Yearly Archive: 2008

It’s something every single sci-fi geek has wondered at some point, possibly while concocting fiendishly devious plans: what if I could turn invisible?

Of course, all the way back to H.G. Wells’ classic novel, The Invisible Man, we have been told time and time again that this power would basically screw us over. I mean, in that novel, the main character found himself permanently invisible, went insane and then became a maddened killer before he was put down like a dog in the street. This idea of how much it would suck to be permanently unseen has been told time and time again, including the 1950s [[[Invisible Man]]] television series and the Chevy Chase adaptation of Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Heck, the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four has control over her abilities and yet even she gets shafted since she has to deal with the fact that she’s overshadowed by her less powerful teammates.

In 2000, the Sci-Fi Channel began a live-action television series in which writer/creator Matt Greenberg gave us a whole new twist on the familiar story. Sadly, the show was cancelled and only enjoyed two seasons. But this year, the first season was finally released on DVD — and there’s a good reason to pick it up.

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Paul Pope is in the midst of making a new comic about a kid who has to fight his way through "Monstropolis," and he’s been kind enough to post a quick preview on the blog of publisher First Second, which is putting out the book.

There are two black and white preview pages — one is seen at right — that detail a small moment in the book, as the main character, Battling Boy, fights "Humbaba, the toughest monster (or maybe at least the oldest — Humbaba can be traced back to Gilgamesh; he is the guardian of the edge of a city, or the place where a forest meets the edge of a city, as you prefer)."

While Pope has often ventured into somewhat harsh territory, there’s an almost Bone-ian vibe of innocent wonder coming from these pages, but it’s far too little to judge. Here’s some of what Pope had to say about the book:

Battling Boy is the son of a god or a super hero—it is left unspecified—who comes down from the top of a mountain (or rather, from inside a cloud/UFO contraption/contrivance from above a mountain top) at this father’s behest, in order to rid a giant city from it’s plague of monsters. Hercules had his labors, Batman has his Gotham, Battling Boy has his Monstropolis.
Monstropolis is a city the size of an entire continent—and it is absolutely overrun with monsters. These are horrible, Grimm’s fairytale, Beowulf-ish monsters, awful things. Child-stealers. Plus some of the vampires and mummies and wolfmen we remember from the old black and white Hollywood horror films. Which—if you remember—aren’t very funny. And they don’t all like each other, either. Even a monster can’t stand another monster, this has been proven time and time again.

(via The Beat)

G. Willow Wilson is a fascinating person for many reasons, not the least of which is that she writes really cool comics. Her path into comics is one of the most unique in the industry, though.

Wilson was born and raised in the United States, later converted to Islam and moved to Cairo to work as a journalist. In her spare time she worked on the graphic novel Cairo, a story of magic and mythology set in Egypt’s capital city that came out from Vertigo last year.

In August, Vertigo releases the first issue of a new series by Wilson and Cairo collaborator M.K. Perker, titled Air. It features a stewardess who’s afraid of heights and becomes embroiled in a fight for a new, magical energy source.

I spoke with Wilson about the series and her upcoming memoir.

COMICMIX: When did you start working on Air, and how did the idea develop?

G. WILLOW WILSON: I started working on Air several years ago as a straight prose novel. But I stopped one chapter in and decided it had to be a comic book. After we wrapped up Cairo, Karen Berger asked me if I had any strong ideas for an ongoing monthly with a female lead character. I hemmed and hawed and pitched her a couple of mediocre things. Then I had a clandestine ‘Duh’ moment and pulled out Air. You always have a certain feeling about ideas you know are going to gel and be great, and I had that feeling about this story. Happily, so did Karen.

CMix: What were some of the inspirations for the project?

GWW: It’s the moments when you feel most trapped that true escape is possible. That’s really what this book is about. Walking into an airport as a Muslim pretty much sucks — you have to de-Islamify yourself as much as possible (I never carry a Koran on the plane with me, for instance; I always pack it in my checked bag) in order not to make security people and other passengers nervous. Yet flying is still the most magical, surreal form of travel we have. So I wanted Air to both examine this tense political atmosphere and shed it, escape from it, use it as a jumping-off point for the totally unreal. (more…)