Who's Who In The CBU Update 2008

Who are... Park and Barb?

Barbara Lien-Cooper writes the comic GUN STREET GIRL at Panel 2 Panel, was an original founder of Sequential Tart, is the managing editrix of the 2004 Eisner award-winning print magazine COMIC BOOK ARTIST, and was named by Mark Millar (The Authority, Ultimates, Wanted) as one of the three most promising new talents in the next wave of comics writing.

Park Cooper started writing about comics at the now-defunct DC FANZINE website.

Going Around: The Rob Vollmar Interview

By Park Cooper

Okay, announcement:

http://www.amazon.com/Atelier-Marie-Elie-Zarlburg-Alchemist/dp/1598165259/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-9355209-4583044?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186512893&sr=8-1

Atelier Marie and Elie -Zarlburg Alchemist- Volume 1

This new manga that's out next week (give or take) was the first adapted by Barb for Tokyopop... You know, someone does a literal translation of the Japanese-to-English, and then someone comes and rewrites it so you don't end up with 'All your base are belong to us.' Well, with Atelier Marie, that second someone was Barb, so please pick it up and enjoy it.

"Welcome to the Zarlburg Royal Magic Academy-- producers of the best alchemists in the world! When Marie, Zalburg's prodigal daughter and premier alchemist, returns to her alma mater after thrilling journeys in many foreign lands, she suddenly realizes things are not too exciting at home. But all that changes after running into fellow alchemist Elie, who has plans to open an alchemy workshop and become famous."

Barb enjoyed it, I enjoyed it, there's adventure, comedy, fantasy, all that stuff you like whether you're a gamer geek (cough cough STEVEN SAUNDERS cough cough) or a Harry Potter geek (cough cough WOLFEN cough cough) or a manga geek (cough cough TRISH cough cough) or just a regular person who enjoys light fun entertainment.

(cricket noise cricket noise)

Or some other type of fanboy or fangirl (cough cough EVERYONE ELSE I KNOW cough cough).

So please go to your local store or however you purchase things and get it. Enjoy!





And speaking of stores that sell manga to both genders, at the Papercutz table at San Diego, I ran into Rob Vollmar, once a writer here at SBC... I later interviewed him, as seen here:


Park Cooper: So Inanna's Tears was at Modern Tales for a while, eh?

Rob Vollmar: That is correct. We serialized Inanna's Tears at Modern Tales from January 1st through June 30th.

PC: Why Archaia? Not "why print", I get that-- how did you come to be at Archaia?

RV: That's got sort of a multi-fold answer so bear with me--

1) I've been a big admirer of Mark Smylie's since Artesia was still running at Sirius. When he turned self-publishing Artesia into a comics business, I knew I wanted to be a part of any organization that he was running

2) The tone of the story as a substantive if speculative proto-historical fiction fit in well with their line as it was developing

3) I think Archaia has one of the most organized and effective promotional machines in comics right now

4) They agreed to it :)

PC: Okay then, why a webcomic first?

RV: Well I for one wanted to see what that experience was like, interacting (as it were) on a weekly basis with folks as the story rolled out… MT was and is being edited by Shaenon Garrity for whom I have an immense respect. I think there was an underlying goal of seeing how pre-serialization online might affect the eventual sales numbers in the Direct Market and beyond. Also, pre-serializing online told the audience with 100% certainty that Inanna's Tears would always come out when we said and on time, every time.

PC: What have you done in the past to promote Inanna's Tears online as a webcomic, to get it readers and publicity?

RV: I was a bit of a novice at promoting a serial, online effort so probably not enough. But... I did the perfunctory bulletins at myspace and comicspace, I lobbied a number of bloggers to read and respond to the work… Most importantly, I reached out to the communities of goddess worshippers I could find online and invited them to experience something new and different as well. I sent out LOTS of press release when we hit various milestones.

PC: Who makes Inanna's Tears besides you? Are you the only writer? Who works on it besides you and the artist? Who colors, letters...

RV: mpMann (Marvin) is the penciller, inker, colorist, letterer and co-creator. We used a collaborative style that oscillated between full scripting and page plotting to make space for him creatively in the story as well. Marv's an amazing visual storyteller and I wanted to make sure we were getting the best of his love, so to speak.

PC: How often did Inanna's Tears update?

RV: We updated every week with somewhere between 3 and 6 pages of comics, and never missed a single week.

PC: I went to look at it at Modern Tales, but of course it wasn't there any more... so you were doing full pages?

RV: Absolutely. Usually one scene per week.

PC: How did Marvin manage to do such speed? Was the secret in the art style, or...?

RV: Boy, isn't that the 64 million dollar question? He's very dedicated and also quite sure of himself. I saw him pencil, ink, letter, etc multiple pages in a day

PC: How did you come to team up with him? And what had he done in comics before this?

RV: to answer your first question, we "met" officially on the Engine (Warren Ellis' message board). I was actually aware of Marv's work from Lone and Level Sands which addresses your second question. LALS was a book Marv did with A. David Lewis that took the narrative from Exodus about leaving Egypt and told it from the perspective of the Pharoah. Definitely worth a read.

RV: Marvin's done quite a bit of comics work but I haven't been awake long enough to rattle off a complete list for you :)

PC: Tell us (my readers) what you'd written before Inanna's Tears.

RV: My first work was with Pablo G. Callejo on THE CASTAWAYS which begin in serial form around 2002. Maybe even earlier, it's starting to get fuzzy… no, it was earlier. 2000 even. We probably started the project around November of 2000

PC: Where was it published?

RV: It came out in an action-adventure anthology called the Absence of Ink Theater which was published not surprisingly by a company called Absence of Ink. After Castaways, Pablo and I did BLUESMAN which took about three years total. Say from 2002 to 2005 (roughly). 180 pgs. Both CASTAWAYS and BLUESMAN are now published by NBM and are currently in print. I've also contributed a story to the recent resurrection of the Tales from the Crypt license from Papercutz.

PC: What are CASTAWAYS and BLUESMAN about?

RV: Well, they are both historical fiction set in the early part of the 20th century (1932 and 1928 respectively). CASTAWAYS is a about a young boy who runs away from home to try and find his father and maybe his fortune in rural Southwest Missouri during the Great Depression. BLUESMAN is the story of Lem Taylor, a wandering blues musician, who finds himself running from the law and worse for a crime he didn't commit. …A lot of running there, heh.

PC: Why these period pieces? I can imagine why the first two in the same time... you get a good feel for a period in one story, no reason not to use that knowledge again for a different story. But I'm seeing a pattern... recently I was asked to look at someone's pitch list... they hadn't classified them, so I did. And I found myself making the category "period piece" which... hadn't been something I realized needed a big category slot. But it does. I'd just never thought about it.

RV: By that definition, everything I've done has been a period piece in some way or another.

PC: I'm sayin'.

RV: I like using the time and place as a springboard for storytelling. In the case of the CASTAWAYS, I actually grew up in rural south Missouri (as did my grandmother and mother) so I was writing about a place with which I was intimately familiar. With BLUESMAN, I was drawing more on my life-long study of the blues as a form and my own experiences as both reformed Christian (meaning that I was once deeply religious and now I am not) and a professional musician to overcome the fact that my main character was from a different ethnic background than I was.

PC: Tell me about your music.

RV: Well like any white male that grew up in the 1980s, I cut my musical teeth on a lot of bad hair metal. But from the periphery of even that culture, I was able to find roads into nearly every other style of music.

PC: Okay... so what music do you do?

RV: Well basically I'm just a musician. I don't play favorites when it comes to playing it though of course I do in my listening…

PC: Dude. Do you play the accordion? Is that what you're trying to...?

RV: Guitar, heh heh heh.

PC: Okay. Juuuust checking.

RV: But I also sing, play the bass, keys, produce, etc… I didn't understand your question.

PC: Well I was ready to let you get to it in your own time, but finally I was like... "He writes filksongs for cons! That must be it!" And if you know about filksongs, you're almost as geeky as I. Not that I'm big on the filk scene

RV: I do and I'm ashamed.

PC: Just-- there you go. Just knowing about it is enough.

RV: I sort of wrote one about Frank Miller returning to do Batman.

PC: Gaaah. Title?

RV: Based on "Bigmouth Strikes Again" by the Smiths

PC: ...That earns you points... and YOUR title?

RV: "Dark Knight Strikes Again" of course. Something like "Frank Miller, I was only joking when I said we'd like to see you do Batman again..." "…and now I know how John Byrne felt, now I know how Johhhhn Byrne felt oh oh oh oh…" You get the idea… I'm so ashamed

PC: Wife Barbara is amused… Okay let's jump back. What's up with this comic store you work at?

RV: I manage Atomik Pop! which has two branches one in Norman, Oklahoma and one in Oklahoma City.

PC: You manage both. But not own? Or also own?

RV: It is a completely singular shopping experience that I give myself partial credit for arranging… I don't own them-- I'm a comics advocate not a capitalist.

PC: >blink blink< A little Marxism there, comrade?

RV: I got my start in retail working with my dad in the music instrument retail business in the early 90s… I'm a solid businessman but for me it's about selling comics not making money. I let the business model take care of that. Let's just say I'm not a big fan of free market capitalism and leave it at that.

RV: The vision at Atomik Pop is to reach out to every human being on Earth in the stock we provide with an emphasis on comics and manga.

PC: Oh certainly... I find it important that you have manga. I could name a Texas store that doesn't… gave up on it... felt people could and were get/getting it at Borders/chains and that he couldn't compete…

RV: I'd go so far as to call us the dominant player in manga in the Norman area… We've competed effectively with the box stores and feel confident about our ability to continue to do so. We also stock the Sanrio/Hello Kitty line of products and feel we probably have one of the highest female clientele of any store in the country by percentage. Depending on the day, women can easily outnumber men shopping across the breadth of our inventory, not just shopping for purses.

PC: My my! And this was your decision, was it?

RV: Well it was certainly part of my vision. The owner, Steve Richter, gave me a blanket vision which was to think mainstream and I interpreted that to mean go after the 51% of the population completely shunned by most shops.

PC: I often think of that bit at the end of A Game of You where the girl buys the comic for her friend and she's totally creeped out… I have seen a couple of stores like that although only a couple quite that bad. Er, this is a Sandman reference, if you skipped that storyline due to the art...

RV: Heh I read all of Sandman but it was at least ten years ago so my recollection of it goes something like: Sam Keith cool wow dreams are odd Man I love Craig Russell Neil Gaiman's a genius

RV: I have other works of Gaiman's I'm more familiar and fond of accordingly… Murder Mysteries for example. Speaking of Craig Russell.

PC: Read any webcomics these days?

RV: Terrible confession: almost none. As a direct market manager and a comics critic and creator, I'm freaking drowning in print comics as it is. If I spent time at the computer reading comics, it would only be by eliminating sleep or restroom breaks. I probably ingest a couple thousand pages a week for real

PC: Okay lightning round.

RV: Hit me.

PC: Are graphic novels gonna do away with the single issue format?

RV: No (do I explain in lightning round?)

PC: You do if prompted—I'm prompting you.

RV: The single remains the most effective means for the moment to promote a graphic novel in the DM. Also, some creators do better work in shorter forms. Third, comic books are fun and people love them. Will they continue to dominate the industry? Definitely not and probably don't already right now. We need to be exploring more formats to reach more people, not winnowing away our options.

PC: Pick one: Fantasy or Science Fiction.

RV: For me, fantasy because I prefer history to the future.

PC: Hmmm... are you now or have you ever been

PC: A GAMER

RV: In junior high and high school, I did some fairly serious gaming. Moreso in junior high. We played a variety of systems including D&D, Rolemaster, MERP, and the occasional game of James Bond.

PC: Ha ha, a true gamer doesn't think to ask if I mean rpg or video games… it was an open trap to see if you'd ask… and indeed you did not ask so I salute you sir. ...Seriously though... any video games, too?

RV: I was a big fan of arcade gaming in the eighties. Loved the stand up machines.

PC: Now THAT's true of all 80s boys like ourselves.

RV: I've become increasingly ambivalent towards it as the console gaming era has marched on… I have a dead Xbox right now. I usually enjoy playing Morrowind or Buffy on it with the wife

PC: Now that's an interesting point. Does she read the comics, the manga, experience the etc?

RV: Yeah, she's a pretty active partner in the comics/manga sickness…

PC: Favorite movies, go.

RV: Movies… Papillion… er… (thinking)…(not a big movie guy)…

PC: What manga you reading? Also, fave anime.

RV: Wow that's a long list. I buy a lot of offbeat stuff but have some mainstream faves as well…

PC: Lightning round!! Lightning round!! >hits you with bamboo<

RV: Anything Tezuka, anything shojo from before 1980

PC: Old school.

RV: Tail of the Moon, Dragon Head, Yakitate Japan… shojo beat like a crack fiend…

PC: Barb likes Bride of Deimos in a sick way. Now that's old school.

RV: Oh yeah Bride of Deimos is prime…

PC: Anime?

RV: I just got a French edition of the Rose of Versailles that I'm slogging through now.. anything by Satoshi Kon, Yoshitoshi Abe…

PC: Naruto?

RV: Not Naruto.

PC: Fruits Basket?

RV: Just started exploring Inu-Yasha…

PC: Gah… the thing about Inu-Yasha is that geometrically it is a spiral that gets bigger. It spirals out beyond the known universe. It does not end. Much like Ranma.

RV: I'm a big admirer of Rumiko Takahashi… a BIG Maison Ikkoku fan… shit makes me cry like a girl scout

PC: Yes, Maison Ikkoku... The One That Ended. The One With Closure.

RV: Well anime and manga don't really excel at closure… It's my observation that that is a Western hangup. For them, it's the journey not the destination…

PC: Ah, but Fruits Basket does well enough. That director is genius.

RV: There are exceptions of course. Another fave: Saikano in both manga and anime form. An utterly demented piece of work. Cruel sadistic wonderful love story. I also really enjoyed Gankuotsuo.

PC: Okay, I'm going to destroy one: you can keep Marvel or DC. Which will you keep around?

RV: Historically I'm a DC kid… I have favored characters in both pantheons as it were though. I think of the two as an old couple whose relationship thrives on conflict with each other, keeps them both alive and healthy… but go ahead and blow up Marvel. See if I care. Heh. Just don't screw with Firestorm.

PC: >FOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM<

PC: I read Firestorm back in the Gerry Conway days. Nobody does crack villains like Conway. But it was more than just crack. There was some good writin' there sometimes.

RV: I'm not holding it up as genius or anything but it got me off at 13 so huzzah, you know? There were a few issues drawn by Rafael Kayanan that are worth going back to look at.

PC: Is that the guy who excels at drawing people who hear something behind them and so they constantly whip around with a look on their face like WHAT THE FUDGE?!?!?!? People used to do that all the time in Firestorm…

RV: Ha ha no but that's funny. Kayanan has a beautiful style that was almost of no use to the book. He drew more detail into Firestorm's fire-wake or whatever the fuck you'd call that than you would believe possible. Very Baroque in a sickly applied sort of way Also Kayanan's women were actually sexy like maybe he'd seen one before. He did a fill in on Conan recently that was similarly impressive… He doesn't like to talk about the Firestorm thing I gather lol

RV: But the lightning round!!!!

PC: I think I'm out of lightning… I was looking up Rafael Kayanan. Pretty art.

RV: Everyone in comicdom should look him up. He's amazing and also works as a martial arts choreographer related to this ancient form of knife fighting that stems from the Phillipines.

PC: Let's see... did I ask favorite novels?

RV: Ah, novels. Well my background is in literature, so I have a few… classics might include Jude the Obscure, Absalom! Absalom!, Ethan Frome… I did a lot of sf and fantasy as you might expect, so Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Herbert, Tolkien, Lewis etc. More recently, Waiting for the Barbarians… the Paul Auster book about the dog… (what the hell was that called? grrr)…Watership Down (big influence)

PC: How you mean "background is in literature" …you a Lit major like me?

RV: Timbuktu

RV: Paul Auster book

RV: Uh yeah I have an undergrad in English. I mostly read non-fiction now to be honest. And a shitload of comics

PC: Well that's about all I can think of for now... you got anything we haven't talked about?

RV: I announced a new project at SDCC 2007 if you'd like to talk about that… It's a two volume graphic novel from NBM that focuses on Frank Zappa's life as a teenager, with artist Eric Knisley called Frank Zappa: At Lancaster.

PC: And how did you encounter Knisley for collaboration? Ellis forum again?

RV: No, I picked up on Eric at the Comics Journal message board in a thread about Kirby and Zappa… I went to his website, figured out what an genius he was and pitched him the project. As it turned out, he was looking for a substantive project to take on and we were off to the races. After San Diego this year, we actually drove up into the Mojave desert and did extensive research on Lancaster and the surrounding area for the book. I have about 25 pages of script already completed with more accruing every day and art starting to take shape. We hope to hit the market with it by SDCC of 2008… 100 pgs, full color. Beyond that, I guess I'll just say that Inanna's Tears #1 is in the stores right now, on a bi-monthly schedule for five issues, and that every jot and tiddle of the art is already done so there'll be no shipping delays.
















Wicker Man Studios update: I often hear about Half Dead being sold out at comic book stores these days -- just ask the store to order a copy for you, or else get it online, there are lots of places to do so. Since the distribution is through Marvel, they should be able to get it for you quite quickly (especially if we're talking about North America).

http://www.panel2panel.com/gsg-archives.html
http://www.wickermanstudios.com
http://www.halfdeadcomic.com
http://www.comicspace.com/wickermanstudios

In the meantime, Atelier Marie and Elie shall be found everywhere in freakin' North America.

http://www.amazon.com/Atelier-Marie-Elie-Zarlburg-Alchemist/dp/1598165259/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-9355209-4583044?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186512893&sr=8-1