Unseen Star Trek – from the LOSER.

As promised on the weekend, I said I’d do a fun blog about my recent Star Trek graphic novel whether I won or lost the Shuster Award for Best Writer for that very project.

As you can see from the title of the blog, I lost.  The winners of the awards can be found here!  Congrats to all the talented folks who were recognized for the contributions we get to make to canadian, and comic culture.  YAAAY all around.

But here’s the fun blog anyway.

Star Trek:  Mission’s End was illustrated by a wonderfully skilled young Canadian named Stephen Molnar, who worked himself ragged to get the likenesses, the costumes, the backgrounds, the aliens, and the whole “feel” of Star Trek absolutely right.  He’s a big part of the reason people liked the book, if they did.  I’m going to show you guys a couple of Steve’s elegant pages in pencil and inks in a moment.  You’ll have to get the comic, GN or phone app to read it in colour; the final product belongs to Paramount and IDW.

Not mine to give away online, without a spanking.

But here’s where the fun comes in.  A couple of months ago, a fellow named Darrin Egan took one of my Comic Book Bootcamp courses, and was interested to try his hand at a full set of sample pages, based on an existing script that was yet to be published (so he couldn’t be influenced by the published version).   Though the Trek issues had already come out at the time, Darrin hadn’t seen them, and was interested in trying his hand at the pages.    Below are both versions:  First, the terrifically talented Steve Molnar, artist of the published story, in either inks or pencils,  followed by the vivacious version by Darrin Egan, from the same script, but without seeing Steve’s art.

Obviously, I’m a pushy writer, as the basic storytelling is remarkably similar.  So the parts that mirror each other, are the fault of a micromanaging writer…it’s the little ways in which they differ I find fascinating.  At any rate, I thought you guys might enjoy.  They’re both good at likenesses, and storytelling rules.  Each has strengths.  It’s like the Tiger and Princess.

Steve Molnar, pencils and inks

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Darrin Egan - pencil

page two and three was a double page spread.  Click on the images to make them bigger…

Steve Molnar - pencils and inks

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Darrin Egan - pencil

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Next:  The sexy moment, with the ripped shirt and the flirty, sweet GLAVIN!

Steve Molnar - pencil and ink

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Darrin Egan - pencil

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Finally, the two page spread that reveals that we’ve been inside a HUGE space ship, originally piloted by giants, and now long abandoned and overgrown with foliage and giant insects.   I think they both knocked it out of the park, though I do confess, the last panel of  Spock in the Molnar layout, is what made this whole introduction work for me.  The concept of the satanic character in the middle of Eden, interjecting and ruining everyone’s appreciation of the nature.  Darrin did a GREAT job on every panel,  but his Spock is a little too friendly for the “beat” of that moment.

Again, these are double page spreads, so click on ’em to make ’em bigger.

Steve Molnar - just pencil this time

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Darrin Egan - pencil

Wasn’t that fun?  I’d love to hear how much you like Darrin’s pencils…so would Darrin, I imagine, and he deserves a little slap and tickle for these excellent pages (and please, feel free to equally gush about Steve Molnar’s work, but he’s already a comic book superstar, so he’s getting raves from all quarters fairly continuously!).

And one last bit of unseen Trek before we head on over to Ten Forward for the afternoon….When I first found out I had a chance to do some Star Trek comics, a good friend of mine, Richard (Pitt, X-Man)  Pace (here’s his blog, where he’s doing a GORGEOUS painting of a jungle girl at the moment…) jumped up and asked if he could participate.  Schedules and other things precluded his helping out, but the sample sketch he tossed my way was so lovely, I’m including it here at the bottom of this entry.

Richard Pace pencils

I’d love to do a Star Trek comic book with ANY of these individuals in the future, should the fates or the Great Bird of the Galaxy allow.

Ty the Guy

To share post:

Joe Shuster Awards 2010

The nominations for the 6th Annual Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards have been announced and (drumroll, please!):

Ty is nominated for Best Writer for Star Trek: Mission’s End 1-5 (IDW).

The awards ceremony will be held Saturday, June 5, 2010 in Toronto.

Keiren

MORE UNKNOWN MARVEL, and some UNKNOWN WRITING

Because I’m penciling and inking some stuff for Marvel at the moment, all last week we devoted this blog to unseen artwork I’ve done for Marvel comics in my career.   I still have a million more things to show you in that area, but today, I thought I’d spend a little space talking about some WRITING for Marvel that a lot of people don’t know I did, simply because it was for the Marvel younger readers line, and the average fan simply IGNORES them. It’s a pity, because some of the creators who worked for that line were deserving of more attention.  Graham Nolan, Norm Breyfogle, and Tom Grummett worked on some of the issues before and after my brief run, just to name a few.  And of course, Jeff Parker (now doing well with Hulk office gigs) wrote a SLEW of the Marvel Adventures Avengers books before I got to ’em.  But here’s the three I wrote:

The premise for the issues, as asked for by the editor, was to tell stories about Avengers that were NOT part of the regular team…new members joining, or old members showing up for a visit….as a way of introducing the newer readers to these characters.    If anyone recalls a post from a couple of weeks ago, I consider the ROY THOMAS/JOHN BUSCEMA Avengers period in the late sixties/early seventies the pinnacle of comics excellence from that period.  Silver Age Marvel is Roy and John to me, even SLIGHTLY more so than Stan and Jack, or Stan and Steve, simply because it got inside my brain first.   So when given a second chance at these Avengers characters, I went right back to that well of inspiration again and went for the characters originally from that era.  Quicksilver, Hercules, and of course THE VISION. Amusingly enough, they ran the stories in the opposite order from which I wrote them.

The Quicksilver story was a fun script.   Quicksilver has been kidnapped and forced (in a roundabout way) to betray the Avengers to a super-villainess, the creator (in this continuity) of the Super-Adaptoid.  The art was by my good friend Stephen Molnar, with whom I’d later do my STAR TREK GRAPHIC NOVEL.

I’d had the idea for the Hercules issue in my head for years:  If Hercules was immortal, why hasn’t he been part of human history?  Where was he during World War 2, or the American Revolution.  Or heck, ANYWHERE in  history?  It didn’t make sense to me that so outgoing a character would have stayed hidden for centuries.  But what if he had no choice?  What if he’d been imprisoned for a few thousand years…buried in lava rock beneath the streets of Pompeii?  Perhaps his cousin, Pluto, sent the lava from the center of the Earth JUST to mess with the demi-god.  Sucks to be from Pompeii and get stuck in the middle of it, but from there it was easy to extrapolate a story.

For the last story, this lazy, unscrupulous, thieving bastard went after Roy and John’s original Vision two parter AGAIN!  Last time (in Avengers United) I re-worked the second part, where the team figures out what to do with the killer android in their midst, so this time, I reworked part one of the original story, and set the killer android against the Avengers for the first time.  But instead of ULTRON creating him, this time he’s a creation of Pym’s robotics, Stark’s security tech, and the life force from a bolt of lightning from Ororro/Storm.  (Thor was my first choice for the lightning bolt, obviously, but he wasn’t on the team at the time).  I’m very happy with how this issue turned out, and would love to re-visit this version of our red and green robot pal, but the series eventually ran out of steam and  finished up.  Sigh.

Still a GREAT gig for a few months.  And dig those crazy Grummett covers!

One last image for the lost Marvel today.  It’s an ad I drew for HEROCLIX last year.  Heroclix is sort of a game, sort of an action figure, sort of a desert topping.  Obviously, with Ultimates Cap and Ultimates Iron Man, standing next to Classis 616 Hawkeye and Wasp, with the Simonson Thor tossed in with the Witch and the Seventies Wonder Man, this Avengers team exists only for this ad…but wouldn’t that be a fun team?  Like much of the lost Marvel stuff, I’ve never seen where this ad ran, or what it looked like in colour.  If anyone has a copy in colour, I’d die to see it.  ALSO:  Since last week, I have been told there are Spanish X-Men comics with my art on the covers, taken from the many video covers, and have been promised scans .

Oh, this reminds me…I have a Heroclix story of EPIC scope that I’ll post later this week.  It has to do with my eldest son, and a mini-series I wrote that I NEVER thought they’d make Heroclix for.

Ty the Guy

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BIG PS:  As a lifelong Vision freak, I was excited and elated last week to receive an email from Vision artist RICHARD  HOWELL, who bought a page or two of Mike Parobeck Elongated Man stuff off me.  Richard wanted to know if I’d remembered him…?  Like I would ever forget anyone who worked on the Vision miniseries?  This fangeek is as fangeek as they come!  Here’s one of Richard’s covers below.  Thanks for the email, Richard, and best of luck with your current work at CLAYPOOL COMICS.

Thus endeth the shout-out.

Ty

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