So much happening in the Kingdom these days so let’s get right to it, fiends!
Terror in the Trenches has only 13 pages left to color and is closing in on 69K raised so far! Incredible.
Tyger Blue 2:UNSUNG is launching July 3! It has a fresh one-shot from me along with stories by other indie greats, Mike Baron, Narwhal, and Clint Stoker. SIGN UP HERE!
Shirts based on my comics are up at Cryptofashion! All designs by me. Support the comics you love in style! A lot of fans have been buying these up.
I’ve started rewriting an old script to be drawn by a bad ass indie creator. All I can ask is: Are you ready for repo-men in space? Cause I’m not and I wrote it. Finally getting to make my space opera mecha story and I couldn’t be happier. Updates to come for:
So much cool new work to show you guys.
Some Page 1 teasers!
Been jamming out more on my new sci-fi apocalypse story SCARE-DRONES. All work is WIP. Its my late night sci-fi action romp with a heart.
In SCARE-DRONES, robots with brutal super sonic martial art abilities take on 9ft tall intelligent insectoids called SCOURGE. So I’ve been messing with the designs. Should I draw this one myself? Just a side thang for now for fun.
SPRIGGAN - 2022 Directed by Hiroshi Kobayashi Written by Hiroshi Seko
Spriggan is an action adventure cyberpunk story. The original 1998 film Spriggan was a big deal when it hit during the booming days of anime hitting DVD. Marketed as Indy Jones meets high octane action movie, It was a must for anyone’s anime collection, next to Akira and Ninja Scroll collection. I enjoyed it a lot and before delving into Netflix’s Spriggan I watched it again. Still the same strange action masterpiece it ever was. Somehow it never hit the mark for me as a story though. It felt dragged out, lacking in pace in some areas, and you end up watching it for the action scenes and appreciating the animation. I could never find Spriggan at any of my comic shops and knew it was an older manga and a lot of those just didn’t make it stateside. I stumbled by chance on a book called STRIKER which was what we called Spriggan in the U.S. apparently. Back when we changed titles to make them supposedly more marketable while butchering the original title needlessly in the process. Striker was bad ass and along with the movie I considered myself a fan of Spriggan. The comics were better than how the movie portrayed things. I’m a retro kid at heart and love the aesthetic of 80’s anime and manga.
Cut to now, the director of Kill la Kill (a guilty favorite of mine) is doing Spriggan along with the writer of Mob Psycho 100 and Attack on Titan and and it's a thing of pure glory. It looks and feels like the comic of the 80s while be completely new and clean. They tell the entire story of the 1998 movie in a 45 min episode and it works so much better and feels so much more impactful. And that’s another thing - 45min episodes?! WHAT! I haven’t seen that in an anime before but after viewing I realized it’s perfect. They are able to tell different Spiggan tales fully without drawing it out over episodes and the result is pure satisfaction. Every story is unique and pops along at a great pace and gets us to the action we’re there to see. The adventure and the villains faced are always incredible and threatening. I fall in love more with the world with every episode.
I’ve seen some criticisms online that it’s too fast paced, too “all over the place” - it isn’t. That it’s ridiculous that the hero, Yu Ominae is a high school kid trying to maintain a normal life - it isn’t. It makes Yu’s personal conflict more interesting and even funny as his high school life conflicts with him saving the world. These people don’t get how Japanese culture enjoys giving school kids a fantasy to take them out of the drudgery of academic crunch. These people don’t get Spriggan. It’s not hard to understand ancient powerful relics and specially trained agents meant to track them down and the crazy adventures that ensue. They call it chaos, I call it fun.
And if you’re into it you’ll be happy to know a massive manga release is just around the corner. 600+ page editions are coming in August from Seven Seas Entertainment so finally we can get some Spriggan on in the US! Kinda overdue if you ask me. I should have bought the rights forever ago and published it. I want to promote cool storytelling like because it’s a reminder of the type of action adventure stories with heart that made me want to tell stories in the first place. It’s the type I want to bring back with my writing. So check it out! Highly recommended.
That’s all for now friends! Thanks for reading!
- Vonster