Like the header says, today is annual International Read Comics in Public Day. Started in 2010 by Brian Heater and Sarah Morean, it’s celebrated every August 28th, and is an appreciation of comic books and graphic novels, demonstrated by folks not afraid to show their reading choices by taking them out in public. And if you’re thinking that the friendly fiends at StarWarp Concepts must have some illustrated fiction that would be perfect for this occasion—you’re absolutely right!
The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0: A free, downloadable comic that serves as an introduction to the adventures of Pandora Zwieback and her monster-hunting mentor, Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin, with an 8-page story written by me and illustrated by Eliseu Gouveia, and a preview of Pan’s first novel, Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1. Pan is a 16-year-old Goth girl who’s spent the last decade being treated for mental health problems because she can see monsters. It’s only after she meets Annie that Pan discovers she’s never been ill—her so-called “monstervision” is actually a supernatural gift that allows her to see into Gothopolis, the not-so-mythical shadow world that exists right alongside the human world.
The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1 is a 56-page, full-color comic special that features cover art by award-winning artist Henar Torinos (Mala Estrella) and contains three original stories. In “Song of the Siren,” by writer Steven A. Roman (that’s me again!) and artist Eliseu Gouveia (Vengeance of the Mummy, Lady Death), the teenaged Goth adventuress matches wits with a man-stealing enchantress who’s set her sights on Pan’s boyfriend, Javier. It’s followed by “After Hours,” by writer Sholly Fisch (The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries), and comic-art legend Ernie Colon (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld), in which a demon walks into a bar to unwind after a long day of scarifying. And rounding out the issue is “Shopping Maul,” a short story by me with title-page art by Elizabeth Watasin (Charm School), in which Pan and Annie, along with Javier and Pan’s best friend, Sheena, run into a group of Gothic Lolita vampires out to do more than a little window shopping.
Heroines and Heroes is a free digital comic book. It’s a collection of stories (and a few pinups) that I’ve drawn over the years, featuring mainstream and indie comic characters that include the superheroic Blonde Avenger, the anthropomorphic Motorbike Puppies, the half-human/half-rabbit superspy Snowbuni, and my “legendary” Wonder Woman-meets-Harley Quinn three-page tale that was meant to be my entrée to fame and fortune as a DC Comics artist (it didn’t work out, though).
Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings is a general readers’ graphic novel about a group of supernatural-superheroes-for-hire taking on their first case. The team consists of a wizard, a female ninja, a sorceress, a werewolf, and a rock ’n’ roll lighting designer wearing high-tech armor. Sure, they might not be on a power level with the Avengers or Justice League of America—they’re more like superpowered Ghostbusters—but they get the job done. The graphic novel is written by the husband-and-white team of Richard C. White (Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination, Chasing Danger: The Case Files of Theron Chase) and Joni M. White, and illustrated by Reggie Golden and Randy Zimmerman.
The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual and Troubleshooters Incorporated are available in print and digital formats. Pandora Zwieback #0 and Heroines and Heroes are digital exclusives. Visit their respective product pages at StarWarp Concepts for ordering information, as well as sample pages. And then get out there and start reading them in public!
That’s right, comic book fans, today is Free Comic Book Day at brick-and-mortar and online comic shops around the world. In fact, it’s the event’s 20th anniversary!
Usually held the first Saturday in May, this year’s event was bumped to August by Diamond Comics Distribution in recognition of the difficulties placed on the comic market by the global pandemic, in the hope that matters would be a little easier by this point, given the availability of vaccines (which they have, to a certain degree, Delta variant notwithstanding).
And in keeping with FCBD’s fine tradition of gifting comics to fans everywhere, here’s a list of StarWarp Concepts’ offerings that you can download for free directly from us!
Heroines & Heroes: A collection of comic stories and pinups all drawn by me, dating back to my days in the early 1990s small-press movement—that age of dinosaurs in which creators like me used to make our comics by printing them out on photocopiers and then stapling them by hand. In H&H you’ll find mainstream heroes and small-press heroines, and even a couple of anthropomorphic bikers. Leading off is “V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N (in the Summertime),” a three-page Wonder Woman vs. Harley Quinn story that I wrote and drew in the late ’90s as a sample for a DC Comics editor who thought I’d be a good fit for their Batman: The Animated Series comic (it didn’t work out). If you enjoyed Harley’s recent animated series or her latest movie, The Suicide Squad, you might get a kick out of her matching wits with the Amazon Princess. The WW/Harley matchup is followed by an adventure of small-presser Jeff Wood’s rabbit-eared superspy, Snowbuni; three pages from the long-canceled indie comic Motorbike Puppies; and an adventure of the indie superheroine The Blonde Avenger.
The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0: A full-color introduction to the young adult novel series of the same name, hosted by Pandora Zwieback herself. Pan is a 16-year-old New York City Goth who’s not only a horror fangirl but someone with the rare ability to see the for-real monsters that regular humans can’t (she calls it her “monstervision”), and with the help of a 400-year-old, shape-shifting monster hunter named Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin, she’s learning how to protect her family, her friends, and the world from the supernatural dangers out there—and maybe even have some fun while doing it. This 16-page comic features a seven-page story written by me, with art and color by Eliseu Gouveia (The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual#1, Lorelei: Sects and the City, Carmilla, A Princess of Mars), and includes two sample chapters from Blood Feud, the first Pan novel.
Hearstopper: The Legend of La Bella Tenebrosa#1–3: Before she became Pan’s monster-hunting mentor, Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin made her debut in this short-lived, 1990s Mature Readers series from Millennium Publications. A nefarious heavy metal band has arrived in New York City, and its lead singer is more than just a sex magnet for his female fans—he’s a soul-stealing incubus! Will Annie put an end to his plans for worldwide chaos, or fall prey to his supernatural charms? Written by me (of course), issue 1 is drawn by Pan and Annie co-creator Uriel Caton (JSA Annual) and inker Alan Larsen (Femforce); issue 2 is penciled by Uriel, Holly Golightly (School Bites), and David C. Matthews (Satin Steele) and inked by Larsen; and issue 3 is penciled by Holly, with four pages of inks by “Chainsaw” Chuck Majewski (Harvey Kurtzman’s New Two-Fisted Tales). As a special bonus, issue 3 includes a brief look at the never-published Heartstopper/Trollords, a crossover special that would have had Annie meet Harry, Larry, and Jerry, the Three Stooges–inspired trolls created by Scott Beaderstadt and Paul Fricke for their popular comic series of the 1980s. H/T was to be written by me with pencils by Holly and Scott and inks by Bill Lavin (Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings), but unfortunately it just never got past the starting gate.
(Warning: Heartstopperis designated a “Mature Readers” comic for violent scenes and some sexual innuendo, so younger Panatics should avoid it.)
All these comics are available for download right now, so visit their respective product pages at StarWarp Concepts for more information.
Now get to downloading, and have a happy Free Comic Book Day!
Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!
Today’s pic was snapped in 2019, while I was wandering the streets of lower Manhattan. I don’t know what might be lurking behind that ominous face, but all it would take to find out is by grasping that convenient—and oh so inviting—handle. Care to give it a turn…?
Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, the beast called Queens’thluhu, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the regal Griffin, and the Spooky Forest!
What’s that, you say? Didn’t I announce back in January that the StarWarp Concepts Crew wouldn’t be making any convention appearances in 2021 due to the complications brought about by conventioneering in the middle of a global pandemic? That’s very true…as far as in-person appearances go. But that doesn’t necessarily apply to online convention—like the SPACE show being held this July, and which SWC has just signed up to participate in as an exhibitor!
SPACE—an acronym for Small Press & Alternative Comics Expo—is the creation of Bob Corby, writer/artist/publisher of Back Porch Comics. Bob launched SPACE in the late 1990s in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, and it’s an event that’s steadily grown in crowd size and exhibitor attendance with each passing year. The Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, and the MoCCA (Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) Arts Festival, here in New York, might get all the attention when it comes to alt-press publications, but SPACE still has the sort of small-press-creator feel that reminds me of the days when StarWarp Concepts first launched, and I was turning out hand-stapled, digest-size comics on photocopiers—especially since some of SPACE’s attending creators who were my peers back then (like Bob) are still making comics today!
Coronavirus forced Bob to take SPACE online last year, and this year’s con follows suit (although he is making plans for a live show in November). The advantage here is that he’s opened wide the virtual convention-hall doors so that alt-press and indie publishers who normally wouldn’t be able to attend, like SWC, can now have a presence—for free! Hey, why pass up a good thing?
SPACE runs July 10 and 11. Visit its website for further information.
The 2021 convention season is looming ever closer, and around this time of year I’d be announcing some of the places you’d find the StarWarp Concepts Crew in attendance—but how does that work in the Age of Coronavirus?
As you’re no doubt aware, if you’re a regular con attendee, the 2020 season was completely wrecked when the global pandemic erupted during the spring, forcing the closure of hundreds of genre shows around the world, from one-day venues like Connecticut Horrorfest to mega-events like San Diego Comic Con. After all, it’s hard to socially distance when you’ve got up to 150,000 people crammed into one setting. A number of them, like SDCC and New York Comic Con, opted for online iterations—virtual cons—that had downloadable content as well as YouTube channels packed with prerecorded Zoom-style panels, all to try and provide that “con” feel. SWC even experimented with that format by participating (to a small degree) in one such show—SiouxperConline in October—though it didn’t appear to generate any book sales for us.
But where do we go from here? Sure, there are vaccines that have started to be distributed (thank goodness!), but it’ll be quite a while before the vast majority of Americans are properly immunized, and then there was the discovery of mutations in the virus that are making the rounds, which raised the concern that infection rates will spike again. On top of that, cons in general have never had a good reputation when it comes to matters of personal hygiene. Are you familiar with the term “con crud”? That’s when you come home from a show and wind up sick as a dog because you caught some virus from interacting with people who more often than not knew they were ill and attended anyway. Now, in the days of “super-spreader events,” such venues have become an even greater potential risk for infection.
For those of us at ’Warp Central, it wasn’t as though we’d been hitting the convention circuit very hard in past years, anyway: Connecticut Horrorfest was our only 2019 show, and of the two appearances we intended on making last year, February’s Pow Con in Brooklyn, NY, didn’t turn out all that great, so we had no plans to go back, and September’s CT Horrorfest was canceled due to the pandemic. With regard to 2021’s shows…sorry, Panatics, but we’re opting out for this year to see how things progress. If plans should change, however, you can be sure I’ll keep you up to date on our status.
Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!
Today, on Wednesday the 13th, we pay a visit to the Spooky Forest, a mural I came across during my wanderings in the Queens, New York, neighborhood of Long Island City back in 2018. It’s a mural by Josh McQuary, aka McMonster—who, if the Googling search is correct, is a Portland, Oregon artist (clicking the link will take you to his Instagram page).
An amazingly atmospheric bit of work, don’t you think? Although I’m not sure if I’d want to stop by this particular wood on a snowy evening!
Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, the beast called Queens’thluhu, and the scarifying Ghoulmobile, and the regal Griffin!
Even with the usefulness of the Internet, it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with events in the publishing industry. Which is why it came as such a surprise last week when I learned of the passing of Michael Z. Hobson on November 12, 2020, at age 83 due to heart failure. (The fact that the sad news broke over Thanksgiving Day weekend probably had a lot to do with that announcement being overlooked.)
Mike had been a Harvard graduate, a literary agent, and an executive at Little, Brown and Company and Scholastic Publishing before joining Marvel Comics as an executive vice president from 1981 to 1994.
He was also Pandora Zwieback’s first advocate.
As I often say, get comfortable—it’s a lengthy tale…
Our association started in 1997, during my time as a book editor, when my boss at the time, Byron Preiss, had hired Mike to be executive vice president of publishing for Byron Preiss Multimedia Company, which not only produced screensavers and the like but also co-published a highly successful line of original novels and anthologies based on the Marvel Comics characters (my three X-Men: The Chaos Engine novels, published from 2000 to 2002, were part of that line). It didn’t taken Mike very long, however, to discover that as EVP he wasn’t really allowed to make a lot of final decisions; as president and publisher, Byron held on to that position. Over time, Mike grew tired of the situation and decided to move on—the line of wellwishers on his last day stretched down the hall.
But in the time he was at BPMC, we’d gotten to be friendly. Mike was an easily likeable guy: he didn’t put on the sort of superior attitude you’d expect from someone who’d been in the business as long as he had, and who’d been a top-level executive for just as long. He was attentive, encouraging, and a firm believer in letting creative people be creative.
It was those qualities that made him one of the most respected people in publishing; adding Mike to your roster was considered a major get. So it was no surprise that after he departed BPMC there was news in 1998 that he’d landed as the new president of Parachute Properties, whose book-packaging company, Parachute Publishing, was the home of R.L. Stein’s bestselling Goosebumps and Fear Street series (also books starring the Olsen Twins, but…meh).
That summer, after he’d had time to settle in at the new place, I got a call from Mike, and an invitation to lunch. Hey, who was I to turn down a free meal?
At a bistro not far from Parachute’s offices, Mike explained the reason for the get-together: he was looking for new titles. As he put it, he’d sat down with management and told them that Goosebumps and Fear Street were all well and good, but if Parachute was to remain successful, it needed to expand its lineup, and that meant bringing in outside projects—creator-owned outside projects.
That was a huge step. Book-packaging companies like Parachute—as well as Byron’s Byron Preiss Visual Publications—typically owned the projects they assembled, and hired authors and artists through work-for-hire contracts, which meant that what they wrote and drew was wholly owned by the company. For a packaging company to start offering deals in which they were profit participants on projects but owned no part of them would be a game changer.
Mike went on to remind me that he greatly enjoyed my writing and my approach to editing, which was why, given the praise he’d just heaped on me, I thought he might be headhunting me to join him as a Parachute editor. But he had an even better proposal to offer:
“So…do you have any project of your own you think would fit in at Parachute?”
Well, no, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t have one for him in record time!
A couple weeks later I presented him with Heartstopper, a proposed six-book series of young-adult novels starring an immortal monster hunter named Sebastienne Mazarin and her teenaged Goth-girl sidekick, Pandora Zwieback. I even included character designs, courtesy of Pan and Annie’s co-creator, artist Uriel Caton, who had collaborated with me on the original-but-failed Heartstopper mature-readers comic published in 1994. (Hey, there’s nothing wrong with recycling a title and a character and adding a teen assistant to get it into the YA market.)
Mike loved it. He loved the title—Heartstopper was a short, memorable title like Goosebumps, easy to sell. Even more, he immediately saw its potential—not just YA books, but comics, movies, TV shows, merchandising…yes, this was exactly the sort of new Parachute title he was looking for. By mid-1999, after some fine-tuning of the proposal and a series of editorial back-and-forths, a deal was reached and contracts signed—Heartstopper was now one of the half-dozen (or so) creator-owned properties that Parachute Publishing was going to package. Even better, Mike had put me in touch with one of the other property owners, an artist who needed a writer to help develop his storyline; so now I was looking at two writing projects!
“Off we go!” Mike wrote in his cover letter to the final executed agreement.
But then a few months later I got another call from Mike, and another invitation to lunch. When we got together, Mike explained he had some very bad news to deliver: the new line of books was being scuttled. He couldn’t tell me exactly why that was—that was in-house politics not open for discussion with outsiders—but my impression was that Parachute soured on the idea that they weren’t going to own any of these new properties and thereby reap all the benefits. And possibly they hadn’t realized at the start just how successful Mike would be in launching his plans, or how quickly he’d be able to line up talent for them.
So now they were killing the program, and Mike was placed in the position of having to go back to all us creators and apologize for having us do all this work for no reward. (Since we owned the properties, none of the creators were paid for developing them; the money would have come from eventual sales and a 50/50 split with Parachute. But we all understood that going in.)
For someone with Mike’s standing in the industry, it was a major embarrassment.
The good news, though, was that with the publishing deals dead the creators were free and clear to do what we liked with our projects, hopefully finding homes for them at other publishing houses. Mike even later reached out to some of his contacts to see if Heartstopper could land somewhere (unfortunately, everyone passed on it).
After that, I’d occasionally run into Mike at trade shows like Book Expo America, although in 2000 he went above and beyond just hoping I’d become successful as a writer and editor by convincing Marvel Comics’ licensing division to make me an unusual offer: If I was interested, they’d hand me the publishing rights to all their supernatural characters—which Byron had turned down because he disliked horror—in order to create my own line of original novels and anthologies.
Doctor Strange, Blade, Dracula, Ghost Rider, Man-Thing, Werewolf by Night, Satana the Devil’s Daughter, Morbius the Living Vampire, even the superheroic mercenary Moon Knight—all those and more, mine for the taking because Mike had such confidence in me. Of course I was interested, but things just didn’t work out, unfortunately. That’s a story for another time, though.
By 2003, Mike had retired to become a part-time consultant in publishing, but every time we met he’d ask if anything was happening with that Heartstopper thing. Over time I let him know that the title had changed to The Saga of Pandora Zwieback—the teen-girl sidekick having shifted to the lead position—and he’d encourage me to keep at it.
The last time I saw Mike was in 2011. Elated over the fact that I’d finally taken the plunge and self-published the first Pandora Zwieback novel, Blood Feud, I got ahold of him and asked if he’d be interested in my mailing him a copy (especially since I’d dedicated the book to him). Instead, he invited me to lunch so we could catch up. Well, who was I to pass up a free meal?
Mike was in fine spirits that day, complimenting me on the book and remembering the potential the property still has for ancillary development. It was a fantastic two-and-a-half hour get-together as we talked about old times and the projects we were currently involved with, and as we left the restaurant he shook my hand and wished me continued success.
Like I said, Mike was an easily likeable guy, attentive, encouraging, and a firm believer in letting creative people be creative, and I’m glad I was able to know him, and to be encouraged by him.
This past Sunday night, I made a return appearance to J.D. Calderon’s YouTube interview series Indy Comics Explained, joining fellow comic-creating guests Randy Zimmerman (Tales from the Aniverse), Evan K. Pozios (Time Grunts), Joe D. McFee (Amazonia: The Continuing Adventures of E),and Ray Felix (Bronx Heroes), and publisher/podcaster Varian Grant (Indie Volt). (Sorry for not posting an advance notice, but it was sort of a last-minute invitation to join the chat.)
(J.D., by the way, is the writer/creator of the fantasy series The Oswald Chronicles and the anthropomorphic fantasy comic series Tall Tails, both published through his Dream Weaver Press company. He’s also been a friend of mine since we met back in the 1990s’ days of the indie comics explosion.)
On the show, we discussed a variety of topics related to comics publishing: the pros and cons of crowdfunding; the best money we’ve ever spent as publishers; the best and worst publishing advice we’ve gotten; dealing with printers and the rising cost of paper; the problems of getting comics distributed, and whether there are alternatives beyond crowdfunding; the difference between young adult and middle grade reading audiences; and whether changes in the comics industry will eventually lead to the demise of comic shops.
The panel runs a little over two hours, so find a comfortable chair and settle in for “Sunday Night Talking Comics,” the latest episode of Indy Comics Explained.
And in case you missed it, back in May I made my first appearance on the show, where I promoted my critically acclaimed comics historyFrom the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures, and talked about my time as a professional book editor (and the troubles associated with such work, especially in licensed publishing), my history as a writer and as a self-publisher, the Saga of Pandora Zwieback series, my current work as scripter for Oniric Comics’ Sideral: The Last Earthman, and, if I were offered the chance to write comics for Marvel and/or DC, which characters I’d want to work on.
“Talking to Steve A. Roman” is still available for viewing at Indy Comics Explained. If you’ve got an hour, click on the link and head on over to check it out.
