Broken Frontier

On June 1st, Bob Layton (series creator/writer/inker) will kick off the first installment of a new, free, web-comic series entitled--COLONY. 

The story, developed by Layton as television series, has been broken into three, separate tales that are interconnected through the main characters. The series launch will begin with the second part of the saga and will be serialized each month, exclusively on Bob's personal website, www.boblayton.com.  The plan is to publish the story in five page, monthly episodes until, in Layton's own words, "...until the saga is done--probably several years from now."
Bob gave a brief synopsis of the basic storyline as follows:

COLONY
"Several hundred years from now--on the outer rim of explored space--there is a place where they say that hope no longer exists.
They were wrong.
Wrongly sentenced to 30 years of hard labor, Scott Landus is sent to The COLONY --a galactic "Devil's Island" where the fascist Galactic Confederacy routinely disposes of their human and alien refuse. Attempted jailbreaks, social upheavals, racism, natural disasters, political intrigue, medical emergencies, romantic entanglements and good, old fashioned murder mysteries are all 'par for the course' in the world of COLONY.
During the saga of COLONY, Landus will undergo an amazing transformation from a lowly inmate--to a reluctant leader and ultimately--to a mythical icon whose influence will change the very galaxy forever."
"I've had several producers read the entire screen treatment for Colony and they absolutely loved it," said Layton, "but my Rep kept hearing back that they thought the premise was simply too big for the small screen. I remembered reading an inteview with George Lucas, where he stated that he couldn't get any studio to bite on the Star Wars concept until he had Ralph McQuarrie paint those now-famous pre-production illustrations. That's when I decided to do the comic version first--to demonstrate how the words on the page translate, not only into powerful images, but a workable and compelling continuing story."
Bob adds, "The idea for doing the series as a web comic came to me after receiving a recent monthly web hits report. Once I realized how large the boblayton.com audience had become, it's conceivable  that I could get as many regular, monthly readers than any given Marvel comic.  That was enough to convince me.

After all, a built-in audience will only add to the concept's marketability."

The legendary illustrator Dick Giordano (www.dickgiordano.com) will be providing the pencils for Colony and Ian Sokoliwski (http://www.angelfire.com/comics/red_bee/) will be the series' colorist.