Brandon Graham's Blog, page 164
February 19, 2016
thesebearsarehappy:
@royalboiler did that thing where he asks...
@royalboiler did that thing where he asks artists to join him in drawing their version of a classic moebius thing. he probably meant, like, real artists. but it sounded fun so i did it.
comics friends, you should do this. i wanna see it. here’s a link to brandon’s explanation: https://royalboiler.wordpress.com/2016/02/17/more-humanoides-associes/
February 18, 2016
alchemichael:
Here is my quick response to a request from...
Here is my quick response to a request from @royalboiler for peeps to do their own versions of the Metal Hurlant issue 1 cover by Moebius.
When I was a kid I always saw the Moebius MH cover as some kind of mutated Batman. Just a child’s mind reaching for association but the feelings have persisted to this moment.
here is Brandons blog post
https://royalboiler.wordpress.com/2016/02/17/more-humanoides-associes/
February 17, 2016
emeraldcitycomicon:
Lin Visel @chipperwhale, known for her work...
Lin Visel @chipperwhale, known for her work on Slipshine and Prophet, will be a Comic Guest at ECCC.
February 16, 2016
coll-comics:
I mentioned SPX last night and then I was...
I mentioned SPX last night and then I was rereading the Multiple Warheads trade tonight and I was brought up short by this page.
I had the good fortune, in September, 2014, to meet Brandon Graham on the floor at SPX. He came by to talk and to draw in my Son’s “Doodles For Donuts” sketchbook. We discovered a few things that day: that Brandon can draw exceptional things while standing up, that he liked chocolate covered donuts with sprinkles on them and that he is a cool duuude.
This last was the catalyst for what happened in 2015 when Nico and I ended up with a last minute table and Brandon ended up as a last minute guest for a second year in a row at SPX. We offered him some table space, he accepted and everything was set for a great weekend, which brings me back to this page.
I have a thing for mistakes, not “bad art” or poorly drawn material, mistakes. A line drawn through a person or an object (Moebius), two left hands (Miyazaki) or any number of small errors or corrections that prove the human fallibility of the artist.
Without calling out Brandon in some sort of mean spirited finger pointing this page made me relax.
Let me be clear it’s one of my favorite MW pages and when I saw that Brandon had a big folio of original pages for sale I was curious if it was there.
The original was larger than I thought it would be but the energy was all there on the page - so was something I didn’t imagine would be there, the line on the building edge in the panel of Nura’s leap had been whited out and redrawn.
That’s when I fell in love with that page because it entered the pantheon of great work by great HUMAN artists.
“Of course he’s human!” You say. Well yeah, and like I said before he’s a cool duuude but as I struggled to draw a passable female character or to breathe life into an action scene or a believable background his art was a beautiful nemesis. Infuriatingly and deceptively “simple”, so fucking beautifully “simple”. Fuck me how is this so easy for him? Why is it so hard for me?! Just the usual irrational bullshit until I saw this page and that correction. That beautiful correction, that human moment.
SPX is a giant room full of humans that poor their guts out in comics. It rocks.
This page reminds me of that. Reminds me of how good it is to find like minded people in the world and how irrational it is to hold people up as some sort of gold standard. Don’t get me wrong the cool duuude rocks and his art is still deceptively simple but he’s just human, so I gotta go draw something now.
February 15, 2016
Prophet - A History of the Second Rising of the Earth Empire
A History of the Second Rising of the Earth Empire.
(Compiling issues 21-45 into prose)
A call has been sent, one to awaken a slumbering Prophet. Emerging
from a pod crashing through the arid dirt and rock surface, John Prophet finds an
Earth he recognizes not. He has been waiting for this time to come, this is
what he was created for and he is prepared. Heading east, every encounter
stresses the fact this is not the planet of the once mighty Earth Empire. This is a world that has
forgotten the humans. Following the rising sun, the one constant link between his
old world and this new one, remnants of the all but extinct homosapien litter
the landscape. Rusted metal and ancient broken technology, unseen and unknown
by John lend evidence to the scope of time that has passed while he lay in cryosleep beneath the Earth’s crust.
Time has marched on and man has become a footnote in history of this heavenly
satellite.
John reaches Jell City,
a once living organism that has beckoned since he awoke and is the reason
for his journey east. Through a series of dreams, John is instructed where to
go to further his yet unclear mission. It is here, in the bowels of the city
that his mission gains clarity and purpose. A pod, similar to one that carried
his own self emerges from the ground containing a dolmantle and translator orb. Discarding the drone husk he used to disguise
his foreign presence, John Prophet replaces it with the dolmantle.
Later, he is joined by his contact, an alien creature that
has also only recently awoke. The contact informs John that they have slept for
too long, that the Jell City was not supposed to be here when they were meant
to awake. The Earth awoken Prophet now has a mission. He is to scale the Tower of Thauilu Vah in order to reach
the G.O.D. satellite and to awaken
the Earth Empire. Eastward he continues his journey towards to the tower while
unknowingly being spied upon by two mysterious figures.
For twelve days he walks, coming across old pods, hinting at
other clones who have been awoken by the Earth Empire. Some were not as lucky
as he as only burnt remains occupy the pods. To expedite his journey to the tower;
Prophet finds work on a Taxa caravan
while Xiux-Guin Blade, an alien
hunter watches him. While on the Taxa caravan, Prophet stops the assassination
of the Caravan King only to discover that it is all ritual and his meddling has
inadvertently killed the new king. A chase ensues which ends with John Prophet
disrupting the protective shell that shields the Taxa caravan from the harsh
Earth environ. This affords Prophet a much needed diversion as the exposed
caravan is attacked by the regions deadly arthropods.
Using the Caravan power sockets, John Prophet powers up an ancient
abandoned War-God, upon which a settlement
had been built. It is a man-made relic, a P-970
Marx12 Viron which facilitates John’s escape. Hiding on the War-God with an
eye on hunting John Prophet is Xiux-Guin
Blade, who has finally found one worthy of sport.
Twenty three days have passed since John Prophet was awoken.
The War-God was abandoned long ago as
the power-hungry machine died shortly after his escape. The remainder of the
journey is accomplished by flying on the back of a captured Drone. From this
vantage point, high above the Earthly wasteland, the empty shells of pods, awoken
and abandoned long ago dot the landscape. As he reaches the Tower Thauilu Vah a Living Missile flies toward John Prophet, knocking him off his
captured steed, flinging him towards the Earth’s surface, taking his right arm
off in the process.
The Tower was built to allow travel through space; it is
Earths junction on a universe-scale monorail. The tower has outlasted man and
since then alien religious wars have
been fought and lost over control of this esoteric cloud buster, its purpose
lost in the millennia since its creation.
Making it to the base of the tower, Prophet interferes with
the transportation of alien yearlings, becoming a hero to some while
facilitating his ascent of the tower through a transport device. Continuing his
climb up the tower, getting closer to his celestial destination, the lurking Xuin-Guin spots an opportunity and
attacks John as together they reach the G.O.D.
Satellite, situated high above the tower. During the melee Xuin-Guin takes out one of John’s eyes
before being shot by a third-party. It is the mysterious figures that have been
following John since Jell City and it
is here that they reveal that John Prophet is only one amongst many other
Prophet clones.
All those pods he came across during his trek to the tower had
once been occupied by other John Prophets, but not all Prophets are created
equal. There exist unique castes of Prophet clones and this John is of the command caste. It is he alone who can
trigger the calling of the fleets and an order to return to Earth. With this distinction the embattled clone is dubbed
New Father John Prophet. Every world
the Earth Empire has touched over the
millennia has a Prophet clone seeded within…there are
thousands and they are now awake. “The Earth Empire is born anew”.
Somewhere, light years away from Earth the call is received
by one of many sleeping Prophet clones. He awakes alone upon an Empire Pod Ship, amongst a litter of
damaged and opened pods. These pods were destined to be launched into the
cosmos but were never afforded the chance as their ship crashed into another,
much larger, continent sized ship called a Palatium
Sleepingman which in turn has been pulled into the orbit of a Manufacturing
World.
Guided by the projection of an Earth Mother, John is guided
across the twin bodies of the Sleepingman
ship. Fed to him by an Earth Mother, from head to head he travels to his first
goal, a Neonaught Fibre tank. A Prophets life is never easy as the pod ship is
attacked, blasting John from the pod into the dark vacuum of space. John
escapes a ready fate by using a unique trait, the presence of a tail, to catch
himself from certain death.
Days later while travelling across the ship, John is
followed by another clone, one that heard the call sooner and has become
mutated due to prolonged exposure to the toxic atmosphere of this ship. Even as
he sees this mutated clone, he feels the radiation seething through own his
veins. A fight ensues with the mutant clone coming up on the losing end of the
battle. John makes it to the Neonaught
Fibre tank which saves him from the same radiation that mutated the clone
he just encountered. Submerging himself into the Neonaught fibre tank, he
emerges enclosed in a Star Skin suit which he utilizes to fall toward the
manufacturing world below. Here he finds a Thought
Mother, the source of the projection of his guide, the Earth Mother. It is
Thought Mothers that guide and control the many Prophet Clones scattered across
the universe. His mission is now clear, return the Thought Mother back to Earth
as it is not only the clones that are being called back to Earth.
The journey to Earth is an arduous one and along the way the
tailed Prophet and Thought Mother must pass through an Ixtano war which has been raging for the past 300 years. The war is
so large and intense that they must pass through it using Star Skins. While
trying to protect the Earth Mother from a Wardysozoa,
John is knocked into the gravity field of a nearby manufacturing barge. It is
here, on the barge that John is thrown into a psychic mind field by a Podo Guard. There he finds himself in
the bowels of the Barge and its marsh. It is a munitions factory with an Overmind controlling slaves to produce fuel
for the fire of war above.
John, initially under the control of the Overmind is
assisted by an Earth Mother
projection in weakening that control. Biding his time, using remnant of his hidden
Neonaught skin to heal and grow strong, he meets a band of free-willers ready
to fight and escape. It is with the help of the free-willers that John fully breaks
free of the Overmind’s control. With the aid of a light map provided by a
free-willer named Fim, John and his
crew of Free-Minders use Hasidian seeds
spiked in the mind controlling Omni Milk to loosen the mind control over the
rest of the slaves. Using a force of newly freed slaves, the soon to be dubbed
(Hero) John then sparks a revolt.
In response,
poisonous gas is released in an attempt to quell the revolt. Fim perishes
trying to kill the Overmind before John finally manages to smite it, along with
everyone still under the Overmind’s control. Only those on the Womb Bridge, the command post of Overmind
survive. Earth Mother tries to call John but her words no longer hold this
Prophet clone. Perhaps it is a residual effect of the potent cotyledon found
within the Hasidian seed or perchance it reveals a hint at how many other
Prophet clones may cease to heed the call and commands of the Earth Empire. It
will be sometime before he meets Old Man Prophet.
While most worlds were held by the Earth Empire there
remained a few worlds unfettered by man.
Kartanus is one of them. There
were originally six Prophet Clones here but only three survived; John
Andronocles, John Hu and John Teklite. They are guarded an enslaved Canucus
Wolf and guided by a projection of an Arch Mother who sits aboard a nearby Wombship.
While searching for
Nephilim Giants the three stumble upon a group of Pinwheel Warriors. In the ensuing battle John Teklite is blinded
and later dies. A Womb ship arrives and destroys the Pinwheel Warriors and
proceeds south, taking the remaining clones towards a detected Nephilim which
is killed and attached to the Wombship for transport. With a bloody entrance, another Prophet clone emerges
from the Nephilim corpse and killing Andronocles and Hu He is older than the
others and was one of the first of his kind. He has long since ceased to be a
soldier of the Earth Empire.
The Old Man climbs the cables that lie between the Nephilimand
the Wombship. Inside he kills the Earth Mother and removes the crown she wears
and placing it on own face. Old Man Prophet is the enemy of Earth Empire and another
civil war has begun.
Old Man Prophet travels via Space Worm to find his old friend Brother Hiyonhoiagan, veteran of the first war against the Earth
Empire. He will need help in his crusade against the rising threat and he will
find it first in old comrades. Traveling to Hiyonhoiagan’s home world he is given
a singular arm of Diehard. Together, along with Diehards arm they take the ship
“Insula Tergum” and head towards Earth,
retrieving other parts of Diehard, piecing together his torso (Tombs of Eris),
another arm (Stanford Torus) and a leg (Black Moon). It is Diehard’s torso
which is guiding the ship to his remaining body parts.
The crew lands on Jupiter’s moon Callisto and it is here that they meet a Qid-Pid who tries to drug and kill the Old Man and Hiyonhoiagan. They
are to learn that not everyone supports their insurgence against the Earth
Empire. In a Cetacean fife ship they find Diehard’s head and escape back to the
“Insula Tergum”. They travel elsewhere on the moon to a cube egg where they
find the rest of Diehards body being controlled by a dolmantle. Freeing it they complete the reunion of Diehard’s
body.
Meanwhile on another world, Jaxon, a companion and helper of Old Man Prophet, has also awoken
by the Earth Empires signal. Jaxon is a creation of Old Man Prophet in order to
aid in his rebellion against the Earth Empire in the last war. Jaxon tunnels
through a Bio-Meca and finds a Jung Brother named Xefferson. Jaxon repairs and awakens Xefferson a together they fly
off of the Bio-Meca, upwards to the Armscye
Ting surrounding the planet. They will use the Cyclops Rail there to depart
and search for Old Man Prophet. Losing Xefferson in transit, Jaxon arrives on Brainrock and uses him to send a message
to Old Man Prophet, attempting to locate and reunite, which in time they will.
Two weeks have passed since Callisto and Old Man Prophet and
Diehard are on Scale World in hopes
of reforming an alliance once held with the Scale World ruling clan. It was
here that a young Old Man found love. While the landscape and air remain the unchanged,
this not the same clan that the Old Man was familiar with as the Family Jinnah is now the ruling clan. All
is not right as they have been sold out to the Earth Empire and ambushed by a
party lead by a mutant Prophet Clone. The crew meet a young scale named Rein-East,
an orphaned assassin who was captured en route to kill a member of the Jinnah.
Freeing her, she joins the fray helping the crew battle the traitorous Jinnah.
Without a moment to lose Jaxon arrives aiding the group allowing an escape from
the angry Jinnah. There team is now almost complete. Boux!
The next stop for this motley crew is the dismembered body
of Ixpoliniux, which orbits Moorrock. It is here that they will meet
with the Woman’s Army in order to
forge a much needed alliance against the Earth Empire. Old Man Prophet talks to
a projection of an old ally Troll,
who instructs them to find Badrock as
it is his help they will require.
Shortly after John, Diehard and Jaxon find a Prophet clone awoke
to destroy the very ground beneath them. They track and kill the Empire clone,
disposing of his Life Bomb, saving Ixpoliniux. Diehard removes the slain
Prophets heart and makes it his own. The meeting with the Woman’s Army will
need to be held elsewhere and commences upon one of their ships behind the husk
of the once-living Trust.
Of interesting note is the source of energy powering the
Star Body of the Lady Probable. It is none other than the corpse of the late
earth man known as Supreme. The Woman’s Army has left its own star space for
fear of Empire intrusion. The meeting is interrupted by an attack on the Insula Tergum. The crew return to the ship
where the resulting attack causes the ship to crash into the dead brain of the
Living Trust causing new life in the cerebral body to form. The ship and brain
form to become one which in turn bonds to the roots of Hyonhoiagn.
The crew are bound for Troll’s world, the moon of Phobos. The moon serves as a museum of
Troll’s many adventures as relics from numerous adventures come together to
form an unspoken narrative of Troll’s existence. Upon meeting with Troll, Old
Man Prophet is given his old ship back, the one he commanded in last battle of
the first civil war.
Meanwhile back on Earth the battle for the Tower continues
with more and more recalled clones joining the battle. Nine months have passed since New Father
Prophet took the aforementioned mantle. It is a struggle to capture control the
Tower both against the enemy and within the Prophet ranks. Infighting and
jealousy of the position New Father Prophet holds drive one Prophet to attempt
to kill him. The plot is thwarted by the clone Jun-Oui who Father Prophet renames Green Blade. New Father takes Green Blade on as a comfort brother
(AKA, lover).
The battle for the tower is fierce and losses on both sides
are massive but Thauilu Vah finally returns to Earth Empire control. The tower
crackles back to life, once again a junction on the man-made worm hole known as
Cyclops Rail, connecting space and with it bringing a singular ship, the lone
remnant of the Empire’s Hammer Deon Fleet.
The lone surviving Prophet clone found aboard the ship is mind probed to learn
of its past. The ship was part of a fleet dispatched to investigate a new power
emerging in the universe. The fleet encountered a destructive force at the
center of a living nebula’s core, bringing pain and destruction forth, unlike
any seen by mortal or immortal eyes before. The violent visions of this John
are transmitted to others as well, via Troll. A new threat exists, a common
enemy to both the reborn Earth Empire and Rebels alike.
As Earth Empire continues its march to return to universal
prominence, so does the forces who oppose. On the abandoned war station known
as Kuthra-Thal, Brother John Atum awakens. After defeating a Modan-Bug, he meets up with a Brother
Argo who guides him to the system core where he places Argo’s physical
container into a large mech suit known as a Warbot. The suit flies off to
Karma-Theta to destroy the gravity holes which will open the way for the Earth
Empire Fleets.
Old Man Prophet still on Phobos orating with Troll is once
again reminded that they will need the help of an old friend named Badrock,
more so now if they are to face this new threat. Troll instructs the Old Man to
pay a visit to the home of the Tij-Dekara,
to commune with Suprema in the hopes of finding out Badrock’s location. Here, Old
Man Prophet extracts the name Venerablethe
Wake, giving the crew a lead and their next destination.
New Father Prophet is dispatched to hunt down Old Father
Prophet but realizes, with the help of visions given by Troll, that the
recently seen threat at the center of the mysterious nebula poses a much
greater threat, to everyone. The Brain Mother commands one of the weaker willed
clones aboard the ship to kill New Father. The plan fails and in turn brings
the remaining crew of Prophet clones onto New Father side and the search for a
weapon to deal with the new threat. The crew arrives on Euthymius where New Father John receives a new arm and Long John
splits from the party to head to the surface of Ixpoliniox. His task is to finish the job started by another Prophet
clone and detonate a Life Bomb which will in turn break Moorrock, child of
Badrock, from the gravity of a nearby Neutron Star. The plan works and with
destruction comes the freeing of Moorrock.
Moorrock is one of several sleeping titan children of
Badrock that were gathered by New Father and his crew. They are collected and
placed as a psychic dam to block the oncoming alien threat of the Red Pain. Or
so they hope. The gathering of Badrock’s offspring has lured the father
himself. This action becomes known to Old Man Prophet upon meeting Venerable
the Wake who informs him that he was merely a pawn in Troll’s plan, just as New
Father Prophet was. As Badrock arrival destroys his children and an epic battle
between giants ensues as Troll has left his moon base to confront Badrock.
Troll’s plan is to emerge with Badrock, to become a force powerful enough to
confront the mysterious force. We assume that Trolls plan is a success.
We pick up with the crew as the Insula Tergum crashes on to
the surface of the Body World. It is Captain Qwest and his free-fighters, freed
by (Hero) John, that pull Old Man Prophet and his crew from the wreckage. It
also happens to be where (Hero) John is being held along with some
free-willers. They managed to escape only to end up on the surface of this Body
World. He manages to alert Qwest of his presence and is rescued by Jaxson and
Old Man Prophets crew. (Hero) John is accompanied by the clones Green Blade and
Ka.
The reunited group then encounter and battle the Red Pain where
Diehard takes some major damage (ripped in two!). The battle is cut short by
the entrance of an Empire Star Prophet making short work of the Red Pain and seizing
the core egg lying within. A powerful egg indeed. What will the Earth Empire do
with the menacing power of the Red Pain?
To be concluded in
Earth Wars.
inkstuds:
This is Inkstuds Radio and I’m David Brothers, a...
This is Inkstuds Radio and I’m David Brothers, a two-time Eisner Award co-loser. I used to run 4thletter!, the internet’s most popular comics blog that also focused on wrestling, movies, music, Venom, and the black condition. I did Inkstuds Spotlight a few years back, taking a look at the world of comics from a variety of different perspectives, and Robin Inkstuds, the proprietor of this fine internet broadcast, gave me an open invite to come back and interview whoever I’d like.
I chose Zainab Akhtar, the mind behind Comics & Cola (found at comicsandcola.com, with a Tumblr supplement atwellnotwisely.tumblr.com) and a comics critic and tastemaker whose voice I appreciate greatly in the current comics landscape. She has a taste for things that are new to me, and a way of describing them that fascinates me. She’s done an Inkstuds or two herself, most recently with Michael Deforge.
I reached out to her for an interview/conversation, and she was kind enough to say yes. We talked about Mads Mikkelsen, her childhood experience with comics, what led to her critiquing comics, being focused on narrative, the community she has found herself in, serializing comics for others, friendship, a brief aside into Masamune Shirow, and whether Vin Diesel or The Rock is better, more or less in that order.
The intro music is Akira Ifukube’s “Godzilla (Main Theme).” The outro music is Amit Trivedi & Tochi Raina’s Motorwada Song.
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