Me and Jakers are in Starburst again!

The good people of Starburst have offered us (me and Jake Rowlinson) a page of advertising in their magazine as a thank you for the Showcase Strip "The Ripple Effect" that we submitted a couple of months ago. The ad can now be seen in print in this month's issue of Starburst (#430) which is on sale now.

Great day out at the Beeb...

As part of Spotlight's coverage of Dev Con Plymouth,, myself and costumer Mark Robinson were invited to the BBC to talk all things Sci-Fi & Comics and to discuss what it is that gives them such everlasting appeal.

You can check out the full interview on BBC iPlayer.

Building a Justice Society

So this week we got our first look at the Justice Society of America in Legends of Tomorrow and this got me thinking. A while back there were rumblings that John of cancelled Constantine fame might be making his way over to LOT. In the JSA line-up pic, there are a few characters that aren't present.

We may see John Wesley Shipp's Golden Age Flash pop up at some point, but it dawned on me that there are two supporting characters from the Constantine TV show that have a place at the JSA table and if he's armed with a time machine, the Hellblazer might be the man to get them there. In the Constantine TV show, Zed had premonitions of Jim Corrigan's death, so what if Jim Corrigan travelled back to the 1940s in the hopes of avoiding his fate and starting a new life for himself?

 

Always a Rocker at heart...

So this week I grabbed my copy of Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman's new album Braver Than We Are. If you couldn't tell already from my work on Sioux Warrior, Steinman had a huge influence when I was growing up and I guess stoked a fire to put pictures and music together. Their albums felt like they were concepts for stage shows that never were and their covers felt like fragmented pieces of sequential art.

 I later found out that Steinman had indeed written and performed a stage show which many of Meat and Bonnie Tyler's hits were taken from entitled The Dream Engine, but there were still songs on Bat I and II that losely linked in with this world that weren't part of The Dream Engine, songs that echoed through the iconic art of Richard Corben and the masters that followed. Was the rider who didn't see the curb till it was way too late the same rider that burst out of Hell?  Did New York sink into Hell? Was this the vision of the entire city burning as spoken by Steinman on Dead Ringer? Was the angelic girl on Bat III's cover the one he'd  run right into Hell and back for? And more recently, through the cover for Braver Than We Are, we learn that the rider's motorcycle belongs to one of the 4 horsemen, how did the rider come to aquire it? This world was expanded on a little more in the promotional video for The Monster Is Loose but there are still so many unanswered questions.

For years, the music and the art enchanted me and pulled me into this world, into a story of possibities. It provoked and inspired me to be a storyteller. If you're out there Jim, I just want to say a massive thanks and ask if the story you had in your head was the same I had in mind? If you're out there Jim, I reckon it would make one hellova digital musical comic.

Yours faithful,

A Wasted Youth

UPDATE - My prayers have been answered, I've just heard that they're doing a Bat Out Of Hell Musical

Can't beat that feeling....

Well folks, this weekend I sent off the first set of thumbnails and the first 7 pages of a secret script I've been working on to the incredibly talented Jerome Canty.
I don't think I've ever worked so hard on a script, but think it'll all be worth it in the coming months. More details coming soon. In the meantime, you can check out Jerome's work on The Tamar Brigade. I can't wait to see what comes off his drawing board next...

If I ever worked on a DC CW show.....

So this is one of those just for fun, fan theory things that I wanted to get out of my system and reckoned it would be cheaper than going on DC FanCast like last time.

Hopefully you folks get a kick out of this.

So in Flash Season 2, the Multiverse was finally established (Huzzah!). And there was this really cool sequence where Grant Gustin's Flash ran past a cosmic window showing a clip of John Wesley Shipp as The Flash from the 1990s TV show, confirming now that that was part of the canon of the CW universe. So, this got me thinking, does the Multiverse stop with the CW? Or does it include every DC live action TV and film there's every been?

Well if that's the case, then why does Jeremiah Danvers from CBS' Supergirl look like Superman from that 90s Earth who fought Fat Head (don't call him Fat Head), and why does Eliza Danvers look like that 80s Supergirl who used to fight a JCB? Now you might say, "Sam, you're taking this too far...the answer's clear, the actors from those old DC properties are just there as an homage" but I say to you, that's just not as fun.

So, I'd like to see a scene on Legends of Tomorrow where Physicist Ray Palmer asks Rip Hunter about the Multiverse and Rip says that there are different realities with small changes and different realities with large changes. And that souls can be born into different times and places. A Dark Knight could be born in the 1800s for example and hunt Jack the Ripper or a Physicist like Ray Palmer could be born on a distant planet (let's say Krypton) and then rocketed to Earth and might not even be called Ray Palmer at all. The conversation would be hypothetical, but could elude to some secret knowledge that Rip has and cannot tell Ray of the Superman Returns Earth and they would never need to discuss it again, but would be a great nod for the fans.

This then opens up for all sorts of crazy opportunities. The Flash could go meet the cast of characters 10 years on from Smallville, Dean Cain could come back as a Rebirth Superman, the sky really is the limit.

Anyway, glad to get that out of my system. Let me know what you folks think.

Hopefully won't be the only comic I do with Harley & Joker on the cover!

Howdy Everyone. Welcome to my new blog, a place where I can put everything from my writing publications to my feelings on this week's comics, films and TV. We'll start with some good news. The lovely people of Starburst Magazine have published a 2 page Showcase comic by myself and artist Jake Rowlinson. The comic entitled "The Ripple Effect can be found in this month's issue (#427) available on  the Starburst Magazine website