Comics. Since he was the main writer (only writer) he didn’t have enough time for a full script. And he happened to work with the likes of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. They were artists who he knew could “do the job” as it were. So he provided them with plots of the comic, but left it up to them to actually layout the pages, determine what would go in each panel, and so on. Then, once it was done, Stan would go back in and add the narration and dialogue.

I had no sample script to work from, so my first one was probably closer related to the Marvel Method than a full script. But that was due to me not knowing than any conscious decision about how this scripting thing was supposed to work.

Over the years I’ve mostly done the Full Script version for my comics. And the reason for that is because many times I don’t know who is going to be the artist on the book. And without that key knowledge, I’d rather give them my vision for the comic and then go from there, than leave them with just a plot.

But, as I work with an artist, and grow more comfortable with them, I try to leave more things in their hands. Fight scenes are probably the biggest one. I feel like no matter how I think the fight could go, the artist is going to have a better feel for the flow of the characters. So why not let them stretch their skills a little bit. I give them general ideas of what needs to happen: “Bill and Jack rumble on this page. Maybe Bill gains the upper hand early in the fight, only to have Jack turn the tables.” OR “Jack and Bill are going to fight on this page. The only key thing is that by the end of the page Jack needs to hold Bill out a window… otherwise go nuts!”

All that is a long-winded way of saying, lots of those people coming into those early Terminus meetings didn’t have a clue about scripting or, if they were artists, didn’t know how to draw from a script. They just didn’t have access to one. So a few years ago, at the behest of some, I wrote out a short called 3 Brothers for the express idea of helping newer artists have something to draw.

I divided the story into 3 parts:

Part 1 was a love story (Romance). Two people in love with each other, some talking head shots, playful interaction.

Part 2 was about hate (Rage). Two brothers, in love with the same woman, have a major fist-fight that doesn’t go well for one of them.

Part 3 was about loss (Death). Two people, dealing with the loss of a loved one, standing in the rain (so they have a little bit of the environment to deal with).

Anyway, I think a couple of people tried it out here or there. I think it was a helpful tool, and as such I’ve placed a copy here.

Perhaps an aspiring artist will get inspired by this, or want to draw something that isn’t just superheroes for their portfolio.

Hope it helps.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

No comments

The Unread Pile – Fantastic Four

By John McGuire comics, Reviews

Technically, Fantastic Four was the second comic book I ever bought. At one of those Book Fairs Elementary Schools put on every year, I found a random issue and without knowing anything about comics or the characters or literally anything at all… I bought it.

Still not sure how that particular cover made it into the south Georgia schools.

But it would be a couple of years before I started collecting. At which point Fantastic Four became a mainstay in the monthly trips to the comic book store. Of the various Marvel series, I have the third most of Fantastic Four (Spidey and the Avengers being the Top 2). I’ve stuck with them through thick and thin. But eventually I did stop. And then Marvel stopped putting out the comic for far too long. And while I liked Dan Slott’s run, it wasn’t until Ryan North took over the reigns a couple of years ago that the book felt like the book it was always supposed to be.

***

Fantastic Four (2022 Series) – Issues 1-26

Writer – Ryan North

Pencillers – Iban Coello/Ivan Fiorelli/Leandro Fernandez/Francesco Mortarino/Carlos Gomez

***

This run of the Fantastic Four does something that many of the previous runs almost never seem to do: it allows the characters room to breathe. What I mean by that is North immediately breaks up our little group as in a battle which had happened only weeks before forces Reed to shunt the Baxter Building and everyone near it (including their kids) one year into the future. So in the aftermath of this, Ben and Alicia are off on their own trip, Reed and Sue on another, and finally Johnny is doing… well, he’s bumbling and stumbling in ways only he can (and has grown a mustache!).

There is a bit of genius in this move as it sets the reader up to ease into who the characters currently are. Instead of needing to worry about 4 or 5 or a dozen characters, North spends his time with one or two at a time. Weirdly, it feels more like a move in the middle of a run, but works as a perfect jumping on point.

Which brings us to the second big change for this series: most of the comics are either done in one or two issues.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love a 12 issues storyline with maximum stakes and world bending moments, but doing these smaller stories makes the comic feel like a weekly tv show (it has a very heavy X-Files feel without the heavy horror side). Each of our heroes have to lean less on their superheroing and more on their ability to figure out the current mystery. Plus he has really pushed some of their powers in ways I’m not sure anyone has done before. And Reed’s body manipulation has been, at times, a little creepy. It truly makes it something that you could pretty much hop on with any random issue and get a great idea of what’s going on without any trouble.

Throughout the 26 issues so far, they’ve:

Gone to a Dinosaur world and fought Dinosaur Doom

Dealt with a newborn AI

Fought a town where everyone there were Doombots in disguise

Helped a town stuck in a time loop

Released a bunch of trapped ghosts and then dealt with it using a cursed skull

***

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the art every issue. While Coello and Fiorelli have done the bulk, every artist draws some of the best versions of the characters I’ve ever seen. FF is supposed to be clean line and fun crazy science monsters, and they deliver each and every month.

Not to mention Alex Ross’s covers are… well, it’s Alex Ross. Not sure what I could possibly say that hasn’t already been said.

***

If I had one complaint, and it is a fairly small one, is that I miss the lack of a big plotline running in the background. Yes, the kids being gone was sorta that, but since they were off screen for that whole time, it just felt like something we’d eventually get to (though the Doom spotlight issue was a direct result of this problem – and was excellent). I figure with this Emperor Doom storyline this will no longer be a complaint. I’m certainly looking forward to where Ryan North takes the Fantastic Four next.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Year Eleven

By John McGuire comics, life, writing

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

It feels really crazy to think that this last year was the 11th year of doing this weekly Tessera Guild blog. I’m not sure that I would have thought I’d still be doing it when we started this website, but it has been a great help to ensure I do a little bit of writing (random as it may be most of the time) every week. It also makes an interesting way to look back at the previous year and see what blog posts I’ve written still ring true to me… or stick out in some way. That way I can highlight them (otherwise they get lost in the internet ether).

The Worst Game I Ever Played

It’s not all rainbows and unicorns when you go to a gaming convention. Especially since Egg and Lee and I tend to try games and gaming systems we normally don’t get to play. Such a bold move can sometimes lead to really cool discoveries. Other times it can lead to sessions which are probably best left forgotten.

And then, finally, there are those games which still haunt me to this very day. Will I ever escape?

Image by Gianluca from Pixabay

The One Where I Don’t Get Seasick On My Very First Cruise

My whole life I got motion sick when riding in cars if I wasn’t in the front seat. I’m not sure if my parents really knew that because I tried not to make a big deal about it. But it made family trips a bit of a literal headache. Flashforward to me preparing to go on a cruise for the very first time…

The Reason Why – In Our Dreams Awake

I started up a series of blogs where I talk about… well, The Reason Why I wrote the story/book/comic. It’s been an interesting exercise to try and really drill down to the origins of some ideas. Given that we had a successful Kickstarter for In Our Dreams Awake #2, this seemed like a good time to get into it.

The Song of Your Life III

I look through my music collection and nearly each album… hell, each song has a little personal moment for me. A signpost on the journey of who I was to who I am now. Through “The Song of Your Life” posts, I try and focus on some of those songs and stories.

Rebooting the Marvel Universe

Given the success of Marvel Comic’s new Ultimate line and the DC Absolute line, this blog feels all the more timely, even if it started as an answer to a question asked on Twitter. How do you restart the Marvel Comic Universe from complete scratch?

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

The Perfect Idea

By John McGuire comics, writing

Image by myshoun from Pixabay

I’m written in the past about how I’m a pack rat both in the physical world and in the digital one. The greatest thing about having a digital repository of all my ideas is that I can normally look to them for inspiration on the current things I’m working on. Or a nugget of an idea can linger out there for long enough that it actually becomes something worth pursuing in earnest.

This brings me to my comic projects. Over the years I feel like I’ve collected more ideas for things that never became anything. So why don’t these projects ever become real things?

Where is this story going?

Sometimes that happens because the initial idea of the comic is cool, but I don’t know where to go with it. I might have the barest of bones of an idea. Maybe I know the elevator pitch but then have absolutely no idea how to craft a story around it.

Project Partners

It is something you’re going to do with a partner, and they have other priorities. This one has happened more times than I can count. Whether it is another writer or it is an artist who I’m trying to find a project for… it just never seems to work out. The timing is off.

Divided Attention

The next shiny object gets me. I once heard a writer say that the most exciting idea is always the one you aren’t currently working on. As a writer, I have a ton of possible stories to write about. Which means when I’m in the process of crafting a script, suddenly I have three other ideas who all want their time to shine.

The story is too big.

One of the things that is a ton of fun is world building. Outlining the epic storyline that is going to leave potential readers going “wow”. You can’t do it justice with only 4… 6… 10 issues… no, we need a 60 issue opus where we really explore the world and the characters and and and…

Money

For many years, especially before Kickstarter and Crowdfunding became an avenue to help mitigate the costs, money was the singular reason why I didn’t do a comic book. When you have to pay the artists and the colorists and the letterers and someone to format things… that digital page you spent hours writing and editing actually shows up as a tangible cost to it.

Paralyzation

Whatever project I choose is going to be the next year, two years, three years of my life potentially. If I get to the point where I’m doing more than 2 Kickstarters a year, then that can shrink the timeline, but otherwise it is going to be “the thing” for me for a little while. How in the world do you chose which idea to go with?

***

We’re in the process of getting In Our Dreams Awake #2 off to the printers and finalizing both Issue #3 and #4. My hope is to have an Issue #3 Kickstarter in the Fall and then Issue #4 in the Spring of 2025, which means I need to get the next thing off the ground… like now. Yesterday would be even better.

At this point I have 3 potential (well, actually 4) projects to consider bringing to life.

Project 1 – A continuation of The Gilded Age. Effectively issues 5-8 would be a complete story featuring some of the characters from the first set of issues. In addition, I have two other ideas for Gilded Age comics in my head. One would be a one-shot, and the other would be an oversized issue (if I could ever crack the story, I think it could be amazing). The positives for this one are big as it was the very first comic I Kickstarted, which means I have some amount of backers who would be interested. The bad is it has been like 6 years since the trade was done, so it isn’t the most fresh idea.

Project 2 – A post-apocalyptic edge of space story that I developed with a co-writer. This is one that could make a ton of sense to do because I could share the writing duties. Plus the co-writer has a decent prescence on social media, so that could be a huge help in making sure we hit any funding goals we set. The negative is that the cost would likely be 100% on me (which isn’t a deal breaker at all).

Project 3 – I have an idea for something more all-ages that I’ve been mulling over for years. However, until recently I’ve not had enough of a story to actually get anything down in the computer other than the big idea. But now I’ve been developing the outlines and script for issue 1. The downside here is that it is a brand new project, so the only thing I have to trade on is my name and my past work.

Project 4 – One of those lingering ideas popped into my head about a month ago, and I mentioned it to Egg Embry. And before I knew it, I had an outline for 4 issues and helf a script for the last issue in the series. This is definitely more long term as to whether it happens, but it wouldn’t have been on my radar at all 2 months ago.

***

So I’m sitting here, at a crossroads, trying to figure out the next move. Which story needs to be told next? I’m still not quite sure, but you’ll be the first to know when I figure it out.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

The Unread Pile – Moon Knight

By John McGuire comics, Reviews

I first encountered Moon Knight during the very earliest days of my comic collecting. At the time one of my favorite comics was West Coast Avengers, and while I read both the regular Avengers title, something about the West Coast lineup spoke to me. About 3 or 4 issues into my collecting, Moon Knight made an appearance in the comic and shortly thereafter joined the team.

Weirdly, I didn’t immediately think of him as a Batman rip-off, even if in some instances that’s what writers lean into. Instead I saw someone who wasn’t entirely in control of his own senses. Someone who spoke directly to his patron god: Khonshu. And someone who didn’t shy away from the difficult choices.

Ever since, I’ve collected pretty much any Moon Knight series and they run the gambit of good, bad, and everything between. At least that was the case before I reached the latest run.

***

Moon Knight (Volume 9 – 2021)

Writer – Jed Mackay

Penciller – Alessandro Cappuccio

***

This run of Moon Knight feels like it was written by someone who has read every issue of comics which Moon Knight appeared. It feels like the creators even read those same West Coast Avengers issues which left such a strong mark on my own interests and comic collection. It honors those things which have come before, but then moves things forward in a very organic way.

Moon Knight is a Priest of Khonshu, which means the night is his to patrol. Those who move about at night are under his protection. So what happens when the things which go bump in the night (Vampires) begin to make a move on New York City? What happens to those people who are merely innocents, that now have found themselves transformed?

Marc Spector is not the first man to take them mantle of Moon Knight. When one has died their last death, another one is chosen by the Moon God. And yet, while Marc is the Fist of Khonshu, a god may have two Fists. If this run only introduced Hunter’s Moon into the lore, that would have made this run worth it. Someone who understands the connection with the gods, who doesn’t understand all of Marc’s tactics, but calls him brother all the same.

He has multiple personalities… and the comic embraces this idea. For much of the 90s comic Marc Spector: Moon Knight, the idea that there were other voices in his head was downplayed. Not here… and it is an asset for the character and his story.

Tigra shows up. And is given a large role in the overall storyline. It always bothered me that after they went their seperate ways in West Coast Avengers, I don’t know that they really crossed paths again (at least in any substantial way). And I have to think it is that whole – he’s supposed to be grim and gritty and Tigra is a Superhero. Here, in this run, those things can coexist.

He fights a haunted house… and then uses it as his base of operations. I’ve read somewhere that when a new writer comes onto a title, they should always leave the toy chest fuller than when they arrived. This is it in spades.

Zodiac – Moon Knight has had plenty of villains over the years. The Midnight Man. Black Specter. Randall Spector. Werewolf by Night. Bushman. And aside from the Bushman, I don’t think he’s really had that archnemesis until now. Zodiac is everything Moon Knight needs when it comes to a villain. Someone who can challenge him to become even more brutal. Someone who is thinking steps ahead of him. I never read the miniseries which first introduced Zodiac, but this comic feels like a perfect fit.

8 Ball – Nothing like taking a Z-List character and turning him into a sympathetic character. Who would have ever thought?

The echoes of the past… older villains, characters who might not have been used in decades pop up throughout the run. It never feels forced. More than anything, it makes this little corner of the Marvel Universe feel that much more alive. The connections between everything only help this process.

From the very first issue until the last in this run, it hit every beat, hit every high mark, and immediately took its place at the top of my Moon Knight reads.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

The Unread Pile – A Cautionary Tale

By John McGuire comics

Like this, but with comics

It’s gotten a bit out of hand, and I’m not sure how it made it this way.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I have a decent idea of how it started. I’m not talking about where the comic collection started. I know that very well (and have written about it within my Comic Book Challenge series long ago). I was missing a couple of issues here or there of one of my current pull box reads. Maybe it was an issue of The Flash, maybe it was Avengers, or it could have been Knights of the Dinner Table. But there was a random hole in the comic collection. Which meant I couldn’t push on and skip that issue, no, I had to track it down. But that’s the thing, in this evironment of today’s comics, finding a comic store which not only has some back issues, but very recent back issues (I’m talking about the ones that may have just moved from the front facing shelves to the back issue bins) are much more of a problem.

Regardless, until I found that Flash issue, I couldn’t read the pile I had. Or that Avengers pile. Or that other random pile.

The bulk of my comic books live upstairs in a pair of closets. At last count I had over 11,000 comic books within around 27 long boxes and an assortment of short boxes. The problem with that area is that once they make it to the closet, they kind of disappear. It just becomes very difficult given the space to really do much with them. I have a basic system where I’ve put notes on the boxes listing out what is in each, but sometimes those get loose as well.

Organized… or something

No matter what, if I put any of those series I haven’t read through yet, I will never see them again. They will be lost to the closet!

Instead, I would keep the latest stuff downstairs beside the bed. That way they would easily be there to read through, and then as I made my way through them, they could go upstairs. Except…

Soon enough, it became some kind of monster. I had 5 short boxes that needed to be organized. Needed to be looked through. Because, I had finds from last year’s Dragon Con. I had finds from this year’s Heroes Con. Heck, I had some random issues from Free Comic Book Day which needed to be accounted for.

This last weekend, I went through those 5 short boxes (and quickly realized it needed to be 6 short boxes with all the loose extra stuff sitting on my desk). There were three main piles to start (Marvel, DC, Indy) and then I began to further sort them. But there is something else which happens when you start organizing your comic books. No matter how much you want to deny that it’s going to happen, you end up opening up one of the comics and giving it a read. And then, since the next issue is literally right there… might as well read it. And then I looked up and realized I’d caught up on one of the series in its entirely. I was now back to eagerly awaiting the next issue to drop!

All this made me really think about the original plan, and the fact that I love reading comics. Therefore, I’m going to go through the (6) short boxes and work my way through the last few years of comics that somehow ended up in The Unread Pile. And then I’ll likely write about those series so that everyone else can relive things they read 2, 3, or even 50 years ago (some of the recent purchases go back to the late 70s).

It’ll be a win/win. Content for the blog. Actually reading comics I’ve bought. And my wife will be happier without the short boxes downstairs in the quantities they currently are.

OK, win/win/win.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Two Days Left for the In Our Dreams Awake Issue 2 Kickstarter!

By John McGuire comics, Crowdfunding

Two Days Left for the In Our Dreams Awake Issue 2 Kickstarter!

Click here to back the comic!

***

Throughout this Kickstarter campaign I’ve written a few posts on In Our Dreams Awake, so this post will put them into a more comprehensive guide so that you don’t have to go stumbling through the Tessera archives in order to locate things.

Repost – Behind the Comic: In Our Dreams Awake

This post actually comes from the first issue’s Kickstarter, but it tells the origin story for the comic. Going back nearly two decades, the comic went from something we hoped would be our way into the comic industry to something collecting dust on a computer hard drive to finally a series.

Behind the Comic: – Anatomy of a Panel – In Our Dreams Awake #2

An idea which actually came from Egg Embry when I was struggling on how to post about The Gilded Age. This post takes you through the development of a panel from issue 2 of In Our Dreams Awake. Going from the concept, to an excerpt from the script, to the art itself (and the panel itself is the image from the banner at the top of this post).

Odd Synchronicity?

A little more of a stream of conciousness style post that focuses on little moments which lead to the comic coming to life.

What If?

A post about the core concept of In Our Dreams Awake… trying to find happiness in the life you have rather than always yearning for the path not taken.

The Reason Why – In Our Dreams Awake

Finally, the true reason I dragged In Our Dreams Awake back from the land of the dead.

Kickstart the Comic – In Our Dreams Awake #2: A Cyberpunk/Fantasy Adventure

I started doing a highlight post on Kickstarter some years ago on the blog, so it was only fitting to do one for my own comic (totally unbiased too… honest).

***

A quick reminder that In Our Dreams Awake #2 is available on Kickstarter for only two more days. Go and check it out here.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

John McGuire is at Galactic Quest (Buford, GA) for Free Comic Book Day May 4, 2024

By John McGuire comics, events

The Kickstarter for In Our Dreams Awake #2 is still going! Find it here!

***

This coming weekend (Saturday), I will be at the Galactic Quest Comic Store in Buford, Georgia from 10 till 6(ish). It’s Free Comic Book Day, so there are all sorts of goodies whether you are a young fan or old fan (or anywhere in between). Check out the website for information on exactly what comics are being offered this year. Plus, there are bound to be superheroes showing up here and there in all their costumed glory.

So come and stop by and we can chat. I will have copies of In Our Dreams Awake, the Gilded Age trade and The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, and The Echo Effect novels.

Hope to see you there.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

The Reason Why – In Our Dreams Awake

By John McGuire comics, life

Over the last couple of years, I decided to start writing about the published things I’ve managed to do – comic, short story, and novels. But I wanted to talk about the reason why they exist. Sometimes that’s talking about how the comic came about. Sometimes that’s a breakdown of where I was when it was conceived. Sometimes it’s a look inside my brain.

It occurs to me I never wrote a post for In Our Dreams Awake. Even if I have talked about the origins and it’s history.

The Reason Why In Our Dreams Awake exists is because I feel like I let people down when it didn’t exist.

***

Back when we were first emailing about this story, Egg was doing his best to try and make it in the world of comic books. He traveled around the southeast to various conventions setting up at an artist table with his then girlfriend. He would craft stories, make connections, and was putting in the legwork.

In the meantime, I was traveling down a different path with the folks over at Terminus Media, trying to get the anthologies finished. Trying to figure out how to create a comic book in the first place. And then later trying to figure out how to do more than the odd 8-10 page short.

Both of us were hoping for that little kick from a project or a connection or something which maybe would make it so this crazy idea of making comics might not be as crazy as you think.

In Our Dreams Awake should have been that thing. It should have been the catalyst for something bigger and better.

***

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

There’s this concept called Sunk Cost. Basically it means that a cost has already occurred and cannot be recovered. To me it means that you can’t let your future be determined by mistakes you’ve made in the past. You cannot remain beholden to something because it MIGHT work out for you. Instead, you need to forge ahead almost as if that original mistake didn’t happen.

When the original artist on Egg’s Cyberpunk story fell off the face of the earth, I should have scrounged up some funds and pushed the project ahead with a new artist.

But I didn’t do that.

I convinced myself that we had come too far to go backwards and start 24 pages completely over. I held onto some misguided hope that the time and effort invested in those pages were worth holding the whole project up.

The pages sat there on a computer for over a decade. All that hard work lain fallow.

Even when I finally circled back to the project and decided it NEEDED to get finished and put out into the world, I still couldn’t let go of that Sunk Cost. I still waited to hear back from the missing artist, engaging with him to try and see if we could salvage those pages. And when he ghosted me again, I waited… holding out hope for… what?

***

In Our Dreams Awake is a story about a man who isn’t sure which life he deserves. It’s the story about a man who is constantly wanting something more, something different than his current life can provide him.

But at it’s core it is about DREAMING BIG.

Egg and I wanted to make a comic book. We wanted to have readers and be able to tell this weird story. We wanted to be able to sell a few copies here and there, maybe break even on things when it was all said and done.

DREAMING BIG.

***

So maybe the biggest thing is the things I’ve learned along the way. Every mistake, every misstep got me a little closer to having printed copies of issue 1 in people’s hands. The mistakes that occurred between issue 1’s Kickstarter and issue 2’s current Kickstarter. And probably the mistakes that are likely to happen in the future.

Because doing this isn’t easy. The imposter syndrome is constantly hanging around in the back of my mind. Telling me that all the hard work isn’t worth it. You’ve invested so much, why keep going? It would be simplier if you just called it quits.

Maybe you shouldn’t DREAM SO BIG.

***

But that’s The Reason Why, isn’t it? If I don’t push this through, then the little voice of doubt will have been right. And I owe it to everyone who worked on this comic, whether it was 15+ years ago or it was earlier this year, to find a way to get it out into the world. Because if you can’t DREAM BIG about something so wonderful as comic books, then what can you DREAM BIG about?

***

A quick reminder that In Our Dreams Awake #2 is available on Kickstarter. Go and check it out here.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

What If?

By John McGuire comics, Crowdfunding, life, writing

The Kickstarter for In Our Dreams Awake #2 is still going! Find it here!

***

I’ve talked before about how the process of In Our Dreams Awake came about all those years ago. But just like every idea, it’s meaning and purpose have changed over the years. The way the project started, and what it has become are ever changing in ways I don’t know that I completely understand.

But it all stems from this central idea I have about the What If Game.

What is the What If Game? It’s the thing that every (or nearly every) human on the planet plays at various points in their lives. It is the time we take to daydream about decisions we’ve made in the past and how they’ve affected our current state of being.

It can be very big decisions:

What college will I go to (or do I even go to college)?

Should I ask this person out?

Should I maintain this friendship?

Should I take this job or another job?

And sometimes it can be very small decisions which could add up to something bigger.

Should I go talk to the professor about my grades?

Should I spend more time working on this project?

***

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

The thing is, this is a good exercise for a person to go through. We should constantly evaluate what we have done, and look into not only the results of those decisions, but anything which might have led us to the moment. In the same way you might analyze your victories and defeats to see what you can do better the next time… the very same thing for the various life decisions we must all make.

However, it is one thing to use this in a way to better yourself. To propel you forward in your life. Like everything, it can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you use the self-reflection.

I have a friend who for many years focused a bit too much on the What If Game. They were so busy looking backwards at the things they didn’t have that they didn’t see all the gifts and opportunities right in front of them. Fundamentally their world view became a bit skewed because the path not taken was the path they thought they should be down.

***

In many ways, In Our Dreams Awake, is that idea taken to the next level. It is about a burning for something extra in our lives. Jason Byron lives his two very different lives, but he isn’t happy in either one. In the Fantasy world, he is willing to risk everything he has for an artifact of an outlawed era. And for what purpose? Because he wants to have a life different than the one he currently enjoys. In the Future world, he loves his life so much that he is trying to doublecross everyone and escape off world.

Because he is simply not happy with where he is.

He looks to the past or he looks to the future, but neither sate his appetite for much of anything. For Jason, both of these paths may lead to destruction.

***

In Our Dreams Awake is a reminder, of sorts, to myself that I should take time to be in the present. To experience things as they are and not constanly look back or forward. Time already flies by. If I’m not enjoying the present… what’s the point of any of it?

***

A quick reminder to go and check out the comic book, In Our Dreams Awake #2 on Kickstarter!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Kickstart the Comic – I Took A Hammer to Hell #3

By John McGuire comics, Crowdfunding, Reviews

Just a friendly reminder that I have a Kickstarter going right now for In Our Dreams Awake #2. Back it now!

***

Sometimes there is a plotline/story idea that catches me just right. I’ll be minding my own business (definitely not planning on buying more comic books), and then they jump me out of nowhere. I And then I’m left only trying to figure out how quickly I can get the issue in my hands (or virtual hands as the case may be).

You had me at Deal with the Devil story.

***

Cover by Mulele Jarvis

I TOOK A HAMMER TO HELL #3 (#1 & #2 Available too)

Writer – Matt Garvey

Artist – Mulele Jarvis

Colorist – Fabi Marques

Alternate Cover – J Francis Totti

The Kickstarter campaign ends on Friday, May 3, 2024

***

The Pitch:

With nothing more than a MASSIVE hammer duck taped to his hand, Jake is going to kill the devil!

The Story:

Jake made deal with the devil for his eternal soul (original I know, but wait till you read it, this is VERY different) but instead of waiting till his time is up or trying to wiggle out of the agreement, he goes to Hell WILLINGLY!

Why on Earth would someone do this?!… Well, he has only one goal in mind.

With nothing more than a MASSIVE hammer duck taped to his hand, Jake is going to kill the devil!

This comic has action, it has gore…but it also has a story that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

So, F#@K REDEMPTION…EMBRACE VENGENCE!

You won’t be disappointed!

John’s Thoughts:

So many Deal with the Devil stories are about the person trying to find a loophole to the predicament they have put themselves in. You see, it is very simple: you do the crime and then your soul does the time. And don’t get me wrong, I love those types of stories. Heck, I have a book sitting on my shelf that pretty much focuses on just that.

I Took A Hammer To Hell makes an immediate detour, though. It takes that core premise and says “what if the guy made his choice and was willing to go to Hell when the time came”. And then tried to go kill the Devil.

At it’s core, that is an interesting idea. If you had 40 years to plan your assault on Hell, what would you do? Would you train like Neo in the Matrix? Downloading every bit of fighting skills you could. Would you study with all the religious figures you could find, hoping to find some weakness for the Devil?

Or maybe you’d just strap a hammer to your hand and say f$%# it.

A sampling of the Ultimate Digital Collection

The Rewards:

Matt Garvey does his best to keep his Reward costs low, so you can pick up the lastest digital issue for £2 ($3) or even a signed copy of issue 3 for £2 ($6). If you are just hearing about the comic and want to play catch up the digital will run £5 ($7) and phyrical versions of 1-3 are £12 ($16).

The best bang for your buck though is his Ultimate Digital Package (25 comics) which will get you caught up on I Took A Hammer To Hell and then continue to feed comics directly in your brain from many of Matt Garvey’s history for only £10 ($13).

(I actually did that level on his last Kickstarter: Gangsters Versus Nazis and am working my way through all the comic goodness.)

The Verdict:

I’ve already supported the two previous Kickstarters for Issue 1 and Issue 2, so I was ready to go when Issue 3’s campaign went live. If you can handle a story about Vengeance against the Devil (and who wouldn’t want to see that), you should back this comic so that they make 50 more issues!

Make sure you check out I Took A Hammer To Hell #3!

Covers by Mulele Jarvis

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Kickstart the Comic – In Our Dreams Awake #2: A Cyberpunk/Fantasy Adventure

By John McGuire comics, Crowdfunding, writing

I’ve been writing about it for the better part of the last month, but we are finally LIVE on Kickstarter.

For those who may be unfamilar to Kickstarter, it is a platform that allows creators to take their work (in this case a comic book) and effectively get people to Back the project by saying they want to buy the product. We do this through a number of different reward levels… some of which will just be the new issue of In Our Dreams Awake #2, others will include both issues, digital options, as well as a chance to get signed novels or signed comics from Egg Embry and my back catalogue.

I hope you will join us for the campaign!

Click here to check it out!

Cover by Moonee Art

***

In Our Dreams Awake #2: A Cyberpunk/Fantasy Adventure

John McGuire – Writer/Creator

Egg Embry – Writer/Creator

Edgar Salazar – Artist

Rolands Kalninš – Artist, Colorist, Letterer

Genaro Olavarrieta – Inker

Javier Laparra – Inker

Alexander Lugo – Letterer

Moonee Art – Cover Artist

The Kickstarter campaign ends on Friday, May 10, 2024.

***

The Pitch:

Jason Byron dreams of two lives. In one fantasy, magi reactionaries won, technology is banned, and Jason is a portrait painter hiding a contraband telescope. In the other world, he leads a cyberpunk gang amid a future of flooded cities and gilled aliens. When he closes his eyes in one world, he awakes in the next.

In Our Dreams Awake is the story of what happens when both dream worlds spin out of control. What happens when Jason no longer knows which world is the dream and which one is reality?

The Story:

IN THE FANTASY DREAM, a mage arrives at Jason Byron’s cottage with orders: Paint and document a downed flying machine before the Magi destroy the heretical technology. But, will the authorities let Jason live with this forbidden knowledge?

IN THE CYBERPUNK FUTURE DREAM, there’s a turf war in Drowned London, and Jason Byron must parley with the rival gang leaders. Can Jason make peace with the ‘A People, those mouthy cat aliens, and other gangs? Will this escalate and go to guns?

Who can say what dreams may come? Each Jason Byron works for an unseen love. Their guiding light is making their worlds better for those who hold their hearts. But can these dreampunks make their dreams come true?

Cyberpunk Variant – Art by Rolands Kalninš

John’s Thoughts:

In Our Dreams Awake began with an idea of having a man dream two different lives. Egg and I then took that to the comic book pages by having two seperate artists work on the two different dreams… the two different versions of one story that we were telling.

Issue 1 started things off with us learning a bit about Jason in both his Dreams. A painter who dreams of the unknown, doing his best to keep his contraband technology a secret. A Gang Boss who dreams of a way off a drowned world, doing his best to keep his forbidden love a secret.

Issue 2 escalates that to the next level. Secrets begin to unwind and the consequences will change both his worlds completely.

The Rewards:

The Kickstarter is for the second issue in what will be a four-issue series. Issue 2 is completely done and issues 3 and 4 are nearly complete.

We have the ptions of either the pdf ($5) or print version ($10) to send to you. We also have two different variant covers, one by Rolands Kalninš and the other by Egg Embry ($15). If you missed the first issue, never fear, we have options for both issue 1 & 2 ($8 for digital and $20 for print copies).

On the higher end, we have an opportunity to get drawn into the Cyberpunk world as a potential member of Jason’s Gang ($250). On the last Kickstarter, we had two people choose this option, so you’ll get to see them in this issue!

Finally, we have a number of add-ons ranging from Signed Copies of The Gilded Age Graphic nivel, to the Dreamr by the Apocolypse RPG Zine ($10-$20 each).

The Verdict:

In my completely and totally unbiased opinion, why are you still here reading this? Go and back this amazing project!

Back this if you like Dreams, Painters, Cats, Blowing Stuff Up, Aliens, a drowned London, magic, spaceships, and probably a dozen other cool things I’m forgetting about (oooh, crab people!).

Cyberpunk Variant – Art by Egg Embry

***

I’d like to thank you for taking the time to check out our project. A lot of passion went into telling this story, and we hope you will join us on the ride!

Check out the campaign here!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Repost: Behind the Comic: – Anatomy of a Panel – In Our Dreams Awake #1

By John McGuire comics, Crowdfunding, Reviews

Reminder that the Sign up page for In Our Dreams Awake Issue #2 Kickstarter is still available. Be sure to sign up so you get notified when the project goes live!

I thought it might be a nice look back at the Anatomy of a Panel that I did for issue #1 (which will also be available during the upcoming Kickstarter).

***

Taken as a whole, a comic book represents the input of multiple people, multiple perspectives, and multiple skill sets before the final product is created. I’ve said many times in the past that one of the reasons I love the format is exactly for that reason. You get to feed off of the creatives who you work with. And what begins as one thing can become something completely different in execution (and making the overall comic that much better).

In Our Dreams Awake #1 – Page 7, Panels 7 & 8

The Team

Pencils – Edgar Salazar

Inks – Genaro Olavarrieta

Letters – Egg Embry

Writer – John McGuire

Concept

This pair of panels represent the end of a larger conversation within the issue. So much of this world that Jason Byron lives (dreams?) in is dictated by the mages who control everything. They ensure the chaos technology threatens to bring to the people can never exist again. They are Order.

And to go against that would mean going against everything they stand for… and that way lies madness.

So what do we see? We see that Edgar made a choice to not allow for any other colors within these two panels, but instead presented them as a pair of black and white moments. Two men, representing opposite beliefs about their world, are separated by the small table.

The Script

Page 7 Panel 7

Annoyed by Peter’s accusation, Jason pushes himself away from the table as if to get up.

Jason – I know all of this, Peter.

Peter – So ask me your question again.

Page 7 Panel 8

Same shot as Panel 7 (Jason is still sitting). Jason pauses. No words are needed.

Breakdown

As you can see from the script, I actually made a slight mistake between the two panels. In Panel 7, Jason is frustrated/annoyed and pushes himself away from the table. Edgar followed that showing him standing up. His body language is very tense. However, when we come to Panel 8, I note that “Jason is still sitting”…

No, John, he is not.

But Edgar went with it, and I think it actually works in this visual context because of the artist’s choice to make these mirror images of each other (in regards to the black and white). Where Jason was angry in the previous moment, he has sat back down. But instead of either of them furthering the conversation, the darkness envelops them instead pointing two the very ideas that they stand for can not exist alongside one another.

It even mocks the prompt from Peter in Panel 7: “So ask me your question again.” Panel 8 answers that prompt with silence. There is no need to push the issue any longer.

There are no shades of gray here in this place.

***

But perhaps there is another world for Jason to find peace? One he can visit while he dreams?

***

We are less than a week out from the launch of In Our Dreams Awake #2 on Kickstarter. Make sure to sign up to the Prelaunch Page here:

***

Repost – Behind the Artist – Interview with Rolands Kalnins

By John McGuire comics, Crowdfunding, illustration, interview

Reminder that the Sign up page for In Our Dreams Awake Issue #2 Kickstarter is still available. Be sure to sign up so you get notified when the project goes live!

***

As we prepare for the In Our Dreams Awake Issue #2 Kickstarter, I wanted to spotlight some of the people who helped bring these crazy ideas to life. This brings us to the artist and colorist on the Cyberpunk portion of the comic book: Rolands Kalniņš.

***

How long have you been creating/working in comics?

I’ve been working in the comics industry since I was 16 years old. And full-time since I was 20.

I’m 26 now.

What made you want to work on comics?

As a kid growing up in a post-Soviet country we got our entertainment(films, books, comics) much later than the rest of Europe. So I was lucky to grow up watching original TMNT, Star Wars, Spider-man and the X-men animated series, Power Rangers, Adam West Batman, Tim Burton’s Batman, Pokemon, Digimon…

These shows and films made me love these characters, and later on, I found out that many of them were based on comic books. Unfortunately, the only comics we could buy in Latvia were based on Disney and Hanna-Barbera characters aimed towards very young kids.

So I spent a lot of time drawing and creating my own comics. And when I was living in the UK at the age of 15, I had the chance to buy a lot of Marvel comics. And that moment when I first held a comic book in my hands was simply magical.

And that truly made me take the path to become an artist in the comic industry.

Who inspires you? Or do you have a favorite artist or creator?

Personally, I have so many favourites/inspirations. Tho the most influential artists on me were/are: Dave Rapoza, Sean Gordon Murphy, Nick Dragotta, Junji Ito, and many others…

Variant Cyberpunk Cover by Rolands Kalniņš

How do you manage your daily/family life with your creative work? Is this your 9 to 5 or is this your 10 to 2?

My daily routine used to be different. But for the last few years, I’m also a full-time Tattoo Artist at 2 private studios that I own. So my day-to-day is divided.

Most days I work from 8:30-11:00 on comics and tattoo designs. From 12:00-16:00, I work at my tattoo studio. 17:00-19:00 session at the gym (usually 4-5 times a week), and 19:00-24:00 more work on comics/family time.

How would you describe your creative process when it comes to making comics?

My process is quite simple. I read the script, gather references and inspirational images, and then I draw the pages, usually coloring them right after.

Making comics often requires collaboration with others. How do you foster relationships and approach the collaboration process?

Creative relationships for me are really different with each writer and or company. On some projects, I get complete creative freedom and just create the artwork.

On others, the process is more involved and created on a step-by-step basis. With a lot more back and forth. Visuals changing as the story evolves.

And these things are different on each project depending on my involvement as well. Am I just the artist, or am I the colorist?

In some cases, I design the whole book, spine and all.

For me, the most important thing is to do the best work I can for the client.

Jason Byron makes his way through the flooded streets. By Rolands Kalniņš

What are your biggest obstacles when it comes to making art? How do you overcome them?

Hmm, for hurdles in creating work…

The hardest thing for me is creating art in bulk for my personal projects. Client work comes much more easily for me because it has certain direction-script, or just a description of a piece.

How has your experience been with the indie comics community?

I love working on indie comics.

Of course, a dream of mine is to do a Batman book, but for the most part I’m most comfortable doing creative horror books in the indie scene.

The thing I like the most is the “out there” ideas and that there’s no limit to the craziness of the stories I could visualize…

What advice can you give for people who want to start making comics?

Best advice is to learn the basics first.

And that doesn’t mean human figure, faces, etc… It means drawing straight lines, perfect circles, cubes… and only then applying those skills to draw objects, and characters.

And of course, drawing non-stop, but doing illustrations, pages, and panels, not just studies for study’s sake.

Applying knowledge and learning on the go is key. Many things I learned over the years I learned on the job doing the actual work.

And of course, finishing things. Many up-and-comers tend to sketch a lot and never do finished work, which grows into a boatload of bad habits.

Are there themes and/or subjects/genres you find yourself drawn to again and again in your work?

My favourite genres to create for are usually pulp-fiction, neo-noir, cyberpunk, and horror type of work.

But I love doing most genres.

But dark fiction and psychological mind-bending work suits my style best in my opinion.

Jason Byron and Fem’A Lin kiss. By Rolands Kalniņš

If you could go back in time ten years, what advice might you have for your younger self? Something you wish you knew?

Hmm, I would probably say to myself to never stop drawing and don’t give up. Things will go your way eventually…

And don’t let anyone talk you out of anything career-related.

Do you have any upcoming projects? Anything you’d like to promote? Anything else that you’d like people to know about you (Hobbies? Passions? Favorite TV Show)?

I have many upcoming books and personal projects, but I can’t really talk about any of them due to NDA’s. Only thing I can say is that “The Pandora Window” a book I’m co-creating with Ray Chambers is finally announced and being drawn as we speak. And many other projects with Adam Barnhardt of Sh*tshow fame. Hopefully, soon they’ll be announced.

For hobbies, I tend to have many, but the most important ones are Powerlifting and reading. For me, it’s a way to clear my head. And of course, a healthy mind and body are key with this type of profession.

I personally believe you’ll go crazy quite fast if the only thing you do 24/7 is draw. It can become more of a detriment than a strategy to become successful.

Where’s the best place to find out more about you and your works?

I’m most active on my website(portfolio), Instagram, Twitter and Reddit.

https://rolandskalnins.carbonmade.com/

https://www.instagram.com/marvelzukas/

https://twitter.com/marvelzukas

https://www.reddit.com/user/Marvelzukas/

Jason Byron’s intense stare. By Rolands Kalniņš

Do you have a Bio that I can post at the bottom of the article?

My name is Rolands Kalniņš

I’m an illustrator, concept artist/designer, colorist from Latvia.

I’ve worked on many projects for different publishers and kickstarters.

Scout comics: Red Winter.

Fracture Press: Tales of Fractured Mind, Tales of Fractured Worlds, Soul of The Sea, The Burning Memory

Tpub: Transdimensional.

Source Point Press: Sirius

Frank Martin’s Pipe Creepers

Scapegoat Press Inc: Pcycho Path, Aeonian.

Roy Burdine’s Reapers.

VMComics: Hotel Hell

Musicians: Varien, Hellhills, Manic, Toracha, Cream of Cthulhu, and many more.

***

I want to thank Rolands Kalniņš for taking the time to answer my questions. And I really appreciate his contributions in bringing In Our Dreams Awake to life. Remember to go to the Sign up page for In Our Dreams Awake Issue #2 Kickstarter. Be sure to sign up so you get notified when the project goes live!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Odd Synchronicity?

By John McGuire comics, Crowdfunding, writing

Reminder that the Sign up page for In Our Dreams Awake Issue #2 Kickstarter is still available. Be sure to sign up so you get notified when the project goes live!

There are little things in our everyday world which sometimes lay out a message you might be on the right path. Small reminders, universal beats as it were to help subtlely (and not-so-subtlely) guide you. Then again, it could be more that these are the very things which seeped into your subconcious to begin with to create the path in the first place.

As we close in on the launch date for In Our Dreams Awake Issue 2, I began looking through the old emails, trying to find little bits and pieces that I had forgotten in the meantime. The back and forth in the very early days between Egg and myself as we worked the story, bouncing ideas off each other, trying only to improve upon the blocks of the story each time. Discovering things about the characters and what their goals may or may not be.

***

Things in the original breakdown:

The very first outline was 9 issues of story. Talk about being overly ambitious on what we might be able to do all those years ago… not that long out of college. 9 issues… good lord.

Jason Byron was originally an important man… perhaps a Duke of some sort.

In the sci-fi story there was a moment where he was going to have something similar to an Office Space style futuristic job. There was no Cyberpunk gangs. No angry cats (see issue 2).

Jason has more of a comprehension of what is going on between the worlds earlier on in the process. As seen in issue 1, these two worlds are tied together by him, but as things begin to spiral a bit, those world can start to bleed over.

There was an assassination attempt on Fantasy Jason. Totally didn’t remember that one at all.

As opposed to splitting issues between the two worlds, it would be full issues spent in one or the other. So a lot less flip book.

***

So what are the guideposts that helped us along?

Henry David Thoreau’s core quote. Egg discovered it somewhere and suddenly we had a proper title for the story.

I received a series of post-it notes from my parents as a gift and one of them was the Poe quote which again felt like they had read our emails.

Even stranger than that was a random listen to a Van Halen song which felt like it too was written about Jason Byron two decades before he ever took shape:

Love Walks In – Van Halen

Contact is all it takes
To change your life to lose your place in time
Contact! Asleep or awake
Coming around you may wake up to find
Questions deep within your eyes,
Things you’ve never realized

CHORUS:
So when you sense a change
Nothing feels the same
All your dreams are strange, love comes walkin’ in
Some kind of alien
Wait for the opening
Then simply pulls a string

Another world, some other time
You lay your sanity on the line
Familiar faces familiar sights
Reach back remember with all your might
Ohh there she stands in a silken gown
Silver lights shining down

CHORUS

Love comes walkin’ in

Sleep and dream is all I crave
I travel far across the Milky Way
To my master I become a slave
Til we meet again some other day
Where silence speaks as loud as war
And the earth returns to what it was before

CHORUS

Love comes walkin’ in

***

At the end of the day, the story is one we felt compelled to tell. In our email exchange 20 years ago, Egg asks a key question about the story “Is this a story of hope or failure?”

And I like my response, because even through all the tweaks and changes to the very first kernel of an idea, I think we’ve kept to this guiding light:

“The story, at its core, is probably a little of both (failure and hope). Hope that our lives can be brighter than they are but also failure in the risk of not living in reality. Plus, there’s the issue of what reality is truly. Is it what we perceive, or is it what others perceive?”

***

We are less than a month out from the launch of In Our Dreams Awake #2 on Kickstarter. Make sure to sign up to the Prelaunch Page here:

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Repost: Sleep, Perchance…

By John McGuire comics, creativity, life

Make sure to sign up for the In Our Dreams Awake Kickstarter Pre-Launch Page to get notified when the project goes live by clicking HERE!

***

I feel like In Our Dreams Awake comes from the same place the following comes from… that frantic, unsure thing where we have this thing (SLEEP) that we must have but area always cutting short with everything else in the world.

***

Alarm off. A slow glance at the clock. The time flickers a thought in my head.

That can’t be right. Close my eyes again as if the sheer act of doing so will change what they witnessed. A slow peek before I’m careening out of bed. A mad scramble of clothes and contacts and “did I shower last night?” and deodorant and shaving and finding a shirt and…

It’s already past the countdown clock moment. Now it becomes the beginnings of a true decision. Formulas scream through my brain.

How long is the trip?

When is it too late?

Damn… missed class again…

***

Many years ago Chad told me that he preferred nightmares to pleasant dreams. The very concept made little sense to me at the time.

“Why?”

“Because when I wake up from a “great” dream, I’m back in the real world where things are inevitably worse than the worlds I had just visited. But with a nightmare, I have absolute and utter relief, because my waking life is so much better then any nightmare.

“Suddenly I’m happy to be awake!”

***

I struggle to fall asleep. Not stay asleep… oh, no. That is well taken care of. I tend to stay up too late and want more than my allotted eight hours the next day.

***

Henry Rollins said that you either sleep or you don’t – but you can’t catch up.

***

I respectfully disagree with that sentiment.

***

Your body knows when enough is enough. When you’ve pushed yourself. When you have burned that candle down to nothing but a pool of wax and a long-forgotten wick.

That’s when you need to let yourself catch up.

***

Tonight, I don’t want to sleep. I want to stay up, looking down the internet rabbit hole – wondering where it will take me. I wonder if ancient scholars had the same feeling reading the same obscure text.

Sadly I’m reading about football or baseball or something else not quite so grand.

My nightly ritual where I put it off as long as possible. One more minute. Five more. Let me just finish this article. Where is that link going to take me? What about this video on something from 1 year ago. Five years ago. 100 years ago.

Yeah, I could wait until the next day, but then the information couldn’t swim through my head waiting to greet me in my dreams.

I need to know RIGHT NOW!

***

Reality vs. Dreams? What is the difference really? What if the world ceased to exist when we closed our eyes? And then the very act of opening them created a whole new world?

***

In dreams we are the creator, not always in control, true, but building.

Yet, I have to wonder. Is that actually a truth or just something I believe without real proof?

If that was true, why would I set the clock to a point where I’m late for class? Why torture myself when it is nothing but mental 1s and 0s of my own personal Matrix? What good does it do my body to send that familiar rush of fear and anxiety through my body?

***

What if it were the opposite? What if we are only the creators when we are awake? What if when we shut our eyes that was the real world(s)? That’s why we don’t have control over it. That’s why we can’t get off the railroaded path provided to us.

As strange as that reality might be where physics no longer works the way you think it should. Where people you’ve not seen in years suddenly have different personalities than you are used to. Your wife recognizes you, but she’s different and the same and…

***

We have to follow Alice down that damn rabbit hole no matter what.

***

Another friend in high school once commented that he woke up early (most weekends) because he was afraid of missing something. Better to be awake for whatever exciting/important/whatever thing than to not be.

As if the world ceased to exist when we shut our eyes.

***

The world continues to exist when we shut our eyes.

***

Doesn’t it?

***

We have been working hard to get this issue ready for public consumption. Over the next month or so, I’ll have preview pages, behind the scenes looks, and probably some random other stuff that I’m not remembering right now. I hope you’ll join us on another great comic book adventure!

Remember to sign up to the Pre-Launch Page to get notified when the project launchs on Kickstarter!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Behind the Comic: – Anatomy of a Panel – In Our Dreams Awake #2

By John McGuire comics, Crowdfunding, Reviews, writing

We are less than a month out from the launch of In Our Dreams Awake #2 on Kickstarter. Make sure to sign up to the Prelaunch Page here:

***

As a comic book writer, we are doing the best we can to take the thoughts and images in our head and describe it in a way where the artist can have some idea of what we originally meant to show up on the page. The amazing thing about artists, though, is they take that mess of words and somehow (through magic is the only way I can figure) create an image (or series of images) which end up being a way better version of whatever I had in my head to start. Those are some of the best days, when you open up your email to get a new page and it leaves you speachless. Where you want to go back to your script to see how in the world they made it so much better.

Page 16 Panel 1 Pencils – Edgar Salazar Inks – Genaro Olavarrieta Colors – Javi Laparra

The Team

Pencils – Edgar Salazar

Inks – Genaro Olavarrieta

Colors – Javi Laparra

Letters – Alexander Lugo

Writer – John McGuire

Concept

This panel represents a bit of the calm before the storm. At the end of last issue, Fantasy Jason spotted this very same spacecraft in his (illegal) telescope. Now he finds himself commissioned to draw it. In so many ways, this is exactly what his curious mind truly wants to do. Somewhere inside him is a person who wants to see the strangeness in the world. The very truth of things which cannot be obscurred by those in charge.

Here we are with our artist sitting on top of a hill, trying to draw this literal alien craft as the workers go about disassembling it. He’s not sure whether this thing will be studied or destroyed, so it may be his pictures will be all there is left for anyone to know this machine existed.

The Script

Page 16 Panel 1

Jason has paint on his clothes, face, and has various sketches, scroll casings, and papers lying all around him. He has a sense of wonder and awe at what he is witness to. Magus move past him with pieces of the ship.

For this panel, the time is 13:00.

Caption – Early Afternoon.

Peter (caption) – It will eventually be dismantled, so we need accurate records.

Breakdown

Edgar and Genaro did a great job here really nailing this moment. The butterfly fluttering just above Jason provides a very relaxing moment in the midst of the overall craziness which is not only occurring in that moment, but really has been occurring since the day before (Issue 1) and is a bridge to what awaits our hero throughout the remainder of Issue 2. He placed the papers on the ground beside him, so the reader can see that he has been hard at work for a little while already. And he has an in progress piece on the easel to his left.

On top of that, Javi’s colors are perfect here. The greens, browns, and blues put the characters and the reader at a sort of ease (hopefully).

And while I haven’t shown your the entire page here, the overall feel is much the same as Jason pours himself into this project. Maybe even forgetting for a moment that this craft from his dreams is actually real and true.

Lost in the moment. Lost in the painting.

***

Be sure to sign up for the upcoming Kickstarter by clicking the image below!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

In Our Dreams Awake Issue 2 – Kickstarter Prelaunch

By John McGuire comics, Crowdfunding

The Kickstarter Prelaunch Page can be found here!

In Our Dreams Awake is the story of what happens when both dream worlds spin out of control. What happens when Jason no longer knows which world is the dream and which one is reality?

***

In Our Dreams Awake comes from co-creators John McGuire and Egg Embry. The second issue of this 4-issue mini-series features two dreams, the first illustrated by Edgar Salazar with the second by Rolands Kalniņš. With covers by Moonee Art, Rolands Kalniņš, and Egg Embry, this is a comic written for fans of love stories, dreampunk, steampunk, and cyberpunk, this series promises an engaging mystery with amazing artwork. This story is about love and loss and asking the big questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? Who do I love?

***

Remember to sign up to the Pre-Launch Page to get notified when the project launchs on Kickstarter!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

The Reason Why – The Last Stand

By John McGuire comics, writing

Back at the beginning of this journey, my brain was looking for any way to get a comic done. Of course, at that time I was recently married, just beginning my career in Civil Engineering, so I didn’t have a ton of disposeable income. Which is a nice (or just honest) way of saying I couldn’t pay an artist.

Not the best place to be.

At this point Terminus had gathered a bunch of artists up to do their first anthology, where I had my first published work: The God That Failed. It wasn’t enough. I went online to see what things might be out there. Various contests for artists, but very, very few which had many opportunities for writers. The best I could find was a couple of short contests where you entered your script and if they liked it, you’d get matched up with an artist.

I didn’t win the couple I entered.

Then came an anthology built up to support the victims of the 2004 Tsunami which hit southeast Asia.

I needed to figure out something that would be a little uplifting, maybe having to do with the sea, maybe something from a dream, maybe… maybe… maybe.

I gathered up three artists to do the 4 pages I’d written about a kingdom dealing with the oncoming storms which threaten everything they’d built up. And those same artists took my still very early script and turned into a lovely little story about endings and beginnings.

Sadly, I’m not sure if that anthology ever actually came to pass, or if they just passed on my story… it’s been nearly 20 years.

But the work still stands as one of those first things which I poured myself into. One of those first stories where I am grateful for each of the artists who have their time to a project that ended up not seeing the light of day for a while.

In fact, it wasn’t until Egg Embry was putting together an anthology many years later (The Burner) that the story finally found a place to call home.

***

That story is my reminder that comics are a collaborative process. Every set of hands helping to bring these stories to life which is simply amazing.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Repost – Behind the Comic: In Our Dreams Awake

By John McGuire comics, writing

I don’t have the email anymore where I first pitched Egg the basic idea behind In Our Dreams Awake. I basically remember that I had hit upon this idea of someone having to live two different lives, one when they slept and one when they were awake. I know that it happened around the Winter of 2004-2005 in one of many of our daily emails back and forth to each other. Those emails served as both catch-up on the day/week and also a dumping ground for us to share potential writing ideas.

You see, the goal with Egg and I always was to find a way to write comic books. During college, there were many, many, many weekends the two of us would journey from one comic shop to another looking for back issues. And during those trips, we’d talk story ideas. They ranged from some take on whatever Marvel or DC or Image might be doing at the time all the way to our own comic ideas featuring our own characters. But this was in the days before something like Kickstarter existed, back in the days when we were going to have to find a way to do things on the “cheap”.

Egg’s always been good about looking at potential story ideas and breaking them down into a format that might be a little different. And In Our Dreams Awake sent his mind going.

I know/remember a few things about this time:

Egg found the title from a quote by Thoreau.

Egg pitched the idea of the two of us writing portions of the story. One of us would take one dream and the other would write the other.

Egg found both the artists to do what would become a 4 issue mini-series: Edgar Salazar (pencils) and Genaro Olavarrieta (inks) for my “fantasy world” dream and an artist for “futuristic world”.

So we started on the scripts for issue 1. And then the pages started rolling in… this was working… we were going to have a comic book!

We quickly got scripts going for all 4 of the issues, as Edgar and Genaro were rocketing through their work. I learned how to color on the computer (which is a story for another time). Egg’s artist was turning in good stuff. The tone felt great… all we needed to do was find a home for the comic.

We approached Image, I think we sent it off to a couple of other places, but nothing ever came of it. I was working with the Terminus Media guys at the time and had learned enough to know how to get the book printed, but we realized we probably needed to have a complete book before going down that path.

And then Egg’s artist fell off the face of the Earth.

He’d done around 20ish pages out of the 48 or so we’d need to finish things up. But we couldn’t find him. He didn’t return email. I think Myspace was a bust (remember Myspace?). Months went by, which became a year, which became two years. Edgar and Genaro finished their pages and moved on, but we felt hamstrung by this artist. It was weird that one of the original reasons for doing the comic with two artists was so that it would half the load. We thought there was a chance that if an artist disappeared (or ghosted us) that it would be relatively early in the process. Maybe they’ve done 1-5 pages and then make like a wizard, but he’d done enough for 2 issues.

We scrambled. Egg came up with an idea to split his dream in two with the already finished pages and then get a new artist (potentially himself) to do the last 24 pages. We toyed with some other thoughts, but time went on, and like so many things…

In Our Dreams Awake passed into legend…

It nagged at me. Tugged at the back of my mind. Every year I’d look through my files and see the pages and think about what could have been. I wrote the Gilded Age and The Dark That Follows and still, it was there. Egg moved on to RPGs and writing for so many websites that I can’t even keep up with his output these days.

When we were first working on the comic, Egg found the Thoreau quote and it fit perfectly. But randomly during that same Christmas, my mom got me post-its with quotes on them. And while they didn’t have the In Our Dreams Awake quote, they did feature one from Poe that seemed made for our comic:

Things had lined up perfectly until they didn’t.

Then March 2020 happened and the world changed. We had time on our hands. And In Our Dreams popped up in my dreams again. So I reached out to Egg. Told him I wanted to make a go of it. That we knew so much more than we had nearly 2 decades earlier. The biggest obstacle was always having product, but in this case, we had 1/2 the story already done. There was only one hurdle to go: we needed to reach out to Egg’s artist and see if we could use those pages or if we were going to start over.

And after many weeks, we decided to go with someone new.

The thing was, I’m a part of a couple of Facebook Groups where artists post their work looking for their next gigs, so I’d been saving posts of anyone who caught my eye. So when we decided to move on, I shared all the potentials with Egg, and very quickly we identified Rolands Kalniņš as the person who could bring the sci-fi/cyberpunk dream to life. And Rolands has done that and more. And all of a sudden we had issue 1 ready to go.

All of sudden… after 17 years… we had the first issue.

***

We’re in the process of putting the 2nd issue on Kickstarter very soon, and I’m hopeful that we won’t have quite as long of a break between issues from now on. Be on the lookout for the prelaunch page coming to your screens very shortly.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Rebooting the Marvel Universe

By John McGuire comics

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Looking through my Twitter Feed a month or so ago, I came across the following tweet from Sean Taylor’s:

“You’re given the task of making a clean break (a la DC Golden Age to DC Silver Age) for Marvel and can only keep four existing characters to continue unscathed into the new Age. Who are they?”

***

It started the wheels turning in my head. And while Sean was only wanting a list of characters, I began sketching up ideas for who would be there in this fictious future version of the Marvel Universe.

The interesting/funny thing here is that they sorta have done this at least 2x already. When Marvel launched the Fantastic Four ushering in their version of the Silver Age, this was an effective launch/relaunch of their existing universe. And while maybe continiuity was fairly fast and loose back then, it wasn’t long before they brought back a couple of characters from their Golden Age stories. You had the Human Torch as a part of the Fantastic Four – a direct call back to the Golden Age Android version and in some ways more along the lines of how DC Comics seemed to update their characters with Flash and Green Lantern.

Avengers 4 then brought back Captain America making it a more direct line to the 1940s (even if he’d had an ongoing comic book throughout the 50s as well).

Finally, the other “main” one was Sub Mariner who, in a twist, they brought back as a villain. And while the years have softened that version of him, he still wins the award for most likely to find himself hanging out with other big named villains more so than any other hero in Marvel.

***

The second time they did this is with the 2099 launch in the mid-90s. There they had 4 titles. Spider-Man 2099 was a brand new version with no real ties to Peter Parker other than taking up the mantle. Punisher 2099, who in the regular universe was one of their most popular characters (he had 3 ongoing series at one time), received a version of the character who I honestly don’t know enough about to talk about. Doom 2099 who either was the Doom from our time and was time-displaced or was someone who thought he was Doom from our time and was time-displaced. I’m not 100% on where we ended up with that one to be honest. Finally they had Ravage, a brand new character to help usher in this new line.

***

In both cases those 3 or 4 characters really helped jump start their respective universes.

So going along those lines we could go a few ways:

Think about who the most popular characters are, and then make sure you have updated versions of them. This helps to solve the problem of not having someone who can sell comic books.

Who are Marvel’s best sellers right now? Spider-Man, Wolverine, Venom, randomly Moon Knight (the comic is really good right now), X-Men, Daredevil… those are the ones I see in the top 25 of sales. Maybe you could throw Deadpool in just due to the movie side of things. From a movie point of view, you would have to include pretty much any of the Avengers and Guardians (basically anyone who showed up in Infinity War and End Game).

However, even before we get into that, we should probably think about the situation. Is there a potential time jump that we have going on here? Has 20 years passed since the last generation of heroes? Is this more of a thought process where we have to save Marvel from flagging sales (maybe along the lines of their Ultimate Universe in the 00s)?

It’s also one of those things you don’t want to copy things specifically because it has come before without some form of a twist. With the Marvel Silver Age, those other characters were enhancements to all the new ideas which eventually led to the juggernaunt that it has become.

***

Strictly speaking, if we are going to go with the best sellers approach then my list might look something like this:

Spider-Man has to be there in some form or fashion. He is the heart of the Marvel universe. In we have the time jump version then perhaps he can now be the retired hero we were all hoping for with wife and kid(s) that eventually can be the one that trains the youngsters? And that doesn’t consider what happens if we use Miles for this…

Wolverine is your immortal character who can kind of swiss army knife things in this new world. You need to older teacher, got it. You need a wild man out in the wilderness who needs to tracked down? Got it. You need to touch on the Mutant side of things, he’s your connection.

Iron Man – This one I can see as the inheritor/pure update to the old idea. It’s either a long lost relative to Tony Stark or perhaps even better he is a relative to one of Stark’s enemies who decides to do something good with the suit of armor. Maybe even set this up as a bit of a mystery at first with him (her?) showing up in the other books before finally revealing the person under the armor and launching their own book.

The fourth character feels like it should be someone low key. Someone who in current comics isn’t a big deal but now in this new world could become that new hero. Or potentially someone who never got by before and now could go on to the villain (or at least anti-hero) side. This would be the someone like Elsa Bloodstone or Speedball or something like that. I don’t have anyone specifically in mind here.

***

But then it occurred to me, one of my favorite things about the Marvel Universe is that it can be so many different things to so many different people. So what are the main pillars of the Marvel Universe? And then which characters let us focus on those ideas and build?

In my mind, the four major pieces of the Marvel Universe are the following:

Cosmic

Mutant

Magic/Tech

Street Level

Those you pretty much touch nearly all the characters who currently exist within the comics. And while it is a little bit of a cheat to lump Magic and Tech together, given that so many quotes from the comics and movies talk about how Magic is simply technology we haven’t figured out the science for… I’m going to say it works.

With that in mind, here are my four leads:

Silver Surfer

He’s such a singular character within the greater framework of Marvel, and he allows you to tell as many adventures as you’d like throughout the cosmic side of things. He is an immortal style character, so whatever time jump might have happened, he might have been there at the EVENT.

When written well, he becomes a focal lens for all the cool stuff you can do in comic books.

Storm

Allows you to have those true connections to the Golden Age of X-Men while not leaning on Wolverine for the 1000 time. She could allow you to have an X-Men style team with her role as more in the Prof. X stylings. This would be a woman who perhaps has learned the original Dream is dead, but that doesn’t mean the struggle isn’t still ongoing.

Dr. Doom

My favorite character in Marvel, I would be remiss if I didn’t include him in some way. That said, this would be a version of Doom that we only ever get to see glimpses of most of the time. This is someone who finally decided to put the pettiness behind them and actually strives to be something better. And that all came about because Dr. Strange is no longer the Sorcerer Supreme (whether he died or retired or whatever would be a portion of the story). Doom then assumes this mantle and with it the responsibilities it requires. You wouldn’t have the FF “baggage”, at least at first, and could focus Doom on things again we don’t see a ton of – the magic side of things.

Daredevil

This would be my brand new person wearing the suit slot. A new ‘Devil’ for Hell’s Kitchen to lend some hand to the little people. Not sure they’d need to be a lawyer, but whatever their profession it should give the writers something to play with as that’s one of the things the Daredevil character does the best – weave his daily life into his night life.

***

Of course, if I thought about this more, I’d probably come up with about ten other combinations of characters to restart things with. That’s really the beauty of the comics, anything can find a way to grab a reader and never let them go.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

The Reason Why – The God That Failed

By John McGuire art, comics, writing

How do you write a comic book?

I had crafted terrible, terrible stories throughout my youth. I have a blue beat-up notebook with the ongoing tales of the Threats based on the adventures of my sister and friends. I had various files on the computer with a bullet list style outline of ideas here or there but there was never a real chance to actually get a comic going. And then somehow I found myself with a very random opportunity after spending a few months talking about writing in the back of a comic shop.

There were some artists who met up there as well and somehow there was an opportunity to do something short. 8-pages.

I didn’t go back to any of my old ideas. In fact, I wasn’t really sure how to go about writing a script for an artist. I don’t think I’d really seen anything at that point. But there was a bigger problem:

I didn’t have an idea.

It was a struggle to try and find some kernel of an idea. Sure I had 60 issue epics planned out, but only 8 pages? What in the world could I tell in such a short amount of time?

And then it hit me one day while I was at work. Over the next 10 minutes I roughed out the full script on a bunch of scrap papers. The idea of having a hero who had a very limited time in the world. I don’t know if I was feeling my own mortality as I approached my 30s or if there was something about comic book heroes never getting to see the last of their stories, but that’s what I set out to do.

Again, it was a bare bones script at best that I handed the artist, John Etienne, the next meeting. He might have asked a couple of questions, I can’t remember. All I knew was there was a chance this bit of words on a couple of pages might get transformed into something bigger.

Since the internet loves a list, here are 9 things (Why 9? Because that’s how many I came up with!) about my first comic that might strike your fancy, a behind the scenes, if you will:

1- John Etienne was the artist on the story. The only reason that Etienne was my artist is because I had approached him a couple of months earlier, before the idea of doing an anthology was even a real thought in anyone’s head. However, it wasn’t because I had this story lined up. No, instead I had wanted him to draw an 8 page Moon Knight story for me (not sure what my goal there would have been). Lucky for me he didn’t have time right then to work on anything, and when the anthology project was finally launched I had a story of my own.

2- John Etienne happens to know my Mother-in-Law. She played a trick on him once the comic was out by telling him that not only had she gone to Dragon Con, but she had bought this comic book and wondered if he was the artist on it. “I always go to Dragon Con, and I love comic books”. After a few dumb-founded seconds she fessed up, but both of them later relayed the story to me (and the look on his face as he wasn’t sure if he’d stepped into Bizzaro world or not). I believe Etienne’s words were to me that he just couldn’t see her at Dragon Con. Though, I would pay good money to see her downtown on Labor Day weekend.

3- There was some debate about the order of the stories within the book. I generally like to be the nice guy about most things, but by my thinking I believed you either wanted to be the first story or the last story in the book (actually we all may have thought those spots were the best). I ended up with the last story position, but when the first story ended up delayed (or abandoned, I can’t remember) everyone agreed to put The God That Failed into the first position. Again, I have to thank Etienne for actually being the first one finished with his pages which made the choice fairly easy plus they looked pretty damn good as well, which did not hurt our cause).

4- I mentioned in the blog that my favorite superheroes are Spider-Man and The Flash. The God That Failed was my idea of what would happen to a guy who received the abilities of The Flash, but that power was burning him up inside.

5- In my original script, page 7 was actually page 6, and page 6 was page 7. Given the way the narration was done the story wasn’t as much linear as it was a guy talking about his friend who was disappearing from the world. When I actually saw the finished pages I had those two flipped given the way the story played out. That being said, page 7 is a “what if” moment, not something that the character actually did (he didn’t need to get more power, he already had way too much).

6- Though I love the serialized format of comic books, this was always a stand-alone story… a cautionary tale, a new myth or something. Thus began my apparent need to tell complete stories (done in one) in comics. That continued with The Gilded Age. But the real reason that I didn’t want to have him as a new hero for future stories was that I had no idea if or when I’d ever get a chance to do more comics. And as a reader there is nothing more frustrating than buying a comic that says “To Be Continued” and then not ever finding the rest of the story.

7- The main character’s name was John Smith; however, it wasn’t because two Johns worked on the story. I wanted a generic name, someone who might be easily forgotten regardless of all the good deeds he might have done. That fear is something that I know I have and I was channeling that fear into John Smith. This is really summed up to me on pages 5 & 6 but mostly in panel 4 on page 5. John carving into the Easter Island statues is not him destroying something precious; it is his attempt to prove that he existed at all. I sometimes wonder if he did that all over the world.

8- The title is taken from the title of a song on Metallica’s Black Album. I just liked the way it sounded, and since superheroes many times are considered gods, it fit exceptionally well in my mind.

Now I probably owe them money or something.

9- My favorite page of the story is the last one. I think (I hope) that I dodged becoming too preachy by having that last panel thrown in there. I love the idea of another what if… this one being, of course, what if John Smith had lived. The shot of The Fruit Fly conjures up memories of a 10-year old me. I think he would have gotten a kick out of that.

***

I’m not sure John truly knew how excited I was to start seeing those pages. And while the narration and idea was mine, it wouldn’t be anything without his wonderful artwork. He took a bare script and made it look like a true comic story. And when he was done, that’s when I got that first true rush I hope everyone who creates something gets when they see it finished. It’s an odd moment where you know no matter what else happens, a little piece of you exists in the world. Something permanent which sprang from your mind.

My own Easter Island carving if you will.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Review – The Marvels

By John McGuire comics, film, Reviews

There is a ton of talk about this movie online. Honestly, it is to the point that I’m wondering about that old saying “whether it is bad or good… as long as they are talking about you” still applies. After one weekend, this has underperformed at the box office, and while many people have listed their own theories about why this has occurred (smarter and dumber people alike), it seems to me we’ve gotten away from the key part of watching a movie.

Did you like it?

Yes.

***

Thanks for coming to the blog!

***

OK. The first Captain Marvel really occupies an odd place in the MCU as it came out after Infinity War but before End Game but took place in the 90s, which put in a position where it didn’t really fit into the current storyline and acts as a prequel to much of the MCU (other than say the first Captain America movie). It introduces more of the Kree (since Ronan in Guardians was really the only Kree we’d met otherwise) and sets up something that within the comics is a HUGE deal: the Kree/Skrull conflicts.

I enjoyed the first one, but I must admit, I haven’t gone back to do a rewatch so it might have been seen through rose-colored glasses as we all waited for End Game.

***

With Marvels, my concern was how well would people who haven’t watched the tv shows understand who these characters are. We’d watched WandaVision, so Monica’s story was familiar to us, but we haven’t had a chance to watch Ms. Marvel. And while I am familiar with the comic version, I haven’t really read much with her in it. Luckily, I think they did a pretty good job of introducing both, even if Monica has a leg up due to Captain Marvel being Aunt Carol.

The sequence which gets the movie started is them switching places whenever one of them uses their powers at the same time as another of the trio. Which creates a breakneck series of fights which does a nice job of illustrating each of their power sets. When the three are finally all together, the embarassingly cute interaction Ms. Marvel has with the other two women is infectious. It also does a nice bit of contrast to one of the things people complained about with the first one – that Captain Marvel was too stoic. In fact, that is kind of her character arc here. Someone who has seperated herself from the rest of the universe, someone doing a job only they can do, and just being utterly alone. Faced with a “team”, she balks at it because it is so against her nature. Yet as things continue, she has no choice but to literally and figuratively embrace these two souls. It was this underlying thread that still made it HER movie in so many ways.

Dar-Benn

On top of everything else, though, this movie feels like something where everyone is having fun. The actors look like they are into it. The writer clearly understood this was supposed to be more about the three heroes and their developing relationships between one another rather than the larger plot. Which may be the one bit of “bad” about the movie for me.

I don’t know if they completely knew what kind of villain they were portraying here? Is Dar-Benn your classic cosmic world destroyer in the vein of Ronan? Is she someone who is only trying to do her best to restore her homeworld back to from the brink of annihilation? Or is she someone who is bent of revenge against a sworn enemy?

Now, that sounds like the beginning of real depth for Dar-Benn, but it is here that things seem to get confused. She is all these things, but we only find out about the revenge against Captain Marvel near the end of the movie which makes it seems like it was her ultimate motivation. However, this came across as more of a “oh, ok” moment rather than a “WOW” moment. I wish they would have put something more into that, even an exchange between her first officer saying something about getting revenge is how she’s picking her targets.

***

The cosmic side of Marvel has so much to explore and these characters could allow them to do just that. And could even seed some additional ideas for a Fantastic Four movie (Annihilus is out there).

The comic book nerd would hate for the lower box office to hurt these explorations in the future. There is a ton to enjoy about this movie, and if the first one didn’t quite hit right, this one has a feel very different to that one – it may be more in your wheelhouse.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Best Marvel Movie Moments – Phase 1

By John McGuire comics, film

After watching Guardians 3 a couple of weeks ago (I’m only a little behind the times), it got me to thinking more about the Marvel Cinematic Universe again… and more specifically those moments within the movies where I will rewatch the scenes over and over because they are so good.

Phase 1

I Am Iron Man – Iron Man 1

We can start with the biggest moment within all the movies, which is Tony Stark admitting that he’s the one in the suit. Supposedily this line was ad-libbed as the writers had planned to go with the Body Guard story. What’s interesting about this is that for so much of Iron Man’s career, that was the cover story within the comics. Iron Man was simply a hired body guard… who also happened to be in the Avengers…

Which never made a ton of sense other than the “it’s a comic book, what do you want?”

So many heroes over the years have this secret ID to protect their loved ones, but with Stark it felt a little more odd since he could legitimately protect those people with the weaponry and technology he invented.

With that one moment though, the movies told us that this was going to be a little bit of a different take on the character… and what is even more amusing, I feel like the comic version has pretty much adopted a form of the Robert Downey Jr. version.

Art imitating Art?

Cap jumps on the grenade – Captain America – The First Avenger

What’s the best way to show the deep down parts of someone? What happens when you put someone in a life or death situation. With one moment, we can see who Steve Rogers is. We can see why he is deserving of the power he eventually possesses. And we can see that he is someone to inspire others around him because he’s willing to make the sacrifice if that’s what is needed.

Avengers Assemble

Black Widow Interrogation – Avengers

Black Widow has a ton of great moments in the film, but the key one is the very first one. We find Natasha being interrogated by Russian Mob. And the old thoughts from a thousand movies begin to work their way into our brain: how is she ever going to get out of this mess?

Instead, we see very quickly she was always in control. Much like with Captain America in the grenade scene, this one tells us so much about the character, why she is so trusted by Nick Fury and SHIELD, and that her connection with Hawkeye is extremely important (and personal).

Punny God – Avengers

The Hulk slamming Loki against the floor over and over again.

What more do you need?

The funny thing about the actual line “Puny god” was that I didn’t hear it on my viewing in the theater. Nothing could be heard over the laughter and cheering. It was only after I sat down to rewatch the movie at home and got to experience the full scene. Which made it go from good to great.

The Team is Assembled – Avengers

This is not only the culmination of Phase 1 with all the characters striking their hero poses and truly becoming Earth’s Mightest Heroes. However, for me it was something I wouldn’t have ever dreamed would have worked. It shouldn’t have. Putting those characters on the screen and having it make sense. To have the other lead in movies manage to do well enough that it could propel us to this movie. That should have been impossible.

My inner 12 year old was/is glad that wasn’t the case.

***

Of course, there are a ton more, but these were the first ones to come to mind.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Free Comic Book Day is this Saturday!

By John McGuire comics, events

Normally I would be preparing my own comics and novels for Saturday at one of our local comic stores, but I will be in Raleigh, NC with family this year. That isn’t to say that you still shouldn’t visit your local comic store to get some free (and hey, maybe purchase some other ones) comics. What’s cool about Free Comic Book Day is that the offerings are so varied, you always have something to potentially check out. Whether it is a Marvel or DC superhero book or A Nightmare Before Christmas comic or a Smurfs anniversary comic or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic or…

Typically, I grab a handful of things for myself and then try to get a couple of comics for the nephews and neice. Whether you are 5 or 95, there is likely going to be a couple of things which might appeal to you.

For a complete list of the Free Comics, visit the Free Comic Boo Day website.

For a list of comic stores near you, visit the Comic Shop Locator.

For a free copy of one of my comic books, issue #1 of The Gilded Age, you can join my mailing list here.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Movie Review – Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

By John McGuire comics, film, Reviews

After spending the last two blog posts talking about Marvel’s Phase 4 movies, I finally managed to get out and see the first movie to kick off Phase 5: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. While the Phase 4 movies and shows gave us glimpses of where (when?) we might be heading… it is here that the big storyline for the MCU really kicks into gear.

It’s an interesting choice to use an Ant-Man movie for this purpose as the first and second movies were really elaborate “caper” movies. They played things more for the laughs. And yes, while Marvel movies love their comedy bits, I feel like the Ant-Man movies lean into the full comedy with a touch of science fiction. So if you were to tell me which Marvel character would be best suited to provide us with Kang the Conqueror, I would have probably leaned more toward a Thor movie or Guardians of the Galaxy or even The Eternals (if you had to). In the comics, Kang is traditionally a full Avengers team opponent, so no matter who had first contact with him, it should potentially leave us with the idea of “We’re going to need the whole Avengers team to deal with this.”

Ant-Man 3 then has to really pivot from those first two movies. The sidekick friends are missing from the film to instead focus on the surrogate Pym/Lang family which has developed in the time since End Game. Really, there is no opportunity to spend much time with anyone else, as we quickly find our heroes all trapped in the Quantum Realm doing their best to navigate this alien world and find their way back to each other.

All the while, the threat of Kang the Conqueror hangs over them (and the world).

This is very much a superhero movie with BIG STAKES.

Michelle Pfiefer’s Janet Pym is effectively a co-lead within the movie. She is the only one of the five who has any real idea of what might be in store within this world, and therefore literally takes the lead trying to reunite the family and find a way home. Which works well for the most part… however, her character does the trope of not telling her family about Kang and the danger he represents for nearly half the movie. This isn’t a case of a story where maybe the character with “knowledge” doesn’t know whether she can trust the people she is with… no, she’s with her husband and daughter. But instead of taking ten minutes to let them in on the big problem they have, she instead dodges the question.

Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man also gets to play the big hero in this movie. It’s another place where you can really see where this character has started back in Ant-Man 1, and where he’s ended up. He’s someone who is content to not play hero. He’s someone who lost 5 years with his daughter. Someone who also was directly responsible for saving everyone who were Blipped. He’s an Avenger. And while they play that bit for laughs, with that designation, he’s someone who has to help others (or, at least he should).

I really liked the various alien creatures ont he world. Many of them had very cool and unique looks to them that I almost wondered what a Quantum Realm tv show should look like. There was an oddity to some (much) of it and while many of those characters offered some humor, for the most part I thought it worked.

However, what didn’t work for me was MODOK. Without getting to in the weeds (and spoilery), MODOK is a character that comes off as a complete joke. Everything is played for laughs, which makes little to no sense considering he is a Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing. Leading up to his appearance he is called the Hunter. Someone who is not only dangerous, but is basically death for those who encounter him.

Yet, that is never shown. Instead it is one character making fun of him after the next. There is a never a moment I really feel like he should be taken seriously. And while I’m not a big fan of the character in the comics, there might have been a way to do him justice… this wasn’t it.

***

So does this work as the launch of Phase 5? Does this movie start the ball rolling for the Kang saga?

Yes. I think that Kang is shown as a very credible threat. Someone who is not only powerful, but he’s powerful on a scale completely different from Thanos. Where Thanos sought to change the fundamental nature of the universe, Kang is someone who snuffs out timelines. He arrives and he conquers. Because that is who he is. It isn’t for some misguided attempt at a noble reason. It is because he can.

And that is someone who the Avengers (and Fantastic Four and maybe the X-Men) will need to be brought back together to stop.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

1 – Avoid large vats of chemicals.

2 – Her Name Doesn’t Translate to Something that could also be a codename.

3 – Don’t allow her to have a fascination for any particular animal.

4 – Don’t let her go off on a journey of self-discovery only to find out that she is really harnessing some power from a League of Assassins or monks who provide her with battle armor.

5 – Don’t let her go around changing the past.

Where is this story going?

Project Partners

Divided Attention

The story is too big.

Money

Paralyzation

Moon Knight (Volume 9 – 2021)

Two Days Left for the In Our Dreams Awake Issue 2 Kickstarter!

The Pitch:

The Story:

John’s Thoughts:

The Rewards:

The Verdict:

The Pitch:

The Story:

John’s Thoughts:

The Rewards:

The Verdict:

The Team

Concept

The Script

Breakdown

Reminder that the Sign up page for In Our Dreams Awake Issue #2 Kickstarter is still available. Be sure to sign up so you get notified when the project goes live!

Make sure to sign up for the In Our Dreams Awake Kickstarter Pre-Launch Page to get notified when the project goes live by clicking HERE!

Remember to sign up to the Pre-Launch Page to get notified when the project launchs on Kickstarter!

The Team

Concept

The Script

Breakdown

Remember to sign up to the Pre-Launch Page to get notified when the project launchs on Kickstarter!

Silver Surfer

Storm

Dr. Doom

Daredevil

Phase 1

I Am Iron Man – Iron Man 1

Cap jumps on the grenade – Captain America – The First Avenger

Black Widow Interrogation – Avengers

Punny God – Avengers

The Team is Assembled – Avengers

Search

New Posts

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Archives

Categories