BULLET GAL: The Kickstarter. What is it, and why bother?

Hey, it's been a while between posts here — sorry 'bout that.

Like a zillion other people, their flying monkeys and the odd enterprising pet, I currently have a Kickstarter campaign running.

Verily, this is something everyone I know on social media like Facebook and Twitter would've realized by now — sorry, mates. I tend to harp a lot. Anyhow, disclaimers and apologies aside, here's a sneak-preview of the promo video thanks to the cool cats at Under Belly Comics in Canada, who're steering the fundraiser:



I overly harp, as I mentioned, because (a) this promo video is a knockout, and I want for this to be a success in order to repay the trust and support that Under Belly has thus far provided — as they do for a lot of other indie outsiders — and (b) I love this project.

But of course I should.

I'm biased as all hell, so don't listen to me. I hope you do listen to people like Shawn Vogt (who reviewed all 12 issues of the series at Weird and Wonderful Reads), or Steven Alloway at Fanboy Comics and Paul Bowler at Sci-Fi Jubilee, both of whom just reviewed Bullet Gal #6.



Plus the Australian Comics Journal and crime novel reviewer Elizabeth A. White makes (I think!) great cases. Ta, mates.

We now have 70% pledged funding, which equates to $3,502, thanks to 79 incredible individuals.
Even so, that leaves a somewhat giddy $1,498 that still needs to be bid before the Kickstarter campaign is successful, and we need to accumulate this within 13 days. The big, somewhat leading question here is why? — one reason I chucked the word in the title of this entry.

Well, there's the story: More nods and winks than you can poke a long stick at, an homage too many, and tongue kind of firmly in cheek — beneath other levels of hardboiled noir, crime, sci-fi, abstract expressionism, the surreal and a superhero romp gone wrong. And for those interested in my other work, this is a stand-alone link between the novels Depth Charging Ice Planet Goth and Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?

The character herself, Mitzi, is obviously a special one for me and I'd dearly like to see her get beyond the limited-edition comic we're currently publishing monthly in Australia.

Feedback to the 12 issue run of Bullet Gal, which is being collected together in this trade paperback, has been nothing short of amazing, and I'm still awaiting the savage critiques. Aside from two pieces of such, the rest has sat exceptionally pretty so far as I'm concerned. The Cult Den referred to the series as "a warped masterpiece", Spartantown said there's "nothing like it in comics", while Sequart wrote it's "consistently impressive".


To further my cause, I've been able to write rambling pieces for Graphic Policy, Pulp Pusher, The Next Best Book Blog and Bleeding Cool.

I also did extensive interviews on Bullet Gal and the ideas behind the series with We The Nerdy, ComicBuzz, and 8th Wonder Press.

And you know what? There are so many artists working now or who've previously worked in comic books that I love. Five of the current crop are David Aja (Hawkeye), Mike Deodato (Original Sin), Walter Geovani (Red Sonja), Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night) and Steve Epting (Captain America/Velvet)... and all five of them this week supported the Bullet Gal Kickstarter on Twitter. Just wow. Thanks, lads, and hats off.


Finally? A further doff of the boater to the 76 people who have pledged financial support to the trade paperback, and the people who've helped spread the message of this silly project or ours. 

You all seriously rock. That's why.

Southern Cross: Character Design Competition

My next novel, Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?, is a crossover homage to things comic book, pulp, sci-fi and noir—pretty much all the genres I dig—and the central character here is Jacob Curtiss... who moonlights as superhero Southern Cross.

Given the comic book nature of the romp, which will be published later this year by Perfect Edge Books, and the fact it's partially illustrated, I decided to continue the exploration of the comic artist angle by setting up a competition. 

This comp is open to anybody with a pencil, and the 5 winners will get copies of the novel once it's published. 

The key point is free-range interpretation, something that's important to me. I like the idea of disparate visions of the same person — it's the way American comic books, after all, work in the real world. Bryan Hitch's perception of Captain America in 2009 was far different from Jim Steranko's in 1969.

We're getting some great entries only days after beginning (the comp closes on 30 June), including the hilarious caricature of a man-and-his-dog (above) by Claudia Everest and the more Iron Man-inflected style by Craig Bruyn (below, at bottom). 

One of the artists, Tomomi Sarafov (she did this gal-version of Southern Cross, along with another piece), wrote about the process here at her blog.

Anyway, if anyone else is at all inspired, you can hit this link and find out what the competition is all about.

By the way, for those of you (a) with long memories, and (b) Australian, this isn't the first Southern Cross superhero character. I've recently been chatting with esteemed veteran comic creator Tad Pietrzykowski who nicely filled in the gaps.

"Yes, there are at least three other Southern Crosses out there. Mine [the Golden Age Southern Cross by Tad, with Glenn Lumsden], Dave de Vries' Southern Squadron, and one at Cult Fiction Australia that I don't know the status of. Under the copyright law, no one can own the name "Southern Cross" exclusively. We can all retain copyright on our own individual Southern Crosses—artwork, logo, et cetera—as long as none of us try to impinge upon anyone else's version... which none of us are interested in doing, so it's all good." 

I guess Australia doesn't have too many iconographic logos to stick on the chest of union suits. Hey, wait... maybe I should've gone with Captain Vegemite.?

Anyway, I initially created my version of S.C. in high school in 1981/82, when I still had great aspiration to be a comic book artist/writer and mostly frustrated that Marvel Comics didn't have an Australian superhero. After procrastinating, I finally sent a concept design (and pitch) to Stan Lee in the mid '80s—after which Stan got his secretary to write back that he loved the idea and was hand-passing this on to then-Marvel editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco... who sadly was not so inspired in the follow-up letter, knocking back the character in no uncertain terms (if politely).

At which time I stuck him in a drawer and sat on the character... until last year, when I started dreaming up a novel that pays homage to 1960s silver age Marvel stuff (Heropa) and decided to resurrect him the bugger.

But until the book comes out (around September?), it's definitely worthwhile exploring the other incarnations of an essential cultural icon—cast in tights—and seeing how different people explore the superhero medium from an Aussie and/or foreign perspective.

Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?

Other news — namely re: writing.

I just signed the contract with Perfect Edge Books for my anthology The Condimental Op, and it’s now in production.

This baby should be published in 4-5 months.

We're cobbling together noir, surrealism, comicbook asides and dystopian, hardboiled moments colliding with snapshots of contemporary culture. Think 1989 right through to 2013.

You will even find some of the articles about Japan that have appeared on this blog, in Geek and Impact magazines, or at Forces Of Geek.

Incidentally, on the subject of novels, I just got a great review for my last one One Hundred Years of Vicissitude, with big thanks to Dan Wright @ Pandragon Reviews.

And I’ve received some more fantastic artwork for Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? (my upcoming dual homage to 1930s-40s noir and 1960s comicbooks chiefly produced by Marvel) from Canadian artist Fred Rambaud (see above, with Southern Cross on the motorbike) while Mexican artist Rodolpho Reyes is putting together still more.

If you’re curious, you can stay abreast of things here.

You can also read about some of the early '60s comicbook influences at my other blog.

6:00 am in Tokyo

I’m spending most of my waking hours, and the ones during which time I should be sleeping, waylaid by Japan’s lovely August humidity – and also on novel #3 – Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? The current pitch is this:

Heropa: a vast, homogenized city patrolled by superheroes and populated by the adoring masses. A perfect place a lifetime away from the rain-drenched, dystopic metropolis of Melbourne. So, who is killing the great capes of Heropa?

Yep, as you can figure out, the Capes are superheroes. Kind of. It’s set in the future Melbourne dystopia of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat (without being a sequel) where the only escapism is a computer game wherein people play out the role of superhero/villain. All fun and games until someone starts knocking off these superheroes… hence the mystery.

Thing is I’m just past the half-way mark of writing the thing, so I’m sure there’ll be more twists and turns to come that I have no idea about at this stage. I just today changed my mind regarding tone – I had a dramatic segment set for the finale, which worked (I thought) as author, but detracted from the over all tone of the project. The simple fun of the comic.

While it’s shaping up as a wink, aesthetically speaking, to the Golden Age of comics in the 1930s/40s (one of my favourite periods for the noir, pulp, movies and cars) this is definitely more of an homage to the classic 1960s work of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at Marvel – and still gets to poke fun at the auspices of the Comics Code Authority.

There's also a sequence of a murder that reminded me of the death of Marat (and in particular that famous painting by Jacques-Louis David, so my wife Yoko sketched up this image above.

I waffled on a bit more about the writing stuff here.

Anyway, enough rambling. I need to get stuck back into the manuscript, if I can only ignore the fiendish cicada outside the window that sounds like a malfunctioning dentist’s drill.