Jim Zub's Blog, page 46

Comic Book Club Live: Conan and More

I was a guest on Comic Book Club Live with Pete LePage, Justin Tyler, and Alex Zalben. I talked up a storm about Conan the Barbarian and other fun comic projects in the wings. Check it out!

Conan the Barbarian and Much More on Steg-Man and His Amazing Friends

I was a guest on the Steg-Man and His Amazing Friends live show and we had a great time chatting about comics, new and old – Conan the Barbarian, Rick and Morty, Dungeons & Dragons, Champions, and more! Check it out.

Year In Review

Here we go again. A post to try and summarize the year that was and, man oh man, 2020 was quite possibly the strangest of them all.

In mid-February I announced I was stepping down as Coordinator of Seneca’s Animation program after 14 years and would be starting an 18 month sabbatical from teaching in April so Stacy and I could travel to more international conventions and take advantage of big creative projects I had underway. Two weeks later, the pandemic started to take hold on this side of the world and all our big plans for the year began to unravel. Within a month it was clear 2020 wouldn’t be anything like what we planned.

But, we persevered.

I cancelled my teaching break (but still stepped down from being in charge of the program) and went online to deliver lectures. The students managed to keep up with the shift and have done well despite it all. A bunch of writing projects stalled out or crumbled, but other unexpected ones stepped in to pick up the slack. I started my run as the writer of Conan the Barbarian and, even with delays, it’s been a dream to work on. I ran my first Kickstarter campaign for a hybrid comic-RPG project and it did really well. Star Wars, Stranger Things, and more D&D. The entertainment industry shuddered (and, in some cases, shuttered), but we’re still here doing our thing.

Stacy and I tried to use the extra time at home to spruce up our place a bit, expand our cooking skills, and be more mindful of time while doing our best to stay safe. I did a bunch tabletop gaming via Zoom and played online video games with my brother. Even with all the chaos, we know we have a lot to be grateful for. The bonds between friends and family have been physically distant but emotionally resonant.

Touch wood, so far we haven’t had any Covid-related emergencies in our family and, at the end of the day, that’s more important than any creative or travel setbacks. We’re healthy on the whole and weathering it all far better than most.

The broad brushstrokes of the world were dark but little moments gleamed and that’s what we try to stay focused on.

Winter 2021 looks like it’s going to be rough, but somewhere past that will be better days and we’ll be that much more thankful for the time we spend and places we go.

Lots of love to all of you as we close out the year. Be good to each other and keep fighting.

Jim

Talking Sword & Sorcery and More With Comic Tropes!

Chatting with Chris at Comic Tropes was an absolute pleasure. We cover all kinds of great stuff here, including how I got my start in animation and comics, working in the business and a lot of sword & sorcery fare, including Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and Conan the Barbarian. Check it out!

Talking Stone Star With Citywide Blackout

Max and I chatted with the Citywide Blackout podcast all about STONE STAR Season 2 – How we work together to develop the series, the fun of creating our own universe, and teasing big story developments coming up in future issues. Give it a listen!

Stone Star Season 2 #1 Reviews

• Drop The Spotlight: “Exactly the kind of thing I look for in a comic book, a great story, well-written characters and dialogue, artwork that’s beautifully colored, I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this!”

• Fanboy Factor: “Max Dunbar is outdoing his previous top-notch environment and action work in this new season, bringing in a whole new A-Game of visual interpretation. Together with Espen Grundetjern on colours and Marshall Dillon on lettering, this team is offering a fun, funky take on mechs, men, women, and beasts.”

• Reading With a Flightring: “This is so charming and so well told that you can get lost in this world and left wishing you could explore the city itself.”

Creating a New Language in Conan the Barbarian

For Into the Crucible, my first arc of Conan the Barbarian, I wanted to channel the sword & sorcery prose/comics that had a big influence on me but also give it a spin that, ideally, readers hadn’t quite seen before.

That piece ended up coming from building a new language.

Conan is traveling through Uttara Kuru, a distant land from his home of Cimmeria. In the classic comics, characters would all be speaking the same language or passages would automatically be translated to make the exchanges relatively frictionless for the reader.

I decided to give our team a challenge and put Conan in the deep end on this trip by not having him (or the reader) understand exactly what was being said. Assumptions and inferences abound. Body language and facial expressions have to sell intent that much more.

Sometimes Conan gets bits translated for him, other times the translator puts their own spin on things.

In the fourth part of the story we included a lexicon of key words so readers could go back and do their own rough translations if they want.

It was one of the most challenging things I’ve done so far as a writer, but also a ton of fun.

If you’re a sword & sorcery fan and like what you see here, you can read Into The Crucible now in single issues (Conan the Barbarian #13-16) or pick it up in trade paperback in March 2021.

Conan the Barbarian:
Into the Crucible
(issues #13-18)
A new era for Conan! The barbarian has faced many foes since leaving Cimmeria, but the greatest challenge lies ahead! Conan finds himself in a city in the mystical Uttara Kuru, farther on the eastern border than he has ever traveled. And with a new city comes new dangers!

PRE-ORDER
Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Book Depository

Bookshop

Chapters-Indigo

Indiebound

Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons #2 Reviews

• But Why Tho: 10/10 “Houser and Zub humanize two of our main fictional characters while Galindo brings out raw emotions through an amazing display of facial expressions.”

• Comic Book.com: 8/10 “Honestly, this comic focuses on another great aspect of D&D—how people use it to grapple with complex emotions like grief or rage. It’s a surprisingly deep comic, one that clearly comes from a place of love for D&D.”

• One More Comic (Spanish): 8/10 “The love of playing Dungeons & Dragons transcends and is no longer just fun, it is a way to heal wounds.”

Stranger Things and D&D Panel and Liveplay – Part 2

Dark Horse hosted a second live panel and livestream D&D session about the Stranger Things comics with creators. Watch the crew discuss Stranger Things and D&D, an upcoming comic series, and our many other Stranger Things graphic novels and comics, and then play a session inspired by the Stranger Things Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set.

00:08:10 Stream Start

01:02:49 Game Session Begins

Chatting With Comic Quirks

I spoke to Jimmy at Comic Quirks about growing up reading comics, writing iconic characters, writing structure, and more. Check it out.