Category: News

Prodigal, the globe-spanning tale of a team of fortune-hunters living on the edge of danger from writer Geoffrey Thorne and artist Todd Harris, debuted today on Thrillbent.com.

In addition to writing Prodigal, Geoff Thorne has written comics for Dark Horse, Spinner Rack and EZD Comics.  His TV credits include: Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Leverage, Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, and Ben 10: Omniverse.

Todd Harris is an accomplished artist for both comics and storyboards.  His credits include: X Men Origins: Wolverine, God of War II & III, In Time, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, and Thrillbent’s own Arcanum.

Geoff was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions for us.

ComicMix: Give us the Don-LaFontaine-movie-trailer speech for Prodigal. “In a world…”

Geoffrey Thorne: “In a world where psychotics and murderers are accepted as legitimate heroes, two creative professionals decided to reject that paradigm and put a little fun back into the comic book multiverse.”

CM: So literally, Prodigal returns?

GT: Prodigal is the nickname of Byron Lennox, one half of J & L Retrievals. He got it a long time before becoming a retrieval specialist because, for some reason, no matter what befell him on a mission, he always came back. Sometimes he’d be the only one to come back.

CM: Then who’s the “J” in J & L Retrievals?

GT: Pae Mei Jacinto.

CM: How did they decide who got top billing?

GT: Pae wins all arguments. Of the two of the two of them she is, by far, the more dangerous.

CM: Play out a little bit of Prodigal for us. Where are we starting from?

GT: The beginning of a case, the middle of Byron and Pae’s lives. We only tell the stories of the cases that go sideways in the middle. We only tell you as much as you need to know to keep up with the story.  another thing over which we’re not overly fond is ridiculously long and ponderous continuity chains. Everything you need to know is in the story you’re reading. No tricks, no zingers. Just straight-up fun.

CM: Why are these people doing it? Is it literally just the paycheck for them, or is there something else going on?

GT: Thrills. Money.Freedom. Beats the hell out of fighting Galactus.

CM: Isn’t Arcanum supposed to be running on Mondays on Thrillbent? For that matter, isn’t Todd Harris the artist on Arcanum? Have you stuffed John Rogers into a school locker and taken his pencils?

GT: Well. Yes, except it’s on hiatus. Anyone who tries to stuff John into anything is welcome to the butt whipping that will ensue. John can handle himself and so can his many friends.

CM: What’s it been like working with Todd Harris on the art?

GT: Working with Todd has been the most fun I’ve had creatively.

CM: What’s it like working for Thrillbent? What are the advantages, for you, of working for them?

GT: The advantages are… 100% ownership of our IP, a creator-friendly contract that must be read to be embraced an editorial and publishing team who really know what they’re doing. Plus, the founders of the company are not only writers, but fantastic ones. Working with them and the rest of the team, thus far, has been pretty damned awesome.

CM: How has your storytelling changed in writing for the sort of comics format that Thrillbent has?

GT: Hmmm. Not as much as you’d think. Mainly this format gives us better control of the tempo. Beyond that, it’s pretty much business-as-usual.

CM: You’re a loooongtime comics fan. How big was your collection, and how bad was your weekly habit?

GT: At its height my collection numbered in excess of 65,000. At my worst, and this was when comics cost a LOT less than they do now (and I was a lot richer), I was probably dropping between 60 and 100 bucks a week, depending on what was happening in “indie world.”

Lucky for you folks, Prodigal will be presented for free for the foreseeable future.

So what are you waiting for? Go read it!

If you’ve ever read anything from Clifford Meth, you know he can be a ferocious writer, and ferociously talented. We like that sort of thing here, and that’s why we’ve published his stuff in the past. He’s compiling his columns and essays into a book, and you have a few hours left to pre-order it on Kickstarter:

Comic Book Babylon gathers icons HARLAN ELLISON, STAN LEE, ALAN MOORE, FRANK MILLER, JOE KUBERT, GENE COLAN, DAVE COCKRUM, WALTER SIMONSON and NEAL ADAMS into a conversation with CLIFFORD METH where anything goes. Among other stories, you’ll learn how & why X-Men co-creator Dave Cockrum became the first Marvel artist to receive a monetary settlement and lifetime royalties for his creations after years of suffering and virtual banishment… You’ll meet a well-known Hollywood film producer who doesn’t like to pay his writers (until someone squeezes his face)… You’ll read Harlan Ellison saying things no one else would publish…

This fascinating book collects Meth’s decades of comics columns and essays–some too outrageous to publish in their day–and adds never-before-revealed material. Everything is brought to life with sensational illustrations by the celebrated and beloved Marvel/DC artist MICHAEL NETZER.

What’s achieved is a startling look at the REAL villains and heroes of comics. Introduction by STAN LEE. Art by NETZER. Rants by METH. Join us!

I freely admit a bias. DC’s animated efforts have always trumped Marvel’s. Always. Super Friends smacked Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends two ways from Sunday. And for every great episode of the 90’s X-Men or Spider-Man there were two Batman or Superman: The Animated Adventures. And sure, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and the Sensational Spider-Man were brilliant, but they don’t belong in the same breath as Justice League Unlimited and Batman Beyond.

At present moment the only animated war (and it’s a weak one at that…) that may be around is Ultimate Spider-Man against Teen Titans Go! Both are meant to skew young. But only one of them is doing it right. I’ll give you half a guess – it’s Teen Titans Go!

In the simplest of terms, Ultimate Spider-Man ultimately sucks. And that hurts to say, because my personal lord and savior Paul Dini, is a creative consultant. The show is a schizophrenic attempt at making Spider-Man for a new generation. This is after the way-better-written Sensational Spider-Man, mind you. Every single trope a cartoon can use to wave the white flag of “love me!” is plastered throughout the show. A misfit team of B and C listers meant to accompany the star? Check. Family Guy style cutaway gags every few minutes? Check. Frequent guest stars to make you forget there’s no character development? Ch-ch-check. In all the episodes I’ve sat through, the only thread that connects them all is the desperation that oozes from the pores. Here is a series that reeks of plot by committee that does anything short of shuckin’ and jivin’ in order to grab the kiddies’ attention.

On the other hand, Teen Titans Go! seems to suffer from none of this. An oddly post-modern retread of its former self, TTG takes the titular titans of 2003, and re-imagines them in kawaii form. This super deformed (more cartoony, if such a term could ever be applied to a cartoon) Titans show plays towards the micro-sized popular companion toons like Regular Show or Adventure Time. With no serious episodes to be had, TTG is a show hellbent on solely being entertaining. No secret machinations present. Where USM seeks to birth a brand new Marvel Animated Universe™, TTG seeks only to get some laughs. I should note in the wake of the cancelation of Green Lantern: the Animated Series and Young Justice I was apt to be cranky with whatever replaced them. It took literally two minutes of TTG to <a href=”

crack my grimace.

Normally I’m a bit more verbose, but the proof is in the pudding. As it stands, Marvel continues down a terrible path, choosing to aim at any market that will have them. DC continues to allow their creative teams to explore, experiment, and ultimately (heh) aim their cartoons with laser focus. Combine that with their continued brilliant voice casting, and smart writing? You get, more often than not, a superior product.

‘Nuff said.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

MONDAY: Mindy Newell