UNTHINKABLE - a 10 - count'em 10 page preview

Boom! Studios has a lot of confidence in UNTHINKABLE, my upcoming thriller coming out in May. So much so that they released not the usual five, but a ten page preview. Why show almost half the book up front? Because we believe that the 2nd half is just that good.

Major Spoilers

Newsarama

Splash Page Previews

For those of you who don't know, Unthinkable is based on a real-life government program. After 9/11, there were many who felt like what happened was out of a Tom Clancy novel, or a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. Some people in the government took this seriously, and created a think tank made up of novelists and screenwriters. Their task was to come up with worst case terror scenarios. If we could imagine the next 9/11 before the terrorists did - maybe we could stop that.

Where I depart into the realm of fiction is with Alan Ripley, a young Tom Clancy-esque novelist who joins this Think Tank when his brother is killed in 9/11. Eight years afterwards, he finds that the nightmare terrorist scenarios he envisioned have started to come true. Now, it's up to him to stop them. The problem - just because you write about action heroes doesn't mean you can be one.

I've never been more proud of a project, creator-owned or otherwise. Much of that is due to the great work of Julian Totino Tedesco, who does the interiors you'll see on those ten pages. Paul Azaceta, my first ever collaborator on Grounded does the covers. That's the cover for Issue #2 above. Issue #1 however will be out in May.

Unthinkable has been the reason I haven't posted more - it took incredible research, and I put nearly as much into the marketing - which involved an ARG (Altered or Alternate Reality Game) - as I did the comic. I plan on posting more soon - at the very least links to the many interviews I've done, the reviews (which are not out yet, but should be coming sooner than you think), and behind the scenes stuff.

I've agreed to do a "director's commentary" for the ARG. If that goes one, I've always wanted to do one for an actual comic, being a process junkie (or just a narcissist) myself. I think this is a book that lends itself to it, because of the amount of research, ties to the real world and the ARG etc. I'd love to get some others involved - maybe Julian, marketing/gure Chip Mosher and the rest of the ARG team (Dafna Pleban and Ian Brill), Paul, series editors Mark Waid and Matt Gagnon etc. My priority is the book, but I don't want readers of this blog to think I've forgotten about it.

Top Ten Reasons to Buy Teen Titans Spotlight: Cyborg - TODAY

The Top 10 reasons to buy my Teen Titans Spotlight: Cyborg trade TODAY:

10.He’s black. You’re not. Racist? Do the math.

9. Find out what’s underneath those steel underpants.

8. This Cyborg not in a wheelchair.

7. tCyborg trade: Man vs. Machine theme not explored enough Battlestar Galactica

6. You don’t need to read Final Crisis to understand it.

5. Surprise crossover with Marvel – he rapes Machine Man Iron Sheik style.

4. @Shaq promises to follow up his Steel performance when movie made.

3. Real reason for Vic's cybernetics – hit with bottle at Comicon

2. Cyborg trade: Sonic disruptor replaced by Sybian.

1. Cyborg trade: Vic finally cured…of being black!

All meant in jest...hope you'll pick it up if you weren't able to pick up any or all of the single issues.

Newsarama, CBR and Comics on Comics on Unthinkable; and On Decompression

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Particularly now, with the announcement of Unthinkable, I should be posting here like it was Twitter (which, incidentally - I'm on under "marksable"...that's been quite a drain on my time). But I've not only been writing Unthinkable and writing/managing the ARG (Alternate Reality Game), but doing everything I can to promote Unthinkable. From interviews to podcasts to cold-calling retailers.

Speaking of interviews, You can see Mark Waid interview me at Newsarama and read a great interview with Jeffrey Renaud at CBR. Finally...I did an audio podcast with the funny folks at Comics on Comics. I say audio because they also do video podcasts, one of which I was lucky enough to do last year.

The Newsarama piece features the 1st five pages of Unthinkable #1 (of 5). To keep to our exclusive arrangement, and take up the entire blog, I'm just going to show you Page 2:





Why not Page 1? Well, it's a splash, and you've seen those before. But the first 3 pages - 2 and 3 especially - are part of a really amazing opening sequence. I basically asked (Unthinkable artist) Julian Tedesco to cram pages worth of material into a variation of the nine-panel grid. He was able to do so without sacrificing detail. It's probably the single hardest thing I've ever asked an artist to do and he pulled it off effortlessly.

One thing I haven't talked about in the interviews is that Unthinkable is a really dense book. Not dense in the "inpenentrable" sense of the word, just dense in that, I wanted to tell a lot of story in 22 pages. For better or for worse, we're living in an age of decompression. But this is an epic, even if it's told in 5 issues, and I want it to feel that way.

Quite frankly, I don't believe the majority of comics right now are giving you the bang for the buck that other media are. Most comics don't tell a complete story...so you wind up paying $3.99 for what would be an act of a 4-act TV episode...when you can get an entire TV episode for $1.99 off itunes.

At the same time...decompression happened for a reason. While the comics of 2o or more years ago told a complete story...much of it was filled with redundant exposition.

In the past, I've written my creator owned books at closer to 32 pages than 22 pages, and I've done so at great expense to myself - both in terms of paying my collaborators and giving up ad space.

I'd think to think I've found an artist who can help me deliver the kind of density of great books from The Dark Knight Returns to The Wintermen, without heavy handed exposition. Ultimately, that means more story for you.

UNTHINKABLE - READ THE COMIC, PLAY THE GAME!

I'm proud to OFFICIALLY announce UNTHINKABLE, my latest, and I think greatest, creator-owned comic book series, coming this May from BOOM! Studios (and available for preorder NOW).

UNTHINKABLE is edgy spy thriller with roots in a controversial, real-world government initiative. Shortly after September 11, 2001, the Defense Department commissioned "think tanks" comprised of some of America's most darkly imaginitive writers. Since the 9-11 attacks seemed like something out of a Tom Clancy novel, the Pentagon asked these writers to come up with worst case terrorist scenarios. Their hope was that if our best writers could come up with these nightmare plots first, we could devise defenses before our terrorist enemies thought about, let alone planned, the next 9/11.

UNTHINKABLE tells the story of Alan Ripley, a (fictional) writer who joins this real life think tank, only to find that the devious terror attacks he imagined have started to come true. Realizing someone is using his imagination as a blueprint for terror, it's up to Ripley and his fellow Think Tank members to stop these unthinkable attacks they unwittingly planned from becoming reality.

With covers by GROUNDED artist Paul Azaceta:


And DMZ's Kristian Donaldson:

...interior art by rising star Julian Tedesco , and edited by Mark Waid (Kingdom Come) and Matt Gagnon, there's a dream team of creators helping me bring to life a story I've been researching and dying to tell for for years.

If my pitch isn't enough to convince you, than I'm hoping that THE UNTHINKABLE ARG (Altered Reality Game) will. An "ARG" is an interactive, online game that uses the real world as a platform. The UNTHINKABLE ARG, created by myself and a marketing team headed by BOOM!'s Chip Mosher, is the world's first ARG for a comic book.

Starting now, by going to http://www.wolfpackpmc.com,/ you can sign up to apply for an intelligence position in The Wolfpack, a (fictional) Private Military Contractor. Next week, those of you who are accepted into the Wolfpack's training program will be tasked to search the internet for clues that can help them apprehend the dangerous characters in the book. At the very least, the ARG is a way to get the kind of supplementary material found in books like Watchmen to readers for free. More than that, it gives you a chance to interact with UNTHINKABLE'S fictional players in a very real way. I've spent nearly as much time crafting the game as I have the comic, integrating the world of UNTHINKABLE into our own.

It's completely free to play, and there's a tangible prize for the winner(s). You can sign up for the game NOW at http://www.wolfpackpmc.com/ by clicking the "join" button.

I have had the privilege of working with many talented people on a wide variety of projects, but I can say without hesitation that both the comic and the game are the best work I've ever been involved with.

I hope you'll ask your retailer to pre-order the first issue by giving them the pre-order code of MAR094127.

Some changes before the big announcement

Hey everyone. If you've been wondering why I haven't been posting with much frequency it's because I've been spending a considerable amount of time on the project that will be officially announced on Wednesday. Not just the comic series, but the ARG (alternate reality game)/contest I've been creating to promote it. Or, to put in another way, you know you are in deep when you are spending more time creating blogs etc. for your ficitional characters than for yourself.

In the meantime, I thought I might point out some changes to the blog.

First, I've updated the links and pictures to my published works. You'll notice that both Teen Titans: Spotlight and Batman: Two-Face/Scarecrow: Year One are collected editions of both those mini-series that will be out in March and May respectively. You can order them on Amazon, although I'd prefer if you purchased them at your local comic shop. On a selfish level, it means my sales numbers will be higher. With the economy the way it is, I'd also rather you help a small business than a large one. Plus, you'll get the books a week or more earlier that way.

I've also started to link to SOME of my friends' and collaborators' blogs. If you are one or the other and would like a link, e-mail me or comment on this thread. This is by no means an exhaustive list, it's just a start.

At some point, I'd like to do longer pieces on or with people I worked with - interviews, guest blog posts - whatever they'd like.

In the meantime, I thought I'd introduce you briefly to the first batch:

Paul Azaceta is the artist and co-creator of Grounded, and has since gone on to do work such as Daredevil, Foolkiller and the upcoming Punisher Noir for Marvel, as well as Hellboy BRPD: 1946 for Dark Horse and Potter's Field for Boom! He's doing the covers for my new project and I couldn't be happier to have him aboard.

Jason Badower was the artist on my first Heroes webcomic, "Blackout", featuring Suresh. It's not only in Volume 2 of the Heroes Hardcover, it was reprinted as a 2008 San Diego Comic-Con exclusive (of which I only have one copy). He's got a fantastic, photorealistic, painterly style that he does entirely on the computer.

My friend Jen Grunwald, otherwise known as the "hottest girl in comics", is a Special Editions editor at Marvel Comics. She's very cool, even when she drops names of all the famous comic book creators she knows.

Valerie D'Orazio, aka "Occasional Superheroine", is the writer of one of my favorite comic blogs. It's often labeled as a feminist blog, which to some extent it is (she is the President of The Friends of Lulu, the premiere women's organization in comics), but that label is kind of reductive. She covers anything worth covering in comics, is incredibly prescient as far as where the industry is going and is a hell of a writer.

Salgood Sam is the artist who illustrated/co-created my contribution to Tori Amos' Comic Book Tattoo collection, "Upside Down", a graphic adaptation of the song of the same name. He does a great deal of really inspired creator owned work as well.

Finally (for today), if you don't know who Mark Waid is, you probably haven't read comics in the past twenty years. Generally, skipping the last 20 years of comics might not be the worst thing in the world, but during some of the dark times in the 90s Mark helped re-invent heroic fiction, whether it was his legendary Flash Run, the groundbreak Kingdom Come, or...the list is long, but chances are if you haven't read anything by him, you've read something that wouldn't exist without him. He's now the editor-in-chief at BOOM! Studios, the publisher of my next work. He's the best editor I've worked with bar none, and he's also served as a mentor to me.

I've had the privilege of working with other great artist, writers, creators etc. who I hope to introduce you to soon. Chances are if you like my work, you'll probably like the worked of those who I linked to.

In about 6 hours or so I'll be headed to NY for, among other things, The New York Comic Con. I'm going to be sharing a table with artist Paul Azaceta (GROUNDED, FOOLKILLER, BPRD: 1946) in Artist's Alley, Table L7. Hopefully, FEARLESS artist PJ Holden and co-writer Dave Roth will be hanging around the table as well.

As always, I'm happy to talk to anyone, sign anything, and I'll be selling my Image Books. If you want my DC works signed, you're probably going to have to bring your own copies of TWO-FACE: YEAR ONE, CYBORG and SUPERGIRL #16. And if you happen to have San Diego's limited edition HEROES comic from last year, you can be the first to have me sign a copy.\\ If I'm not at my table, I'm likely just taking a walking around break, or doing a signing for Comic Book Tattoo (the hugely successful Tori Amos anthology I contributed a short story for).

But the real treat will be getting a sketch from Paul Azaceta, who does kickass - well, everything, but particularly Daredevil. And you'll never see him more excited if you ask him to draw Darkhawk.

Looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones.

My favorite interview so far

Although I'm not promoting anything (yet), my good friend Mike Le (pictured above) conducted what I think is the best interview I've ever done. Not just because he asked really insightful questions about the comics medium and my writing process. But also because he somehow got me to talk about my embarassing Bar Mitzvah memories, the best strip clubs in LA, and why going to to Tijuana during the San Diego Comic Con would be a bad, bad idea for me.

In addition to being a friend, and the best wingman in LA, he is VP of HQ Entertainment (Tyrese's production company), an accomplished screenwriter, and the creator of the must-read web comic "Don't Forget to Validate Your Parking". It's about the trial and travails of being an assistant in Hollywood, but you don't need to be an industry insider to appreciate it's absurd humor.

Doing interviews with my many talented friends and collaborators has been something I've been thinking of doing here when it's a slow news day/week/month for me. What do you guys think?