Purveyor of sheer awesomeness.
Joshua Hale Fialkov is the Harvey, Eisner, and Emmy Award nominated writer of graphic novels, animation, video games, film, and television, including:
THE LIFE AFTER, THE BUNKER, PUNKS, ELK'S RUN, TUMOR, ECHOES, KING, PACIFIC RIM, THE ULTIMATES, I, VAMPIRE, and JEFF STEINBERG CHAMPION OF EARTH. He's also written television including MAX’s YOUNG JUSTICE, NBC's CHICAGO MED and NETFLIX’s AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER.
Tony Fleecs Draws Pancakes For Jimmy
Originally uploaded by Joshua Hale Fialkov.
Here's a page from a little 4 pager I did with Tony Fleecs of In My Lifetime fame. I'm honored to work with the guy, he's as good as they come. No sure when the actual book this is in comes out (I think around San Diego) but I'll let y'all know.
-- Sent Via E-Mail
I've been MIA because this weeks been apeshit insane. I did a quick update over at Creator Direct about what all I'm working on currently, and I didn't add that I'm also powering through hours of day job, and contracty type stuff during most of the days. Oh, and the very specific bus line that Dina takes to work and school is on strike, so I get to spend a couple hours a day racing around town trying to get from here to there in order to get where I need to be and get her where she needs to be. And to top it all off, I had to suffer through American Idol positively butchering Queen. They deserve to be punished severely for their sins.
And he said a little something... like this:
The thing is apeballs. I've never read a comic quite this nuts; Josh is writing a series of characters that read like brain spasms, a series that seems to be aiming more to send electricity up the spine than anything else.
Read the rest, and of course the stellar blog of Mr. Comics himself, here.
I forgot to mention this (or mentioned it and forgot, one of the two). Anyways, Kody Chamberlain (of ye olde Punks fame) started Creator Direct, a blog featuring a bunch of us young creator types. It's lots of fun and info, though still in its embryonic stages, go and check it out.
Friend and Blogger Mark Fossen had this, and more to say about the first 12 pages of Punks which we casually sent his way as part of our 'feedback phase.'
"Punks is the kind of thing you find when you wake up passed out on a friends couch with a splitting hangover. It's crumpled under your head, and as you come to consciousness, you read Punks and say : 'Dude. What the FUCK is this?? Where are the rest?' .... And then you spend the rest of the day calling your buddy 'Noisy McNoise-Noisenstein', and quoting lines from the book."
So, go read, get excited.
Or else.
or, How I Over-Analyze Punks, a comic about four guys setting each other on fire and punching each other in the nuts.
I had a long intellectual conversation with my manager about Punks today. He has a great knack for finding a greater depth to what I do then I ever really touch on. He’s also a real ball breaker in negotiations, but that’s beside the point.
So, one of the things he gave me to chew over was the idea of Ego, Super Ego, and Id. This pretty successfully covers three of the four main characters of the book, (and for that matter, just about every sitcom character structure there’s ever been.) But, we have one piece that doesn’t fit.
Ego, is that rational middle ground, trying to balance pleasure with survival, rationality with living a satisfied life. In Punks, that’s Abe. He’s the emotional center of the book, his whole thing is chewing over the right and wrong, the real and unreal, and while not necessarily always deciding properly, his decisions come from a place that is at the very least balanced. For those unfamiliar, using Seinfeld, he's the Jerry.
Super Ego is Dog, the self-doubting, self-hating, angry young man. He serves as that voice in the back of your head saying “You’re not good enough, and everybody’s on to you.” Again, to Seinfeld, he's the George.
Id is Skull. Skull is pure sensation. The pleasure in violence, the lack of interest in anyone other himself, and a temper that’s only matched by his need to feel in a very guttural sense. He is what he appears, and does what you’d expect (although, the uses he finds for duct tape are pretty remarkable, if I do say so myself.) So, now, and maybe this is a stretch, in Seinfeldian, he's the Elaine.
So, that’s all your Freudian labels applied, and yet we’re left with Fist (or, our Kramer). He’s the guy in the Mentos ads. He’s not particularly interested in where he’s going or what’s happening around him, and because of that, he tends to always come out, if not on top, at least better off than the rest. So, for the sake of this conversation, I’m looking at him as the Counter Ego. He goes against both Super Ego and Id, neither filled with rage nor self-doubt, and, further, has virtually no interest in figuring out which option is best. He simply is. And that’s why he succeeds.
Punks, as a book, is about a world that shits on you. We live in a time where we’re constantly attacked by world events, from the crush of gas prices to a whole generation sent off to a war with a purpose, at the very least, that’s unclear. In the comic, this comes across as a positively surreal wash of constant insanity that never quite manages to get the boys out of their self-obsessed funk. So, in theory, all the comedy comes from how these four parts of the mind deal with it.
And lots of groin punching.
My car has been randomly dying in the midst of my scuttling around town, so, with the week off from my day job I decided to get it fixed. I figured "A couple hours, couple hundred bucks, and it'll be right as rain." That was at 10:30 this morning. Took them 3 hours to look at the fucking thing, and then they handed me a quote for 1400 bucks to made the car 'road worthy.' My favorite note was "Well, you don't have to replace the axle, but, you hit a big enough pot hole and it's 'Goodbye Tires!'"
So, to make the most of this zombifying dead time, I've been trying to work through the second script for Punks. The highlight thus far being the coining of a new non-swear swear, "HOLY ANAL BEADS UP A MONKEY'S BUM!" It's a particularly angry script, I suppose mostly due to sitting in a cramped hard metal chair at Pep Boys for over 4 hours without internet to distract and pacify me.
Hopefully, I'll be done in 3 or 4 hours, and will return to a slightly less homicidal state of mind.
Here's a page of Punks #1 that Kody's showing off. To make this post something other than piss and vinegar with a heaping helping of bile.
The internet's barely abuzz about Wizard World this weekend. I'd reckon that's because it was pretty lackluster. Downtown Los Angeles is just not friendly for this sort of thing, unless it E3 which is so massive it's sort of a town unto itself. Aside from the hot dog vendors, there's pretty much no food within a walkable distance, parking is a nightmare, and well, everybody who lives in L.A. knows that. Compared to last month's Wondercon, which is usually one of the most low-key shows I go to, WWLA was just a massive disappointment. I'm thrilled we didn't exhibit, because I know we would've lost our shirts, and frankly, there's enough other ways to do that in this business. That being said, I got to see a lot of friends I rarely get to catch up with, despite living in the same city, and had some pretty interesting business conversations. So, it was good, it just wasn't the kind of show it should be. Considering the insanity that apparently way NYCC, you'd think Wizard would step up their game, all signs, though, point to not so much.
Oh, and guys, seriously, March in Los Angeles? Rainy Season. People who live in L.A.? Don't like driving in the rain. Don't have a convention in an inconvenient location during rainy season. Oh, and the whole 'marathon' thing, too. Who has a convention the weekend of the Los Angeles Marathon, mere blocks from the start and finish line? Whether it made the convention center inaccessible or not, I know everyone I talked to was making a point to stay home on Sunday just to avoid what might have been nothing.
Have you been reading the World's End blog? There's a bunch of new stuff up from last week, including the above.
Poof of Pudding = In Eating. Just finished the first draft. I'm... well. That was emotionally draining to say the least. Very fucking cathartic though. I think I'm going to go pass out for a bit.
Oh, also, the script is LOADS better with the different approach. I swear.
for me, anyhow, is no matter how well planned out a story is, when you're actually executing it, things have a tendency to just go where they want. Best laid plans and all of that. I've been hammering hard at Elk's Run 8's script for a couple months now. When things slowed down at Speakeasy, I took some time away from the book to get the other projects up and running, only to come back to the book with, at the very least, a very different sense of place and purpose for what I'm doing. So, I have this interesting little fight with myself between the story that I've been planning to tell since page 1, panel 1 of issue 1, or, just letting it roll where it needs to.
We'll see how it goes, I suppose.
In that issue there, there's a beautiful Elk's Run Review that says things like the following:
"Easiest described as Stephen King's The Body (aka Stand by Me) crossed with M. Night Shyamlan's The Village, but comic's best kept secret is actually a great deal more."
and
"A far from happy ending is exactly the reason we're reading why we're reading this excellent book in the first place."
So, go support the best horror mag on the stands, cause they've supported the best indie comic on the stands. It all works out karmically.
Speakeasy Comics Shuts Down - 3/7/2006 - Publishers WeeklyThere's a few quotes from yours truly, and it's a very interesting read. Go on and check it out.
Ain't It Cool News' Comics Reviews Year End Recap Delcares:
"VROOM’S 'WTF?' AWARD FOR MOST INSANE PLOT POINTS PER ISSUE ELK'S RUN from Speakeasy Press. "
Thanks Vroom & Co!
The deadline for the Harvey Awards Nominations are tomorrow at Midnight. The nomination process is open to all comics professionals and the form can be downloaded here. Now, if you were to say nominate Noel Tuazon for Best Artist, or Scott Keating for best colorist, and maybe even Jason Hanley for best Letterist, that'd be unbelievably cool. f you were to nominate Elk's Run for best mini-series, or Western Tales for best anthology... wow. And if you nominate me for best writer? Well, that's just crazy.
So anyways, whether you vote for us, or yourself, get out and vote!
Jebus. Thanks for all the well-wishes and kind words everybody. I'm behind on a deadline, so I'm gonna end up not answering a lot of these, at least not tonight. For those concerned, we're fine, and all saw this coming, so, don't worry. We've been planning our next move for quite some time, and know what's what.
Of course, if you really want to cheer me up you can visit http://www.WorldsEnd-TheComic.com and http://www.PunksTheComic.com still on the horizon.
So, just got off the phone with Adam Fortier, President etc. of Speakeasy Comics. Speakeasy is no more. Due to some payment problems and low sales, it seems, they've had to lock up shop. Elk's Run... well... We're working on it. The book is 90% done, and it's murder keeping it away from you guys, cause frankly, I've never been prouder than I am of the back half of the series. Everything clicks, and it's just amazing work from Keating and Noel... The type of stuff you, as a writer, only dream of having turned in.
The book will come out. You will get to read the rest of the series.
When and How are still our main questions.
ON SALE NOW!!!