Read Part One. Read Part Two.

Series Premise

Felix is a 'Pilgrim of the Road'. In this world there is one road grander than all others and it runs possibly forever in length. No one knows if the Earth is no longer a sphere, or if it has just increased massively in size. All that is known is that there is a road with populated cities and settlements along it that you can travel down your whole life and it will never end or repeat. Once there was no road like this and the world was a nice manageable place.

The Pilgrims of the Road are a group devoted to finding the Source or Terminus of the Road, and they travel down the Road for their entire lives. When they die, each Pilgrim passes the task on to one of their sons or daughters and then they travel the Road. Chosen Pilgrim families have the knowledge of their ancestors stored in an AI implanted into their skulls. These are ancient artifacts passed through the generations, designed to accumulate knowledge of the Road and aid the current Pilgrim's progress by supplying information from past experiences.

We join Felix as he's readying to leave a city to join the Road again, but this time he's cutting all ties with the Pilgrims. He is one of the Chosen with an AI in his forehead. The Pilgrims are unlikely to let him leave freely without his obedience to their cause assured. Felix is on the run from his fellow Pilgrims and assorted city low-lives while trying to get out of the city and further down the Road.

Page 58

This page came together really easily which is always a good sign. Miah likewise bests the Orphan Elite with ease. The action flows nicely and I liked the idea of using a humble knife to strike down a powerful enemy, almost like an insult. A lot of time is spent planning how to tell a scene in the story. How best to make it effective. This page came together easily which is probably why I like it. It didn’t cause me pain, only the Orphan Elite!

Page 59

Is a rather important page in Road as it marks the final desperate fight of the Pilgrim’s Chapterhouse against the Orphan forces. The mobile headquarters of the Pilgrims for generations finally stops moving and the Pilgrim’s mission is seemingly brought to an early close. The fall of the Chapterhouse is a big moment in Road. None of the characters really expected it to occur, yet it did, and those Pilgrims left in the aftermath have to forge new destinies for themselves.

Page 71

Shows the first of Felix’s downloaded memory flashbacks. It introduces Galen for the first time and links him to Felix and the Elder. This all sows seeds for the future!

We did think hard about how to show these flashbacks and whether they should even be drawn in a different style. In the end we thought that would be too jarring a transition for the reader, especially for the longer flashbacks, so we went for the data borders whenever the flashbacks appear, borders that hark back to the image of when Felix first downloaded the memories.

The name for the character Galen came from a dim and distant memory of a history lesson. Galen being one of the most important people in the early history of medicine, his drive and determination to try and understand the human body even though most of his experiments and ideas caused outrage at the time seemed to fit our character perfectly.

Page 74

Here Jay shows her combat skills and we get to see her true hair! Not enough people in comics wear a wig these days (o;

She’s named after a guy I used to sit next to at work. He told me to name a character in Road after him, so sorry Jay, it had to be a girl! Her character is a good fit with Felix and Raoul though, as they make their way from Kaiden’s Rift and further down the Road.

Page 77

The reader hasn’t seen Michael, Felix’s cousin, since the Pilgrim Chapterhouse fell, and here he returns with a character only mentioned before, but never seen, the Surgeon General. These two will come into play later on. The ‘mutoad’ was an addition we both really liked, perhaps more than it deserved!

The future of Road

With 83 pages (at time of writing) of Road available to read up on Zuda.com and having completed 91 pages to date, we’re starting to near the 100 page milestone which will feel like a big achievement. There are 20 more pages after that until the end of Road Season 2. Do we know if there will be a season 3? No, which is why every page of Road until page 120 will be one that counts. Knowing there is a definite page count of 120 pages for this story arc presented a real storytelling challenge. There is so much Road story to tell that we have to plan and prune very carefully so that we don’t squash in events in an unnatural manner. Road has taken on a life of its own and the characters have become very real to us. I hope it continues as long as the Road….possibly forever. (o:

Check out Road at the Zuda website here.

A product of the same keen editorial minds that revolutionised British comics with Action and 2000 AD, "Battle" is the greatest British war comic ever published! Over 300 pages of relentless action are collected here, from the desperate dogfights of Johnny Red to the down-and-dirty Rat Pack, the reflective, critically acclaimed Charley's War and the uncompromising Hellman of Hammer Force! Created and drawn by some of the biggest names in British comics, including Pat Mills and John Wagner (co-creators of "2000 AD"), Joe Colquhoun ("Charley's War", "Johnny Red") and more.

The book is a mammoth 288 pages long and took me a while to read. Every strip has a one pager introduction noting place and time, explaining the premise and an interesting insight by the then-editor of the magazine (most often than not Pat Mills). Most three-pagers are presented in roughly twenty pages screen time before they are rotated back into history by the next strip.

Art-wise, all strips are drawn in a realistic, figurative style with dynamic panels featuring black and white art. The scratchy outlook of the pencils only adds to the drama and all strips are real beauts to look at. There's not a bad artist in the book and on a book that rotates strips every twenty pages, that's saying something! The art also shines on the pulpy paper stock that forms a link with the past. Reproduction quality is excellent and the blacks are solid and sharp, quite an achievement with the detailed renderings of tanks, guns, explosions etc that the artists undertake. I'll go over the strips singling out the ones that grabbed my attention the most.

With only a year left to live thanks to a German bullet lodged near his heart, D-Day Dawson gave his all for the war with daring rescues and heart-stopping action. A high octane strip with a heart, Dawson constantly offers up his life to save his comrades while being burdened with the knowledge that he is the only one who knows why he undertakes all the risks. Very good.

One of the weaker strips in the book is Day of the Eagle where the Eagle is an assassin who gets the assignment of ... killing Hitler. Since we all know how Hitler died, it kinda defeats the purpose of any underlying tension and the character is devoid of any emotion making it also hard to root for the Eagle itself.

The ageless tale of the ever patriotic youngster who is too young to enroll but still manages to enlist set in his ways to become an exemplary marine. The Bootneck Boy is nothing exceptional in either execution or art but manages to entertain due to a boyish charm and the lovable character work.

The Dirty Dozen but with only four, Rat Pack focuses on high octane action and risky missions. However, I found the character work a bit stale and the characters chosen a bit boring. The trick is making us care about the criminals and unfortunately that is not the case here.

Slacker Major Eazy stars in the strip of his own name and it is a groovy outlook at how to view the battle front with a keen mind and relaxed attitude. The title suggests a more hippie approach but in essence, it takes a more Buddhist stance; Eazy always taking in the happenings to then deliver the solution for the problem thanks to a razor sharp insight of the mechanics of war. Very good.

Hold Hill 109 is a high concept tale where every strip represents one day in the life of a bunch of soldiers who need to hold the fortress at Hill 109 against an overwhelming force of Germans. The strip lasts 6 episodes representing six days. It's one of the better stories in the book because of the mounting tension and allotted time frame.

Darkie's Mob is the story of Darkie who leads an unwitting band of soldiers back against enemy lines against their will. John Wagner writes an überviolent tale of revenge without compromises. One of the most engaging strips in the book, it oozes a roughness and grit that is sometimes missing from the other strips while raising a lot of questions about Darkie and his mission at the same time.

Kurt Slinger is a German soldier accused of cowardice but as Panzer G-Man he sets out to defend his family name! A recurring theme of redemption shows up in the German protagonist stories. The setting as a dog soldier walking side by side with monster tanks lifts this up from the rest though. A truly horrifying look at one of the many unknown jobs soldiers had to undertake.

Joe Two Beans found his inspiration in the Indian character from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. An unwilling Apache soldier who doesn't sleep but is moved by the atrocities the Japs perform on American soldiers, pushing him to join the fight in his own way. A nice inbetweener and it mostly stands out because of Joe himself, created and written by John Wagner.

While some strips suffer from a lack of unique voices in the cast, Johnny Red is a brawling do-gooder who has enough character to make him stand out between the rest. Another winner where Johnny Red is a rogue pilot behind enemy lines who needs to clear his name and return to friendly territory. It's his unique voice and excellent character work that makes this strip shine.

Crazy Keller is a bit of a disappointment and tries too hard to emulate the relaxed approach of Major Eazy. Keller is a black market dealer with a good streak hidden behind a rough exterior. It seems often bodged down by the fact that the ending always had to make Keller a 'good' character which seems to contradict the black market angle quite a bit.

The General Dies at Dawn is another high-concept strip telling the story of a German general who is sentenced to death and tells his story to his jailer. Every strip is one hour of tales told and in six hours he'll be executed by the firing squad. It's a nice idea but the tension is undercut by underlining straight away how the generals road to his execution is paved. I did find it amenable that the general is not a truly good human being but he is an honourable soldier.

The legendary Charley's War needs no further explanation. Often cited as the best British war story in any medium, Charley's War was created by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun. It tells the story of young Charley going through the horrors of the Great War, documenting his experiences on the Somme, Ypres and the Advance of 1918. Charley is a ground level character and we see the war through his eyes. A very human and touching approach while at the same time not absconding on the horrors of war. Highly recommended.

Other strips are Fighter from the Sky, The Sarge, Fighting Mann, Hellman of Hammer Force and Death Squad. All of them solid action tales but the concepts do not lift them above the herd like almost all of the above did.

In general, the concepts are solid and well thought through, or at least in the stories presented because it is hard to tell how certain things hold up in larger chunks than published here.

If you find yourself hankering for a good war tail after stepping away from Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, look no further! The Best of Battle is a supremely good book that represents a flock of gold of the holy grail of war comics. The all British creators go all out and the constantly innovating concepts and different outlooks on war are truly a joy to read.

The Best of Battle is published by Titan Books Ltd. It is a 288 pages black and white softcover retailing for $ 19.95 and is available in finer bookstores and comic shops across the world.

Read Part One

Series Premise

Felix is a 'Pilgrim of the Road'. In this world there is one road grander than all others and it runs possibly forever in length. No one knows if the Earth is no longer a sphere, or if it has just increased massively in size. All that is known is that there is a road with populated cities and settlements along it that you can travel down your whole life and it will never end or repeat. Once there was no road like this and the world was a nice manageable place.

The Pilgrims of the Road are a group devoted to finding the Source or Terminus of the Road, and they travel down the Road for their entire lives. When they die, each Pilgrim passes the task on to one of their sons or daughters and then they travel the Road. Chosen Pilgrim families have the knowledge of their ancestors stored in an AI implanted into their skulls. These are ancient artifacts passed through the generations, designed to accumulate knowledge of the Road and aid the current Pilgrim's progress by supplying information from past experiences.

We join Felix as he's readying to leave a city to join the Road again, but this time he's cutting all ties with the Pilgrims. He is one of the Chosen with an AI in his forehead. The Pilgrims are unlikely to let him leave freely without his obedience to their cause assured. Felix is on the run from his fellow Pilgrims and assorted city low-lives while trying to get out of the city and further down the Road.

Page 33

Ever gambled and lost? Well, here's where Felix has definitely lost. Captured by his former Pilgrim Sister allies in the heart of the Orphan base, surrounded by enemies with no allies in sight, he's not doing so well.

Road is almost entirely written and drawn in the evenings and into the small hours of the morning. In the quiet night, there's less distractions and it's easier to get totally lost in creating the Road world. Maybe hopeless situations like this one are easier to imagine too.

Themes of discovery versus blind loyalty and obedience are central conflicts throughout Road. Catalyst characters like Felix and Galen are interesting as they try and push the boundaries of what's accepted as unchallengeable facts.

Page 38

Kyde; too crazy to die, too extreme to live. It'll take more than an exploding building to spoil his day. Sometimes it would be nice to take the time out to maybe have more panels of wanton carnage. Like some of the sections of the Akira graphic novel where there is just page after page of meticulously rendered destruction. Sadly, there wouldn’t be much room left for plot.

Kyde has a good story which we're itching to tell. I don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll say no more.

Page 46

A fun page. The Pilgrims versus the Orphans; only one group will walk away from this. All the posturing is over and it's down and dirty, fight for your life stuff. We debated how exactly to show this big battle and in the end a big splash page seemed best. This is the only splash page in Road so far. I thought it would be quicker to draw than a regular page, but that proved not to be the case at all! There are so many characters in there.

Page 50

Is a fairly important one in terms of plot, as it is the first time the reader is shown the Dark Arms' power, which becomes important to the story later on. It was also a good chance to show the Pilgrim Sisters and the Orphan Elite having a showdown to see who was more badass. It looks like the Elite are winning. Miah's story thread has also branched off from Felix by this point and she gives the reader another perspective on the events that are unfolding as the Orphans attack the Pilgrim Chapterhouse.

We are not religious and didn’t really have the intention at the start to necessarily make the Pilgrims, Sisterhood and other factions out to be overtly religious at all. But as the planning for Road took shape, it just seemed to naturally fall into place. It seemed obvious that if such a strange event took place like that which created the Road, then a new religion would also emerge to try and make sense of it. The terminology and hierarchies were ready made for us to use and didn’t require any explaining to the reader.

There were originally many more factions in the story, but for clarity and sanity we decided to focus on the Pilgrims, Orphans and Sisterhood just to give a taste of the sectarian nature of the Road universe.

Page 55

This is where Felix and Kyde both prepare to steal data from the AI artifacts of other people. By having the two situations occur in parallel and using the same dialogue in the last panel, we thought it would help show the importance of what they were about to do and how deeply it would affect them both. It also ties Felix and Kyde's fates together. The two have never met, but one day….

Check out Road at the Zuda website here. To be continued tomorrow... 

BROKEN FRONTIER: Wonderland is ending and Neverland comes around the corner! Can you tell us a tad about this Neverland, its inhabitants and its horrors?

JOE BRUSHA: Like all of our Grimm Fairy Tales series it’s a dark re-imagining of Peter Pan and everything has been turned around from the original. Most of the characters from the original story appear in the series [but] they’ve just been given the Grimm Fairy Tales make over. The croc has been transformed into a really monstrous beast that I think fans are going to love.

BF: That is indeed something I am looking forward to! Who are the leading characters in this new series?

JB: Peter Pan is the bad guy and Hook has been reinvented as the Hero, although he’s not called Hook in my version of Neverland. His name is Cross and the heroine in the story and his love interest is Wendy. Tinker Bell is still with Pan but she’s not truly evil and she plays kind of a wild card in the story.

BF: Wonderland eventually became a trilogy, with two sets of oneshots to wrap it up. Now you can never predict the future of this next series, but how will Neverland be set up at this point?

JB: Right now it is set up as a single miniseries. But it is part of the greater Grimm Fairy Tales Universe so I’m sure there will be other Neverland stories to tell down the road. If it’s as successful as Wonderland we’ll probably try to figure out what they are sooner rather than later.

BF: Who came up with the idea of Neverland in this Zenescope-fashion?

JB: I did. I can’t really explain how it came to me but it was one of the first stories I thought about doing for the Grimm universe. So it’s kind of been sitting around for the past few years.

BF: Who is the artistic team at this point? And do you also have plans for a regular kick-ass artists like Eric Basaldua did for Wonderland?

JB: Right now we have Vic Durichio doing pencils. Jason Embury is doing colors and Bernie Lee will be handling letters. We would love for Ebas to keep doing covers for the series and I’m sure we’ll get a couple from Al Rio. David Finch did the cover for issue #1 which is awesome. We definitely want to keep kick-ass level on covers as high as possible.

BF: Joe, besides being the writer of this series, you are also one of the presidents of Zenescope. Did you start out as a writer yourself or is it something that came to you after you became president of the United States of Zenescope?

JB: I was a writer first and kind of fell into running a comic book publishing company by default. My partner and I, Ralph Tedesco, we’re aspiring screenwriters who couldn’t get anyone to look at our scripts. I had been a huge comic book fan growing up and we saw publishing comics as an outlet for all these stories we wanted to tell.

BF: Zenescope Ent. seems like a very successful and driven company. What are your thoughts about the current publishing climate and the state of the economy?

JB: I would agree that we are driven. Successful in some ways yes, but this is a very hard industry to be profitable in. I think it’s hard to judge what retailers and comic fans are going to respond to. We’ve had a lot of success with our Grimm Fairy Tales titles but some of our other titles haven’t found the same level of popularity with fans. Overall I would say publishing comics is a very tough business.

BF: Sorry to hear about that! Can you show the fans some artwork for Neverland? Some interior artwork so they can get a taste for it already?

JB: We aren’t showing any interiors yet but we do have some cover artwork fans can see and the original concept sketch for Pan.

BF: What attracted you to the artist to make him the person to take on this highly anticipated new series?

JB: Vic [Durichio] has worked on a few books for us in the past and he recently finished a creator owned series by [Wonderland trilogy writer] Raven Gregory called The Waking. I though his work was excellent and when Raven pitched him for the series I just thought he was a good fit for the material.

Series Premise

Felix is a 'Pilgrim of the Road'. In this world there is one road grander than all others and it runs possibly forever in length. No one knows if the Earth is no longer a sphere, or if it has just increased massively in size. All that is known is that there is a road with populated cities and settlements along it that you can travel down your whole life and it will never end or repeat. Once there was no road like this and the world was a nice manageable place.

The Pilgrims of the Road are a group devoted to finding the Source or Terminus of the Road, and they travel down the Road for their entire lives. When they die, each Pilgrim passes the task on to one of their sons or daughters and then they travel the Road. Chosen Pilgrim families have the knowledge of their ancestors stored in an AI implanted into their skulls. These are ancient artifacts passed through the generations, designed to accumulate knowledge of the Road and aid the current Pilgrim's progress by supplying information from past experiences.

We join Felix as he's readying to leave a city to join the Road again, but this time he's cutting all ties with the Pilgrims. He is one of the Chosen with an AI in his forehead. The Pilgrims are unlikely to let him leave freely without his obedience to their cause assured. Felix is on the run from his fellow Pilgrims and assorted city low-lives while trying to get out of the city and further down the Road.

Page 1

The narrative structure we try and follow for Road is to make it like a series of close-ups that never pull back to reveal the whole scene. This gives Road a disjointed, surrealist quality which sets it apart from a lot of comics.

There was a review of William Gibson’s Neuromancer somewhere which said it reads like the author has his finger jittering on the Fast-Forward button, and that seems to be a good analogy for how Road reads too.

Page 1 is really like a cover or chapter page. Felix and Miah, two of the main characters are shown, as well as other important elements like his parrot, car and the city, Kaiden's Rift. The image also gives a nice mise-en-scene and sets the tone for a lot of the pages to come. There's also hints of upcoming story points, like the skull he's holding. This page is useful for inspiration as it acts as a kind of mood-board for the series. Some little previously overlooked detail always seems to catch your eye and provide inspiration at a critical moment.

Pages 15 and 17

These pages are interesting from a character development point of view as we start to get a taste of the double dealings and back-stabbings which pervade the Road universe. We also see the introduction of two important people, Kyde and the Mother Superior of the Sisterhood.

Road has a fairly large main cast of characters and none of them could be said to be completely good or evil. All have complex inter-character relationships with a fair amount of subterfuge and betrayal going on. Writing characters in this way is kind of like playing chess against yourself, planning several moves ahead for one side, then trying to plan countermoves pretending you don’t know the other’s strategy. We do keep notes on character development and sub-plots, but nothing in Road is set in stone. Working in this format gives us chance to tweak the course of the story and keep it interesting.

Writing chunks of plot into conversations between characters isn’t something we enjoy. So we tend to avoid it whenever possible. This is lucky because it fits into the structure of the story. Most of the plot points are buried in throw-away lines or broken up over a series of un-connected pages, such as the development of the Dark Arms, or Felix’s connection with the extinct line of Pilgrim Chosen AI. It would be tempting to stop and explain in a large chunk of text the background to these objects, but we find that 70s style of ‘classic’ Sci-Fi very dull, so the details are left to the reader’s imagination and the plot advances.

Page 21

This page is interesting as it marks a turning point in Felix and Miah's relationship; self-interested co-operation instead of hostility and Felix being on the defensive for a change.

Page 28

This page is good for its panel flow and badass action. We enjoyed the feedback we got for this page when it went up on Zuda. That's the great thing about webcomics, almost instant feedback from the readers! We do read it all and enjoy the interaction on the comments thread about the latest pages.

Check out Road at the Zuda website here. To be continued tomorrow...

As fans remember, Hiro met Charlie during his “save the cheerleader, save the world” quest in the episode “Seven Minutes to Midnight.” Hiro learned that she also had a special gift—a superhuman memory—but she was soon killed by Sylar, who targeted her for her ability. After Charlie’s death, a distraught Hiro traveled back in time six months to save her. The two fell in love, but before Hiro could fulfill her dream of traveling around the world, she revealed that she had a blood clot in her brain that would kill her eventually. Despite Hiro’s efforts, he could not save her.

But with Hiro now facing a potential death sentence of his own—a brain tumor—he’s decided to save Charlie for good this time after accidentally traveling back to the Burnt Toast Diner in Odessa, Texas on the day Sylar will kill her.  Unfortunately, with the help of a time-traveler at his carnival, Samuel Sullivan trails Hiro, warning him that his intervention could alter the timeline. But Hiro shrugs off Samuel’s warning, freezing time just moments before Sylar would have sliced open Charlie’s head.

At this point in the series, Sylar wasn’t invulnerable, meaning that Hiro could easily bump off the defenseless super-powered criminal right then and there. But, instead, he merely wheels Sylar’s frozen body out of the diner and stashes him in the luggage compartment of a Greyhound bus. With Charlie safe, Hiro confronts his younger self, telling him that Charlie is dead and that he must travel back in time to save her, thus preserving the timeline. But while Charlie is safe from Sylar, her aneurysm has ruptured. Suddenly, Hiro needs Sylar’s help.

Unfrozen, Sylar realizes that Hiro’s time-traveling abilities make him impossible to kill, and agrees to use his power to remove Charlie’s aneurysm in exchange for information about his future. What does Sylar learn? That despite acquiring several new abilities, he will die alone (isn’t he glad he asked?). Hiro then freezes time and moves Sylar elsewhere to continue down the same path, ensuring that history will play out as intended.

If all this time travel is giving you a headache, you’re certainly not alone. While this episode brings back familiar characters, locales and scenarios from the series’ halcyon early days, this show no longer has that level of narrative focus or underlying intensity. “Once Upon a Time in Texas” just feels like a chore until its eventful final scenes. When Hiro and Charlie are ready to share their happy ending together, Samuel pops up and has her transported somewhere else in time. With his own time traveler now dead, Samuel is using Charlie as a bargaining chip. If Hiro helps Samuel right some wrongs in his own life, he’ll get Charlie back. Hiro reluctantly agrees, and travels with Samuel eight weeks into the past. There, they find Mohinder Suresh (remember him?) lying dead. That should be a shocker, but since it’s doubtful Heroes viewers really missed Mohinder or his droning opening monologues all that much, the character’s appearance likely elicited more groans than gasps.

Okay, since Hiro apparently has far more control over his powers than he did earlier this season, why can’t Hiro just travel back in time to the moments before Samuel abducted Charlie and prevent it? Also, wasn’t Hiro losing control of his abilities earlier this season? He doesn’t seem to have any problems with them these days, save for the occasional headache. His powers only seem to work incorrectly when it’s convenient to the plot, which is becoming distracting.

This episode also features a pretty superfluous storyline involving Noah Bennet and an almost-affair with his Company partner Lauren (Law & Order’s Elisabeth Röhm). We learn that Noah once had the opportunity to cheat on his wife but didn’t, and that he would much rather be a high school English teacher than a Company agent (err, I mean a “paper salesman”). But it all feels like padding, and it doesn’t really move the overall story or his character forward. And at this point, Heroes can’t afford to meander like it does this week.

But all this jumping back and forth in the timeline brings up some interesting question. Theoretically, if Hiro ever did drastically alter the course of events and shift the timeline, couldn’t this series essentially reboot itself permanently? Each season, Heroes’ writers make a concerted effort to get back to basics, but a timeline shift would afford them the opportunity to revisit character relationships and abandon tired storylines and freshen the overall premise with a minimum of expository housekeeping. This season is by no means terrible—it’s been quite good overall—but an actual new beginning for this series could bring jaded former viewers back to the fold.

SPOILER WARNING: Read no further if you’ve not had the chance to dig into your most recent Blackest Night titles…

As might be expected with a group named “The Doom Patrol,” there ARE a few past members ready to rise from their graves as part of the Blackest Night.  It is a little more challenging to determine exactly WHO might be part of this group of Black Lantern DPers given that the Doom Patrol have had several series, a soft transition from the DC Universe to the Vertigo imprint, a switch back, a complete franchise reboot and a few Superboy-Prime inspired continuity ripples to mix things up.

Arani Desai-Caulder, also known as Celsius, was the wife of Doom Patrol founder, The Chief.  First appearing in the short-lived Doom Patrol revival in Showcase #94-96 (August 1977-January1978), Celsius assembled a new team in the wake of the deaths of the original Doom Patrol (in Doom Patrol #121, October 1968 – although all of them have since been revealed to have survived in one manner or another).  Having met The Chief while she was living in the streets of Calcutta, Celsius was wed and granted immortality and the ability to generate both intense cold and heat.  The pair were soon separated (and it was eventually revealed that the Chief had manipulated Arani into becoming a metahuman much like many other members of the Doom Patrol), and it would not be until years later that Celsius learned of her husband’s death.  On two separate occasions (Showcase #94, August 1977 and Doom Patrol #1, October 1987), Celsius gathered the Doom Patrol together to search for her husband, whom she believed was actually still alive.

As the leader of Doom Patrol, Celsius not only expanded the team roster (adding Lodestone, Karma and Scott Fischer), but faced several foes including her own father, the demonic Kalki (Doom Patrol #3, December 1987).  Ultimately, she and the team did locate the living Chief – a reunion soured by his denial that they had ever been married (a deception that pushed Arani to the point of mental instability).  The Doom Patrol was then immediately thrust into the interstellar conflict known as Invasion!, during which they teamed up with the Sea Devils and Aquaman to stop an alien occupation force in the Arctic.  During the battle, Celsius sacrificed herself to destroy the alien vessel (Doom Patrol #17, January 1989).

Joshua Clay, Tempest (first appearance Showcase #94, August 1977), was born a mutant with the ability to fly and generate kinetic energy blasts.  Electing to serve as a combat medic in Vietnam rather than serve time for crimes he committed as part of a gang, Clay witnessed his sergeant commit horrific crime against non-combatants during the war.  Subconsciously triggering the release of his mutant powers, Clay accidentally killed civilians and, wracked with guilt, went AWOL.  Briefly recruited to the Doom Patrol by Celsius, Clay returned to civilian life when the team dissolved.

Despite using his connections to craft a false identity for himself, Clay was again drawn back to the Doom Patrol as a field agent and conscience to Celsius (Doom Patrol #1, October 1987).   Serving as a mentor to several of the newer members of Doom Patrol, Tempest remained active until following the disastrous mission during Invasion!.  Clay spent the next several years serving as a medic for the Doom Patrol before he was murdered by the Chief (Doom Patrol #55, May 1992) for nearly uncovering one of his schemes.

Briefly a member of Celsius’ Doom Patrol, Wayne Hawkins (Karma, first appearance Doom Patrol #4, January 1988) was a troubled young man with the ability to manipulate probability.  Using his enrolment on the team to hide from the law, Hawkins proved to be a constant source of friction on the team (particularly taking delight in tormenting the straight-laced Scott Fischer).  After leaving the team (Doom Patrol #13, October 1988), Hawkins surfaced as a member of the Suicide Squad, where he died as part of an assault on Circe’s island (Suicide Squad #58, October 1991).

Born with a burning radiation touch, Scott Fischer joined the Doom Patrol (Doom Patrol #6, March 1988) in hopes of learning to better control his power and make a difference in the world.  His altruism and unbridled enthusiasm were, in part, motivated by his diagnosis of leukemia, Fischer's final adventure with the Doom Patrol occurred during the Invasion! conflict;  when the alien invaders detonated a gene bomb to neutralize Earth’s metahumans, it reacted with Scott’s illness, making him the weapon’s only casualty (Invasion! #3, 1988).

Dorothy Spinner initially appeared as a throwaway character early in the 1980s Doom Patrol series (Doom Patrol #14, November 1988) but was added to the team (Doom Patrol #25, August 1989) after Grant Morrison took over the title.  A young girl with a deformity that caused her to appear simian, Spinner also had the ability to bring her imaginary friends to life.  Throughout her life, Spinner was haunted by The Candlemaker, a malevolent egregore seeking to find it’s way into existence through Spinner’s powers.  Spinner managed to consistently hold the Candlemaker at bay, but following the murder of her friend, Joshua Clay, she released it with the promise of Clay’s resurrection.  The Candlemaker help true to its word, bringing Clay back to life, but then promptly murdered him again (along with several other members of the Doom Patrol).  Eventually, through the combined might of Doom Patrol, The Candlemaker was wiped from existence, and the Doom Patrol was disbanded.

A while after, Spinner joined the reformed Doom Patrol (Doom Patrol #64, March 1993), but began regressing mentally over time.  During the existence of a corporate-driven Doom Patrol (Doom Patrol #1-22, December 2001-September 2003), Spinner played a significant role, albeit completely subconsciously.  Having regressed into a vegetative state, her subconscious mind created an “imaginary” Robotman to replace the original (who was presumed dead at the time).  When Robotman resurfaced, the imaginary one disappeared, leaving Spinner with no direct contact with the outside world.  In the final issue of the series, Robotman took pity on the girl, and disconnected her life support (Doom Patrol #22, September 2003).

A male-to-female transsexual, Kate Godwin (first appearance, Doom Patrol #70, September 1993) was working as a prostitute when she had an encounter with Rebis, a radioactive hermaphrodite.  The intercourse with him/her granted Kate the ability to coagulate liquids and dissolve solids.  Taking the name Coagula, Kate became a member of the Doom Patrol, eventually beginning a relationship with Robotman.  During an ill-fated camping trip with Robotman and Dorothy Spinner, Spinner suffered a massive mental breakdown which generated a huge psychic explosion, killing Kate (Doom Patrol #9, August 2002).

Fever (real name, Shyleen Lao) was recruited as part of the corporate Doom Patrol team (she was already a member in her first appearance, Doom Patrol #1, December 2001).  Following the team’s dissolution, Shyleen and her heat generating powers remained marginally active in the DC Universe until she was captured by the Dark Side Club (Teen Titans #59, July 2008).  Brainwashed into taking part in the Club’s gladiatorial games, Shyleen lost to the Ravager and was sentenced to die.  When Ravager refused to kill the unarmed girl, one of the Dark Side Club operatives murdered Shyleen (Terror Titans #1, December 2008).

Nudge (Mi-Sun Kwon, first appearance JLA #94, May 2004), had the ability to psychically plant suggestions in a person’s mind.  Working closely with 6-limbed simian hero Grunt, much of Nudge’s past adventures are now unknown due to the continuity-shifting events of Infinite Crisis (2005-2006).  She did fight alongside several of her team-mates on Oolong Island, where she was recently killed (Doom Patrol #1, August 2009).

Among the potential Doom Patrol Black Lanterns, there are two other possibilities – although both are currently alive;

Cliff Steele, Robotman, is a cyborg, meaning that at some point his human body was laid to rest somewhere (and as demonstrated by Black Lantern Deadman in Blackest Night: Batman, only the physical remains of a person seem to be needed for a Black Lantern ring to raise them).

Additionally, Rita Farr (Elasti-Girl and now Elasti-Woman) was the one member of the original Doom Patrol who remained dead after the series ended (Doom Patrol #121, October 1968).  Her current body is actually cloned by The Chief from a piece of her skull, meaning some her remains may still be at Codsville, Maine.

BROKEN FRONTIER: How far back was the Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men crossover planned? How did you end up writing all the parts, rather than Brian Bendis writing the Dark Avengers issues?

MATT FRACTION: As far back as I’d been involved with the book-- and this is a couple years back at this point-- I’d wanted an X-Men/Avengers dust-up to fall this summer.  Structurally it kind of fit; I knew where we were going and it made sense... and then the more I learned about where the Avengers books were going to be this summer it just made more and more sense.  So what started as a... I don’t want to say pipe dream, but a hoped-for best-case scenario just became more and more logical and meaningful as time went on.  And then more people started getting excited and we had momentum and there you go.

When we very first spoke about it Brian and I were going to write it together, then I got up, went to the bathroom, came back, and it was all me so that Brian would be free to do some damn thing or the other.  It was no big deal.  Brian and I talked an awful lot the whole time and I appreciate that he let me play with his toys as long as he did. 
 
BF: What kind of coordination have you had to do with Brian and other writers, in order to sync up with the Dark Reign storyline and the other X-books? Is it tough to write your own stories, having to juggle it with what other writers are doing?
 
MF: Well, it’s not like we’re writing a show like 24 or something-- these books don’t take place in real time. There are broad-stroke levels of coordination and a high level of general awareness but it’s not like we’re trying to craft and catalogue what happens every second of every day... the short, and wholly uninteresting, answer is that we’re all pretty aware of what’s going on and everyone tries to help everyone else out.

And it would be tough if I wrote as if the toys in the toybox were mine all mine but I don’t.  It’s a really collaborative atmosphere and there’s been a lot of advanced warning as to what’s going on so everybody had ample time to plan accordingly.

BF: How did you decide who would be a "Dark X-Man"? Dark Beast has always been thoroughly evil, but Cloak and Dagger have been heroes, and went with Emma towards the end of the crossover, though we haven't seen them since. Michael Pointer seemed to be on the path to redemption during his recent Marvel Comics Presents appearances, but went nuts in this story, and Mimic just seemed confused.
 
MF: Axel Alonso, Nick Lowe, and I all started thinking about who would look cool.  Like, imagining a cover in silhouette and wanting to ape the original X line up somewhat... we had a long list of candidates and we went back and forth and got ‘em into shape.  So it started with a visual aspect, and then shifted into strategic thinking.  Like, if I’m Osborn, who do I put together and why?  And it just grew out from there.

And you’re looking at them knowing what YOU know, as a reader, and not what the world at large knows in the Marvel Universe.  To the world in general, Osborn is the man that won the Skrull War.  There’s a high level of trust in him at the story’s onset.  He came to Cloak and Dagger with a choice to clear their records and they took it.  Pointer has always been a psychotic-- how do you kill that many people and be redeemed?  And Mimic is a wannabe that saw this team as his shot at greatness.  Everybody had their own character reasons to be there above and beyond the strategic value Oz saw in them all.

BF: With regard to Pointer, Brian Bendis established in his first appearances that he was possessed by the mind of an evil mutant, and that caused him to go on the rampage; the later MCP appearances showed him plagued with remorse, and doing his best to atone for it. Do you think he works better as an out and out bad guy?
 
MF: Clearly, yeah. And profoundly, profoundly formidable. We need more guys capable of that kind of carnage.

BF: Do you have future plans for any of them?
 
MF: Yes. So do others.  They’re not going away.

BF: Whose idea was it originally to have Namor join the cast, and how do you like writing him?
 
MF: Mine, and I love it. It’s because I love writing him so much that he’s come over.  I always liked that he was a mutant AND an Atlantean... and the idea of this regal, arrogant, stuck-up king having to... I mean, he’s never going to be a “team player” or anything but... but do you really think he’s going to follow orders from Scott? He kind of has to now...

Anyway I love him. He’s great.

BF: Cyclops seems to be the fulcrum of the team in a way that he hasn't been in years; he's more confident and take-charge, and seems now to be relishing the role of leader. Do you think the Decimation crisis has brought out the best in him?
 
MF: I think Messiah Complex, and the birth of Hope, is what did it.  I don’t think it was the catastrophe that made him a man, but his faith in its resolution.

BF: What is Charles Xavier's role, now that Scott has so completely taken the lead? Will he have to give up on his dream, and just accept this new separatist society that Scott has created?
 
MF: This is addressed in Nation X.  Needless to say, it’s a big-- a huge!-- question and one that a lot of our characters will be asking themselves and each other.  Magneto has a line in Uncanny #516-- “Homo Superior isn’t the future of man-- we’re its vestigial tail.”  And if that’s the new standard operating procedure for mutants... where does that leave Charles? Or Magneto?  Where does that put Scott?

BF: Emma Frost used to be a selfish, sociopathic individual, but in recent years we've seen her undergo a radical transformation, and she's reached new levels of self-sacrifice in fighting for her fellow mutants and for Scott himself. What do you think caused this change in her character, and are there still some of her old ways underneath?
 
MF: I humbly and respectfully reject the premise. Go back and reread her life: Emma always did whatever she had to do to protect and train mutants, for as long as she’s been around. Selfish, maybe; arrogant, rich, spoiled, bratty, bitchy, yes; but her core has remained unchanged. She’s always allied herself with whomever she needed to above all other things keep her people safe.  And I think she’s a bit like a shark-- she’s just swimming to where the food is. Is that selfish or focused?  Is that sociopathic or single-minded?

That she’s in love with Scott Summers is a layer of complication.

BF: The stuff that strikes me as especially sociopathic is her days with the Hellfire Club; she participated in the kidnapping and torture of the X-Men with relish, and seemed like her main focus was the acquisition of power. Even in her early days with the Massachusetts Academy, it seemed like her goal was to acquire and manipulate young mutants to further her own ends. You don't think there's been a reinterpretation of the character over the years?
 
MF: I don't think anyone's the villain of their own story. And for Emma, her means are always justified by the end, no matter what lens we view her through. That's what's changed: the lens, not the subject.

BF: Greg Land and Terry Dodson have been the rotating art team on Uncanny for some time now; do you write your scripts differently depending on who's slated to draw the issue?
 
MF: Yes.

BF: Can you elaborate on that? In what way do your scripts differ for each of them?
 
MF: Um... it differs for Salva, for Gabriel, Fábio, or anyone else no matter what the book, or the character.  It's like writing music not just for different instruments but for different players.  One size doesn't fit all.

BF: In Uncanny #515, the mayor of San Francisco assures Scott that he and the rest of his team aren't fugitives, and are welcome back in the city. But having battled with duly-appointed law enforcement agents in the form of Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers, and having been declared a threat to national security, how can this be so?
 
MF: Osborn isn’t the final word of law in the United States-- and show me where they were declared a threat to national security? That’s a very specific phrase that was not used to describe anything in the events of X-MenDark Avengers. There is no marshal law on the streets of San Francisco. No warrants have been issued for any mutant, nor are any mutants accused of any crimes.   Nobody quite knows what’s what right now other than everyone is certain they don’t want a mutant war. 

And Osborn brought us right to the brink of it before stopping. 

Nation X is about exploring the delicate balance humans and mutants now find themselves in... what’s it like to be a living timebomb in a world on the brink?

BF: I'm not sure the exact phrase "threat to national security" has been used, but in Brian Bendis' Dark Reign: The List - Avengers one-shot, Norman Osborn is said to have declared the establishment of the mutant utopia "an act of treason" and it's mentioned that he has a "one-strike policy against any and all threats to the United States." Is he just kind of spewing hot air? So far it seems like he's been given a lot of leeway in terms of trampling on civil liberties and using excessive force, since, as you said, he's the hero of the Skrull Invasion.
 
MF: He's not a legislator, he wasn't elected, and he doesn't get to declare what is and isn't treason. To be treasonous unto Norman isn't necessarily to execute an act of high treason against the state, no matter how grandly Osborn views himself.

BF: Also in #515, we're introduced to a new team of mutants, which include Lobe, a psychic, Thug, who's invulnerable, Burst, a superfast martial artist, Verre, an invisible ecdysiast, and Bouncing Betty, who, uh, bounces. How did you and Greg come up with these characters, and is there room for new mutant creations in the post-Decimation world?
 
MF: I dunno, I just made ‘em up.  Lobe isn’t psychic, he’s got prescient hyperintelligence... meaning he knows everything that’s just about to happen.  He’s named after Jeph Loeb, because I think it’s funny to have actually turned Jeph Loeb into a supervillain. Burst is a kung fu speedster.  Hardcore readers of my work know we’ve seen one more of them in my corners of the Marvel world... I don’t know if I’ll ever get to tell their stories but for now, he’s kind of an easter egg like that... more on the rest of Lobe’s gang will be revealed over the course of Nation X.

And who said they’re mutants?

BF: Finally, we see the return of Magneto. It seems to me he's been used relatively sparingly in recent years, which is probably an indication of the "deep bench" of villains the X-Men have. Any teases about what's in store for Magneto, and the book in general, in upcoming issues?

MF: His timing is deliberate, impeccable, and rife with meaning and importance. All is revealed in Uncanny #516.

BROKEN FRONTIER: Tell us a bit about the origins of Hotwire; how did you and Warren Ellis come up with the concept, and how did it wind up at Radical? Is Warren still involved at all?

STEVE PUGH: Warren and I put together the original 48 page Hotwire some years ago, but the publisher went down before the book was finished. It was one of the few times I’d had the opportunity to have a hand in a character's creation, so I always thought of it as unfinished business.

My original plan was to just repackage the book for another publisher, but Warren didn't want his older work being dredged up, and would only be agreeable if I rewrote Hotwire myself and took full blame. (laughs)

Warren has no active role in the new Hotwire, though he likes to be kept informed. He obviously doesn't want anything substandard being published with his name on, and diluting his brand.

Hotwire's actual origin is Warren ill-advisedly asking me what I'd want to draw, and me, being a typical artist, saying "girls and monsters and bikes n'stuff!"

BF: What's been your experience with Radical?

SP: Great! They're a young company, they weren't held back by the baggage of the Big Two, and you don't have to jump through multiple hoops to get a decision on something. It's been a very positive experience, they've really been 100% supportive of the project and myself, I can't imagine ANY other company that would have trusted me to write Hotwire, without any previous track record.

BF: Did you find any challenges in stretching your writing muscles for this project? Was it very different drawing for your own script rather than someone else's?

SP: Yeah, very different. I think the main thing it gave me was confidence. The more inside the mind of the writer I am, then the more confident I am about drawing the story. I feel able to go crazier without going off message. Often you'll find yourself drawing material by writers you've never even swapped e-mails with, and have no idea of your strengths and weaknesses. I like a script to be very, very clear about the motivations of the characters, if Logo-Man loves Police-Girl who has a secret desire for Lawyer-Boy then I want a big paragraph saying so at the start of the script!  Then I can work out everyone’s body language and attitude.

With Hotwire I was on solid ground. I knew all the character's feelings towards everyone else.

Also, I could put in stuff that was hard to draw!

BF: The finished book looks very different from anything you've done before. Can you describe for us your process of creating the art for this book?

SP: It's all based on techniques I worked out while painting Shark-Man, for Image.  I've done a lot of pen and ink work for comics, but I was never very fond off how it turned out. Working in mainstream comics forces you down a certain drawing and inking style, and if you stray too far away from that look, it becomes difficult for the colorists. It's too dependent on a colorist "getting you”, working with your line-work instead of fighting it. Frankly I'm a bit of a control freak and I just wanted to do everything!

I was going to create the color art for the original version of "Hotwire" by painting it in grays, which I was then going to tint using translucent colors on a special coated acetate. What I'm doing with the new Hotwire is almost exactly that, except I'm using Photoshop to composite it. Painting in translucent colors and building up the image gives it a nice look, then I paint in the shadows and light spots which binds everything together. It could all be done in colored inks and then scanned, but it'd take me three times as long and there isn't an undo button if I screw up!

BF: One of the primary elements of the book is the presence of "blue-lights", electromagnetic phenomena that appear to manifest as the consciousnesses of deceased people. A major question left unanswered is whether these are actual "souls." What else could they be, and is this something you want to explore further in future issues?

SP: It's a question I've left hanging in the book, yes, but it's not one I want the reader to spend time second guessing. It's there as a challenge for Alice, not a booby trap for the reader. The climax to a Hotwire story will NEVER be some mad explanation for the Blues that pulls the rug from under the reader and leaves them feeling stupid or cheated. The important thing is that these creatures definitely believe themselves to be the dead, and that's the big question for Alice, how to reconcile the existence of the blue-lights with her own hard science background. She would LOVE to prove that the blues were an obscure explainable phenomena and that everyone else was wrong. She has a lot of half buried issues. Could she ever accept that the horror-voice that leaves messages on her phone really is her mother? Of course, Coroner Love nails it in the first issue- science isn't a belief system. If science is proved wrong then it becomes stronger, not weaker, because it's learned something it didn't know before.

BF: Are there any helpful/stable blue-lights, who could potentially be of assistance to the authorities on a regular basis?

SP: There's a lot more to see of the Blues. We've barely scratched the surface of how diverse their existence can be. As for ones that you can hold a conversation with, yes, we'll definitely be seeing that.  Helpful, well, possibly, but I don't think anyone would use the word "stable" though!

BF: Describe Alice Hotwire for us as a person. What drives her? For someone with a bit of a rebellious attitude, why's she so obsessed with "the rules"?

SP: Actually, I think Alice only does one rebellious thing in the whole story, and that's release the video to the news channel. Even that, in her mind, is routing around the damage in the system, that's being caused by someone breaking the disclosure protocol to protect the bad cops.

The trick with Alice is that she isn't who she appears to be. In the first pages of issue #1 it looks like she's just another kick-ass bad girl. She appears totally together, in charge, indestructible. By issue #2 she's rolling on the pavement up-chucking vodka into the gutter.

On the job she's purposeful, single-minded. In her downtime she's a mess.

Alice was a scarily intelligent, serious, child, who had very little chance to mix with other kids her age. After a traumatizing, life changing incident, she spiraled into some bad teenage years where she chemically "dumbed down" so she could make some kind of social contact.

When she came through the other side of that, she clung to the mathematical view of the world she'd learned as a kid to bring structure to her life.

Like a reformed smoker, after she stopped taking the intelligence dampers (stupid pills) Alice became evangelically anti-anti-intellectualist. She is perpetually irate that people don't just shut-up and do what she tells them 'cause she's smarter than them.

There's a bar fight in issue #2 that starts up because she's genuinely shocked to be asked "if she thinks she's better than everyone else?" Alice, of course gives her honest answer!

BF: How did you develop the design for Alice? She's a pale, almost ghostly white, which I would gather is deliberate given her line of work.

SP: I usually get asked "Is she dead? Does she turn out to be dead too???!!!"

Heh, no. She is physically small, slight. Probably a sickly child.

I wanted to contrast her intellectual weight against her size. Alice isn't an idealized "strong woman" role-model. She genuinely needs Mobey for the heavy lifting. On a practical level, she's nice to paint, it makes her easy to pick out in a crowd and her features read well.

BF: In issue #3, we see that Alice is largely immune to a fear-based attack, because she's been grappling for so long with one of her greatest fears, the possibility that there is no life after death. Why would she go into the field of necro-forensics if this is a subject that scares her so much?

SP: Hey, great question!

My nerdy "Star Trek" answer is that the Faraday cage around her skull protected her from the "injected" emotion. She just got the light show through the optic nerve. The cops just weren't as well protected.

That little stinker of a fear ghost really pushed the wrong button. Her mother’s death was always a motivator for Alice. Alice doesn't believe in life after death, she's already had to process that, accept it. Her little speech was about, “How could anything the ghost shows her be harsher than reality?"

Alice seems to have drifted into necro-forensics when she realized the access it would give her to restricted technologies!

BF: Alice lost her mother at a young age, and now gets messages on the phone from her, seemingly from beyond the grave. Why doesn't Alice make an attempt to establish contact with her, and get some answers to her questions?

SP: Alice simply doesn't believe it's her, or won't let herself yet. And we don't really hear what those messages sound like. They sure shake Mobey up!

BF: A deluxe hardcover collection of the first miniseries will be coming out in November. What can you tell us about some of the extras that will be in this collection?

SP: Well I fixed up some of the art that I felt wasn't working after a second look, and added an extra four story pages. I think it makes the ending smoother, I had to wrap it up quickly in the original issue #4, and this is a nicer lead out. There's also a gallery of Hotwire art from over the years, of Alice's various incarnations, some promo art I did to sell Radical on the idea, a 6 page color story featuring Alice and the "Filthy" character from issue #1 and also a selection of material from the original Warren Ellis scripted Hotwire story. We've probably got enough stuff left over to put some in the second collection too!

BF: What's next for Hotwire?

SP: Three 66-page books with complete stories in each (but with a linking backstory). We're going to get a better look at her world and the weirder blue-lights that inhabit it. Political maneuvering, broken promises, inescapable confrontations, and, of course, past mistakes come back to monster Alice in the present, as these things always do!

BF: Are you working on anything else these days?

SP: I’m looking at something, it's a small, but high profile job that I'll take it if I can be sure it won't interfere with Hotwire, so I'll let you know!

The Hotwire: Requiem for the Dead hardcover goes on sale in November from Radical priced $19.95

BROKEN FRONTIER: Okay Todd, I wanted to ask you how you go about inking the pages on Haunt. Do you brainstorm with the penciller on how to approach certain pages or work out angles or is the pencilling and inking kept strictly apart?

TODD MCFARLANE: Let me see what I'm working on now. Here's a page. Here are these guys in this pit with the body bag. I use photoshop and if I click off the layer that I was inking on the latch. And here are Ryan's pencils right there.They're clean and I like them. You can definitely say, "That's Ryan Ottley." So then I click and drop the blacks in. You can see I'm not changing it or doing anything dramatic to it. Maybe a little bit in the face of the character. You can see the face is a little more cartoony than what I'm used to, so I use the inking to smooth it out a little bit. Darken this and get rid of a little bit here.  Maybe add some goofy lines in the neck over here for effect. But again, when I click off and on, it's still Ryan's face. (Click on the images for a bigger picture)

Where I have fun is here over the shoulder of the main character where there's a zombie head... Zombie head, I'm talking Walking Dead [laughs]... it's a dead body.  When he gives me that, I understand this: there's the eyes, the nose, some teeth. I tell Ryan, don't overdraw it. The guy inking did a little bit of drawing in his day so he can handle it [laughs].  So when we zoom in on it, that face looks a little cooler. So we've got the body bag with some cliffs and stuff over here where he's in a pit. This is what I got, so I'll beef it up, make it a little sexier, a little sassier. It's still just the same as it was.  It's just silly stuff.  Maybe I added some detail on the body bag over there, but again, I'm not changing his composition.

So, here, take a look at the guys on this page. A lot of these little knick knacks, that's just my silly stuff that I'll do to add a bit to the page. If I click off my ink layer, then we go small you can see it. His composition is there. Let me get rid of my fill too. There's his pencils. It's tremendous. Greg did a great job with the storytelling and then Ryan knocked it out with his pencils. My job is to just go in there and finish it up. The one problem is sometimes when I go in and drop the blacks where he wants, it gets a little too simplistic. But I tell Ryan, just drop in blacks and I'll come in there and touch it up.  Add some silly stuff to the gun, to his boots, to his back. I actually added some more speed lines in there. I dressed up the jeep a little bit, added some wrinkles into the driver's body here. Just some nonsense stuff, but the face, everything is still Ryan. I tell him, you take care of all the fun stuff and then I'll come in and take care of the less fun stuff, if you will.  Something like this upper panel here, just show me what the jungle is supposed to look like, give me some basic shapes like the palm trees and that and I'll sex them up for you. With the machine gun, just give me the silhouette and I'll come in finish it off for you. (Click on the images for a bigger picture)

Then, because his stuff is so much fun to ink, I'll do the inks and not even think I'm doing that much to it. Then I'll click off the layer and realize that I added more lines than I thought because it's so much fun to work on. Even more to the example is this face here.  I don't need to do much to this face, I need to get out of the way of it.  So here are his pencils, then there's my inking and you can see how little I did. I darkened the eyes, added a little bit of feathering in certain places just to round it just a bit so it didn't look flat.  But it's not very dramatic in the face. You see more in the glove hand in this part of the panel, but I'm not here to step on the stuff that makes it Ryan which is his cool faces and compositions. So you'll see a little bit more of the dead guy's face maybe.  Poking eyeballs to me aren't that scary. You can buy those for the kids at Halloween.  Instead I darkened it up a bit and added a bit more of a mess there to make it look like the guy got his head blown off. That's sort of my do on him.

BF: In looking at the stuff you can definitely see a little Todd in there.  But it's funny, I always used to be able to really tell your stuff because of the characters' hair.  Have you felt the need to throw any of those vintage McFarlane hair curls in there?

TM: At times. Again on some of the shapes.  With this character's head here - let me take a look at these layers to see which one is the hair - I must've been flattening all this stuff.  Without changing the shapes...

BF - This is really beautiful stuff here.

TM: ... To me it's probably just a couple of lines. I could look at the pencils in another folder in Photoshop. I'm not feeling like I have to come in there and add unnecessary hair. The guys got short hair. Do I add something in here with some white cuts... yup.  Some stuff on his chin and stuff? Sure. Again I thought some of the way he does stubble was just a little bit think (that gray underneath the inks, a little thick). If I burn out his pencils there, you'll see a little more of the subtlety of the stubble. So when you get in close it has a nicer size to it. And again, separating what lines need to be thin and thick.  All the wrinkles in this one section were all just black shapes. That's what I keep telling him, let me take care of that stuff. (Click on the images for a bigger picture)

I think this gun that's up here, the one shooting the bullet. It was just black, silly stupid stuff that I wanted to sex up a little bit. It was nice shape that Greg had given him and I went in there and added up some of these goofy lines. I'd be more inclined to do things like that on these background characters than the hero's face. I want the hero's face to be totally Ryan Ottley. My instincts is to make the face look cleaner there, but then add the lines in the hand here, and wrinkles here where he only had a few marks. I think I turned 5 marks into 50. Like I said it becomes fairly easy for me. So whenever I try to ink guys I don't try to get them to turn into me. I just want people to look at it and say "Wow, that's an interesting look for that person. I've never seen them look like that before." Because its an inker they never worked with before. It's still 95% Ryan with a 5% Todd on top of it. Then let them decide if they like that better than Ryan with another inker on top of it.

BF:  Very cool. I really appreciate you showing this to me. The stuff does look incredible and your description is dead on. There is certainly enough of your imprint on it for people to notice, which I'm sure will make many people happy to see you working again.


TM: Looking at the panels that Ryan did, I only felt that I had to add 50 lines to the page. And like, here's another one where I had to add 350 or 500 lines to it. Not because it was a bad drawing, but because I'm requesting my gunslingers not to have to worry about the backgrounds and the textures. Draw the stuff that they want, that people will remember which is the heroes and the good storytelling. Don't worry about the shadows and curtains and coffee tables, I'll take care of that stuff.

BF:  Good advice all around in there for collaborations between inkers and pencillers! Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Todd.