Foster Children, by Elayne Riggs
It’s finally official. On Saturday in San Diego, IDW announced a new project based on Peter David’s Sir Apropos of Nothing series of novels, to be written by Peter with art by Robin Riggs. “Art” as in pencils, inks and colors — or, as those wacky Brits say, “colours.” Don’t ask me why, they have enough trouble pronouncing words correctly without trying to spell them right as well. Anyway, Robin and I are both pretty excited about this miniseries, and not only because the offer came at the same time as my current job offer so it means we both get to celebrate employment at the same time.
First of all, it’s Peter, whom we’ve both known for a long while and who’s an absolute delight even though he’s never introduced us to his equally-famous friends like Harlan Ellison and Billy Mumy. Secondly, I love the character of Apropos… well, not exactly “love,” he’s kind of a despicable rogue, but I love his adventures, and I love the conceit of a character who’s supposed to be secondary and an afterthought suddenly being the protagonist of his own stories. It’s kind of like if women were lead characters in their own right instead of love interests and fridge fodder! What a concept!
Anyway, the other reason I’m loving the idea of Robin doing a Sir Apropos comic book series is, even though it’s going to be parodying bits of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, art-wise Robin wants to bring to it a sort of Hal Foster Prince Valiant vibe. I think the first story Rob and I ever did together, a 2-pager called Sailor’s Wife, had this sort of feel to it, and the whole medieval atmosphere worked really well with his penciling style.
So Rob has been immersed in Foster these past few weeks, going over all his Prince Valiant collections, studying them for inspiration and visual ideas. He even taped together a number of 11 x 17 sheets to make a page (see photo) the size at which Hal Foster originally worked. It’s easy to see how much more illustrative you can get when you’re working 30 x 40. But it takes a true master to know how to draw so that no detail is entirely lost in the reproduction. (more…)
We’re back from Comic Con and ready to hit the comic shop in search of so much we saw previewed on the floor in San Diego, plus:
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