Broken Frontier

Hello again. Welcome to another exciting edition of Indie Spotlight. This week our guest if Daniel Lundie, creator of Robin Node. Take a peek at what Daniel had to say in the Ten Questions and then give his comic a shot.

The Mighty 10 Questions!

1. Who are you and what is your book?

Daniel Lundie: My name is Daniel Lundie and I'm an "independent" comic book creator. I published a comic in POSTER format as an experiment. ROBIN NODE is that comic poster, and it's available at http://www.futurius.com/buy.html for all.

It's a very low-priced purchase too. I wanted to put out something that was available for a wider range of people. There are a lot of worries from comic buyers today that comics cost too much. I wanted to do something about that.

2. What's your book about? Can you compare it to any other books out right now?

ROBIN NODE is a futuristic re-imagining of the old Robin Hood legend. Everyone knows Robin Hood, whether it’s from the movies, cartoons, novels or even comic books from yesteryear. This is a translation of the old tale, setting it 60 years in our future, with flying cars, crazy robot security guards, energy-blasting bows and plasma arrows.

I’m not sure if it can be compared to other books out there as it's closer to action movies, kind of like Die Hard meets Blade Runner by way of Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (with a hint of the Matrix and Austin Powers). There's a lot of character comedy and action, plus a bunch of science fiction concepts.

3. Who are some of your major influences?

For ROBIN NODE, Prince Of Thieves was a big influence. Also British comedy movies from recent years, like The Full Monty.
I wanted to do a retelling of the Robin Hood myth with the kind of characters you see from The Full Monty or Trainspotting, British slackers and idiots who kind of drift through life getting into all sorts of really stupid and funny situations but not really seeing the funniness in it themselves.

On the comics thing as a whole, Grant Morrison is a huge influence. Mark Waid is too. Brian K. Vaughan is up there, as is Brian Michael Bendis. Then again, everyone says Bendis is an influence.

4. What inspires you?

The biggest thing is probably wanting to be a superhero myself. A real one, which as you can imagine is a difficult thing to make happen. It takes forever waiting for an origin to show up and happen.

Also, just wanting to express myself and share my ideas and feelings. I'm a very misunderstood person, as are most people these days I'd imagine, so I try and play with that in my work - characters that are misunderstood and where it takes them, or concepts put out there to see what others make of them. Everyone seems to decipher things differently, which is interesting.

5. Would you ever like your book to be mainstream, or are you pleased with where it is?

It is mainstream already, in everything except sales. The art looks mainstream, the ideas are very mainstream, the characters have a universal feel that makes them easy to relate to. I think I'm stylistically a very mainstream creator.
Would I like ROBIN NODE as a series to go mainstream? Yeah, that could be fun. But not at the expense of the story I have planned for it.
We'll see what happens. I'm always open to offers.

6. Do you aspire to make it into the mainstream? For instance, if you were offered a job at Marvel or DC would you take it?

It depends. I've got a big love for a lot of DC and Marvel characters and yes, I'd love to work on those characters. But again, if it meant ruining my love for them or "bastardising" them, I'd have to say no.
But I'm aiming myself that way right now. They've got a lot of powerful myths and I'd like to contribute to those.

7. Do you aspire to stay in comics? Or do you just want to tell a few stories and be done with the medium?

I really like the format and I feel right now I've got a lot of ideas and stories to tell and it'll bug me if I don't get most of them out. I love a lot of forms of entertainment, but I feel comics are one of the mediums that need the most different voices in them right now. Too many of them are saying the same thing, in exactly the same way.

So, I'll likely stay in comics as long as it's fun, as long as I've got stuff to say, and as long as I'm adding more than taking.

8. Do you have any other projects lined up?

Always. Right now I'm even saying no to projects, which is ridiculous.
I'm doing art for a six page Buffy the Vampire Slayer spoof that was published around Halloween and we're planning a group anthology on my message boards, which will be published through my company Futurius.

For more details on all this plus the other upcoming projects, check out my website at http://www.futurius.com and the forum at http://www.futurius.com/Futuri_Plex/index.php.

9. What books are you into right now?

SLG's Bear is utterly fantastic and the funniest book I've read in a long time. Runaways and Ex Machina are great. The new Books Of Magic series is really cool.

10. Where can folks go to see more of your work and purchase your comics?

For more of my work, including free web comics I've done, go to http://www.futurius.com and look through the site. There's a bunch of stuff there, as well as some experimental comics.
There's also info on all the published stuff that I've been involved in, as well as the upcoming stuff.

To buy ROBIN NODE: The Comic Poster go to http://www.futurius.com/buy.html and also check out the 'Node mini-site at http://www.robinnode.futurius.com.

Bonus Questions

So let me get this straight, your comic comes in poster form? So it’s not bound and it’s basically one page?

Nope. It's an experiment in testing out the comic storytelling format on new media. Try and get it out there a bit. Maybe people who like things like posters but wouldn't normally touch a comic BOOK might give a comic POSTER a try.

I always think it’s interesting to see how writers work. How far in advance do you have your story scripted?

It really depends on the story. There's some that have been inside my head for years that I just haven't gotten around to writing out yet. I wrote a Superman movie script for fun (which can be found at http://www.daniellundie.futurius.com/supermanmoviescript.html in full) which took me three months to do because I already had the whole thing written out in my head. I usually see scenes and dialogue playing out like 3D movie scenes in my head, so the writing comes from just trying to put those scenes on paper and describe them as best I can.

Of course, it can be pretty boring if you do it like that all the time. Sometimes I just shoot from the hip on it and write it out as it's coming to me.

And there you have it folks. The first ever comic poster. Feel free to follow Daniel’s links and try out his comic.