AclinCorp

Quentin Tarantino and the Blue Duck

2010-07-07T17:27:00.000-07:00

My wife Brooke and I were discussing Pulp Fiction recently, specifically which of its three plotlines is our favorite. I’m partial to Jules and Vincent’s Very Bad Day. She prefers the Butch story, with the exception of the sequence we both agree is the weakest in the film: the extended cab ride with Esmarelda Villalobos. I said it felt to me like Tarantino just had an idea or fetish for a sexy foreign cab driver character who was obsessed with death, and just figured, “Hey, I’ll squeeze her in here! Why the hell not?”

“Esmarelda Villalobos,” my wife said, “is a Blue Duck.”

I cracked up and declared that she was absolutely right, and that this should be the name for all such Esmeralda Villa Lobos type things going forward. They are Blue Ducks.

For those of you not familiar with the classic of modern cinema that is Adam Sandler’s Billy Madison (it was the first movie I bought on DVD because I figured I’d want to watch it over and over, and damned if I wasn’t right), when man-child Billy is repeating the First Grade (it’s a long story), his final assignment is coloring. As his teacher stands over him, Billy says, unprovoked, “I drew a blue duck because I’ve never seen a blue duck before and, frankly, I wanted to see a blue duck.”

So a Blue Duck in film or other arts would be something that only exists because the author wants to see it. I’m not saying it’s always a bad thing, either. In Tarantino’s latest film, Inglourious Basterds, I laughed out loud in the theater every time a touch came on screen that was just so obviously something Tarantino wanted to do because he could. Why does Hugo Stiglitz get giant ’70s grindhouse titles of his name when he’s introduced when nothing else of that style exists in the movie? Because eff you, that’s why. It serves no purpose to the larger story, other than reminding you that you’re watching a Tarantino film. It’s a Blue Duck.

My guess would be that Blue Ducks most often turn up in the work of auteurs who can’t be told that their work needs editing, or in the work of well-meaning amateurs who figure they have one shot at greatness and try to squeeze every cool idea they ever had into their first project.

Can you think of any other Blue Ducks in the worlds of film, literature or comics? Share them in the comments. But most importantly, next time you see one, don’t forget what they’re called. What do YOU think, Mr. Duck?

“That’s Quacktastic!”

...Ask Questions Later

2010-06-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

So today’s the day. I am now officially published by Dark Horse Comics, as my short story with artist Ben Bates, “S.H.O.O.T. First: The Wooden Saint,” is online as part of MySpace Dark Horse Presents #35, along with short stories by the wonderful Stan Sakai, Gabriel Ba and Art Baltazar. You can find it online here.

It’s been quite a ride to get to this point—just over 8 months (as opposed to the just over 5 years it took Hero House to come together, of course) since I first had the idea. So first and foremost, I need to thank my wife Brooke for being my initial reader and telling me she thought it was a good idea. I want to thank my editor at Dark Horse, Dave Marshall, who’s an incredible editor and has never given me a bad note; Dark Horse Senior Managing Editor Scott Allie, who is a legend and who kindly gave the project the greenlight; and Ben Bates, who injected an awful lot of life into the idea with his awesome art.

The last couple of weeks have also been really wild, starting with this interview with Comics Alliance that first revealed the concept behind S.H.O.O.T. First (they’re the Secular Humanist Occult Obliteration Taskforce—a team of atheist commandos who hunt down supernatural and especially religious creatures that they don’t believe in). That led to this article on the Robot 6 blog, which then got picked up by FARK, The Examiner and Discover’s Bad Astronomy blog, which led to a lot of discussion of the idea. Which is a good thing. I was kind of expecting the core of the concept to take some religious people aback, but so far, at least, nearly all of the controversy over it has come from atheists! I’m hoping to keep the conversation going now that the story is out (it premiered online yesterday at Comic Book Resources, along with another interview with me) and people can hopefully see how the idea works in execution (heh), not just in theory.

You can also find interviews with me that touch on both S.H.O.O.T. First and Hero House here at Mapcidy (where I also answer the legendary questions of Bernard Pivot), and one at The Fwoosh.

Now, as I keep mentioning in these interviews, there are more S.H.O.O.T. First stories to tell, if I get the chance. I wrote out an outline for a mini-series with the characters that I’m really excited about. If you’re interested in seeing it, do me a favor and drop Dark Horse a line on Twitter or Facebook and let them know. Or, if you’re a comic publisher who’d be interested in seeing the outline, drop me a line on Facebook, on Twitter or at herohousecomic [at] gmail [dot] com.

So, because I’m always interested in process and I know a lot of other people are too, here’s the original outline for the 8-pager that I submitted to Dark Horse. I’ll probably put up the script and the character descriptions I sent to Ben as well in the near future. But here’s the document that started it all…

S.H.O.O.T. First

Short story proposal by Justin Aclin

“They don’t believe in the supernatural…they’re just here to kick its ass.”

“The exorcism was going just fine,” the narrator tells us. We’re in a country farmhouse where a young girl is confined to a bed, sickly looking and screaming in tongues. A priest is admonishing a demon to leave her in the name of yadda yadda…we know this drill. The priest, however, is brandishing a holy relic to help him in his crusade—the Acadian Driftwood, whose knots have been known to resemble different saints at different times.

All was going according to script, until they kicked down the girl’s bedroom door. S.H.O.O.T.: the Secular Humanist Occult Obliteration Taskforce. To S.H.O.O.T. there are no saints or demons or angels or yetis or what have you. There are just humans, and then the Outside Actors who are playing a game and using humans as their checkers. And it is S.H.O.O.T.’s sole mission to track down these Outside Actors and hit them with bullets.

They’re a motley crew. There’s Kenshin, a former Shinto practitioner who saw the ancestors he revered return as ghosts to prey upon the living and lost his faith in anything he couldn’t see. There’s Bett, who as a child in the late 19th century wandered into a field of fairies and unicorns and disappeared, only to turn up 100 years later, unaged and with no memory of the intervening century, clutching a bloody unicorn horn she still uses as a weapon. There’s the new recruit, Codename: Infidel. He was a translator for the U.S. military in Afghanistan until he saw things that made him question everything he believed. Now he lives without a name to protect his family from the death sentence he’s brought upon himself. There’s Lord Byron, an aging punk nihilist who enjoys trampling upon the sacred and inflicting violence and finally found a vocation that combines them both. There’s the team’s field leader, Mrs. Brookstone, a [redacted]. And there’s Robot. He’s a robot.

The Outside Actors are powerful, but the assumptions and importance that people of faith put on them empower them even more. S.H.O.O.T.’s secret weapon is that they think it’s all bullshit, robbing their adversaries of an advantage. When they enter the room, Lord Byron brandishes a gun and tells the priest to screw, because his belief is interfering with their powerful cynicism field. The priest starts to flee, but Bett blocks his path and tells him to leave the log. Suddenly a humanoid figure made out of wood springs out of the Driftwood—it’s the Wooden Saint, the spirit who had been inhabiting the relic, and it’s making a break for it down the hall. Mrs. Brookstone barks orders for Kenshin, Infidel and Robot to chase it with her and for Bett and Lord Byron to stay behind and take care of the possession.

Lord Byron tries to convince the demon to leave the girl willingly, but it’s understandably reluctant. So Bett pulls out the big guns—literally. They’re guns that shoot metaphysical bullets, which should pass harmlessly through a human and injure the demon residing within. The demon doesn’t buy it, but rather than risk being a sitting duck it jumps out of the girl and tries to jump through the second story window to freedom, but Bett is able to grab it and execute it.

Meanwhile in the farmhouse den, the rest of S.H.O.O.T. searches for the Wooden Saint. As Kenshin passes by a portion of the wood-paneled wall, the disguised Saint peels itself off the wall and makes a run directly through the middle of the team, so that they’re unable to shoot at it. It nearly escapes and the team pursues, guns blazing. Just as it’s about to clear the door and make it outside, Robot smashes through a nearby wall and clotheslines it, enabling the bullets to find their marks. As it lies dying, the Saint asks, “Why? I’m just doing the Lord’s work.” Mrs. Brookstone informs it that they’re just doing humanity’s work, and tells Robot to get a tissue sample to take back to the lab.

We then cut to the narrator, in shadows, on his cell phone. He or she has been relaying the entire story so far to someone on the other end, who says, “This is excellent intelligence. I know it can’t be easy for you to betray your friends like this. How do I know I can continue to trust you?” The narrator says, “I’ve come to realize that sometimes you need to have a little faith.” The man on the other end of the phone, from his office in the Vatican, knows exactly what the narrator is talking about.

The Day a Comic Drove Me Insane

2010-04-08T18:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, the headline isn't exactly correct - it was more than a comic that drove me crazy. But the comic was a part of it. The comic in question was Kurt Busiek's Astro City #1/2 (a Wizard 1/2 issue!), which if you haven't read you really should. Because I'm about to spoil it for you, and it's very very good.

Basically (spoiler) it's a story about a man who's haunted by visions of a woman he's never met, and in the end it turns out that she was his wife, and as a result of a cosmic superhero crisis in the past she ends up never being born. And it's very, very upsetting. You can see some panels from it here. I got thinking about it again this week when it came up in a conversation I was having about Lost. If you saw this week's episode you'll understand why.

But thinking about the story made me think about the first time I read it, when it kind of drove me insane.

A little background first: F0r the past eight years, minus a few months, I've worked at Wizard Entertainment, which was located in beautiful, scenic (and nearby) Rockland County. Then, for four months in 2008, I went to work in Manhattan at a trade magazine called License! Global. (The exclamation mark was part of the name). Suddenly I went from commuting two hours a day to commuting five hours a day, taking a train from nearby my house down to Secaucus New Jersey, then transferring onto a crowded train into mega-crowded Penn Station, then taking an even more crowded subway to the office. It was awful. Then I got my current job back at ToyFare and I was back to Rockland County and the shorter commute. Hoorah!

Then, right after my second daughter was born, Wizard announced that they were moving all the staff into their New York City offices. Which, let me tell you, is not so bad right now. I discovered that if I took the bus instead of the train I didn't have to transfer or go into Penn Station, and it really made a difference. However, the first week we moved into the city, for various reasons, I had to take the train in, which made me fairly well miserable. Add to this the fact that I was doing a lot of the night feedings for the baby, and I wasn't getting an awful lot of sleep at the time. And that's the atmosphere I was in when I read Astro City #1/2, on the train on the way to work.

It knocked me for a loop. Losing your family is the greatest fear of anyone who has a family, and here was a really heart-rending story about just that. It hit me like a punch in the gut. So we arrive in Secaucus, I get off and get on the crowded train to Penn Station.

And in the crowd on the train, I happen to see someone reading a paper - one of NY's abysmal tabloids, probably the Post. And this was the entirety of the headline of the story I saw:

SHE DIES IN A FIRE

That's it. No further information, weird use of the present tense.

SHE DIES IN A FIRE

So given that I was exhausted and depressed and had just had my mind #$%ed by a story about lost loves and time travel, I came to the only logical conclusion: I became convinced that the newspaper was from the future, and it was trying to warn me that one of my three girls was going to die.

I was floored. Devastated. I knew it couldn't be possible, of course, but at the moment I couldn't convince myself it was anything else. I just kept coming back to "Why would the headline be written that way?"

Of course I later realized that the Post is just a terrible, awful paper, which is why the headline was written that way.

I don't think I felt totally better until I got to work and was able to Google the headline and figure out that, yes, it was an actual story about someone else. But for those several minutes, I was convinced that the future was trying to warn me of a terrible occurrence through a newspaper headline glimpsed on the train.

And that's how a comic book drove me (temporarily) insane. Although, in retrospect, it was probably more the terrible headline writing of the NY Post that did it.

Shallow Thoughts - 3/29/10

2010-03-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

• Apologies to the HuffPo, from whom I nicked the above image. I spent the day after the House's HCR vote (Remember that?) tweeting what I imagined the aftermath of Health Care Reform might look like, if the Republican alarmists are telling the truth. Check it out!

• ITEM! You can read an interview with me and read the first 50 pages of my graphic novel Hero House in this Comics Alliance piece from last week. Big thanks to Chris Sims, author of the web's funniest comics blog, for reaching out to me and making the story happen.

• ITEM! In that selfsame Comics Alliance article, you can also read my very first public comments about my long-awaited (by me) first post-Hero House comic book work. In brief, I'll have a short 8-page story in the online anthology title MySpace Dark Horse Presents this June. You'll hear more about this soon (though not to the point of nausea, hopefully), but suffice to say for now that getting my work published by the company that publishes Hellboy comics, BPRD, The Goon and many, many others (and in the same issue as Levar Burton!) is a dream come true. Can't wait for you guys to see it.

• Last comic book item, I promise: I recently had my first encounter with a Hero House in the wild at Midtown Comics in New York City. If you saw a goofy looking guy snapping a photo of himself with the new releases last Friday...that was me.

• Tonight marks the start of Passover, and a happy Passover celebration to all my fellow Jews out there. Passover was always one of my favorite holidays, and Brooke and I (especially Brooke, who does all the cooking, etc.) are working hard to make it special for our daughters. That said, I find myself struggling with what, exactly to tell my daughters about my religion. I don't want to be responsible for the end of a line of Jews or anything, but over the past few years I find that I just can't bring myself to believe in a god who, for instance, would get mad at me if I ate a cheeseburger for dinner tonight. (And I did.) My "crisis of faith," if you want to call it that, has been exacerbated lately by the government of the homeland of my people acting like raging assholes. You're welcome to believe nearly anything you like (actually, that's not true, but that's a different blog post...), but if you are standing in the way of peace because a 4000-year-old book says that you're entitled to a certain slice of land, you are not invited to my Seder, and I'm not sure I want to identify myself as belonging to the same group as you. Combine that with the recent headlines about the Pope and the Catholic Church, and it's enough to think that religious orthodoxy, no matter what the denomination, is a fundamentally destructive force in the world.

• On a lighter and totally unrelated note, hilarious Fred Schneider humor from The State. God bless you, Fred Schneider. (And David Paggi, who found the link.)

• I've started playing Final Fantasy XIII, and so far I'm enjoying it a lot more than certain people I could name. However, I've been playing a lot more Final Fantasy IV on my DS, which has been occupying my time on the way home from work the past couple of weeks. I love being able to carry the greatest video games of my childhood with me on the DS, and I look forward to being able to play today's video games on a handheld in the next 15 years or less.

• And finally, I had mentioned that my wife had been knitting me a scarf. Well, she finished it, and it looks amazing - dig that checkerboard pattern! Can't wait to wear this bad boy in the cold weather. Or, you know, to the beach. It's versatile.

Shallow Thoughts - 3/10/10

2010-03-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

• At the end of “Lost” last night when they said, “Only nine more episodes left until the finale,” Brooke said, “Only?” sarcastically, and I said, “Only?” earnestly. It seems like there’s still a lot of ground to cover in 11 hours if they want to wrap everything up in a satisfying manner. By which I mean not telling us every little bit of minutiae regarding what happened, but to answer the questions that they at least made us think were important, like why the island can time travel, what the Dharma Initiative were doing there, etc. It seems like they’re moving toward a grand unification theory involving (SPOILER) the Oceanic castaways (and most everyone else on the island) as “Candidates” for taking over Jascob’s job of protecting the island, which doesn’t necessarily address all these other issues…yet. At least last night we got a subtle answer to a riddle from last season – why did Ben stop Locke from killing himself, then kill him? Turns out candidates can’t bring about their own demise…but they can be murdered. The larger issue this season, though, is that they have yet to explain the relation the flash-sideways have to the main plot (or if, indeed, they are now the main plot). Everyone certainly has their theories as to how they relate, and as we see two episodes in a row now where Sayid and Ben live an existence where they get to be close to dead people they love without actually getting to be with them, it’s certainly becoming clearer. But until the show explicitly says “These are real, the stakes in them are as high or higher than the stakes on the island,” they’re inevitably going to feel like extended fantasy sequences, and they’re not going to carry the weight that the action on the island carries. For more spirited discussion of Lost, be sure to check out Sean T. Collins’ weekly wrap-up session, and the comments thread there.

New Futurama episodes return in June! It’s almost hard to feel excited because it seems so abstract. The feature-length episodes they did were good, by and large, but not nearly as good as the show at its best, and the protracted battle between Fox and the voice cast last summer (that resulted in a very low-key Comic-Con panel) have made it difficult to get quite as jazzed as I would have been at the news several years ago. But, again, I can count on my apprehension melting away when the episodes actually air – Futurama is a show that rarely disappoints. It’s just part of what I’m hoping will be a very exciting June…

Speaking of San Diego, I’m registering as a Professional this year for the first time ever (provided they accept my registration, which they should because it’s legit). This, coupled with the fact that I’ve recently received my first check for writing a comic book (which, by definition, makes me a professional comic book writer) makes me feel a lot less guilty about listing myself as a comic book writer in my Twitter bio. It’s true!

So the Oscars happened. Brooke and I had the pleasure of viewing them with Zach Oat, who was live-blogging them for televisionwithoutpity.com and had to leave his home due to Cablevision and/or ABC being jerkfaces (and then changing their mind about being jerkfaces 40 minutes into the show). I haven’t seen Hurt Locker, partially due to my prohibition on things that I think will be really upsetting. We watched District 9 a few days before the ceremony to at least up the number of nominated films we’d seen, and I was initially a little meh on it, but I’m liking it better the further away I get from watching it. It was bogged down in my head too much at first by being Oscar-nominated, but as I get some distance from that I’m just enjoying it on its own terms. Brooke suggested that they license the characters out for cat food commercials, and I think that’s an excellent suggestion. If they use it, I hope they pay her. At any rate, I think Avatar got the Oscars it deserved, but I wish Inglorious Basterds had won a couple more awards. Granted, I didn’t see a lot of the films that won over it, but hot damn that movie’s a hoot. I enjoyed Avatar, but it’s hard to judge it on its merits, partially because of the spectacle and partially because it was the first film I ever ended up seeing in a theater by myself. I had to see it for work (look for an Avatar parody in an upcoming Twisted ToyFare Theatre!) and there was just no time we could get someone to watch the kids so Brooke could see it with me. It’s not an experience I’m keen to reproduce—I find doing things I normally do with Brooke by myself depressing.

Final Fantasy XIII is on its way to me, and I'm not sure if I should spend my evenings playing it or getting work done and spending time with my family. The two seem kind of mutually exclusive. I’ve got a long history with the franchise—I played every U.S.-released game up until XI (I’m not a big MMO guy), and the release of a new Final Fantasy game is usually a big deal in my family. To this day, my brother can only remember my birthday because Final Fantasy VII (possibly the masterpiece of the video game medium) released on September 9th, and he remembers that it was the day before my birthday.

The ToyFare blog FarePlay should be up and running again, either today or within the next couple of days. Definitely keep an eye on it—I’m going to be adding some entries soon that should prove pretty entertaining.

Speaking of blogs to follow, keep checking out We Are the LAW. After moving on from Poltergeist, the guys tackled Sean’s Destructor, then Orko, and the next round of drawings should prove pretty fantastic, indeed.

Shallow Thoughts - 2/20/10

2010-02-20T18:01:00.000-08:00

Hey, it's been a while. In my defense, we've been ramping up to our busiest time of year at work, and then I was living it for a week or so. In my prosecution, I'm also just kind of lazy. Anyway, here's what's going on.

• A large group of my buddies have formed a new blog called We Are The LAW. Although very few of them are artists it's a sketch blog, and to my kind of embarrassed delight, they chose Hero House's Poltergeist as their first subject. That's my former boss Zach Oat's take up above. Check out the LAW Blog to see them all. I can't wait for the next subject, which will be a character by one of our other friends. It should be awesome.

• Let it be known, I'm back on Twitter. If you're on as well, you might want to follow me. I'm not exactly interesting, but I'm endeavoring.

• We're watching (right this moment, actually!) Survivors on BBC America, which is interesting so far, but has a premise that's so upsetting you wouldn't even want to play a game of "what would you do in that situation?" with it. I just want to point out that the main actress, Julie Graham, who's British, looks exactly like actress Lauren Graham, who's American. Cue Patty Duke Show theme!

(Above: Which is which?)

Also, for the record, I think Patterson Joseph would have made a pretty awesome Doctor Who.

• Lost is back! I'm definitely more on board now after the phenomenal last episode featuring Locke, Ben and Sawyer aplenty, but I still feel that they need to (SPOILER) explain the significance of the flash-sideways before they begin to feel truly crucial. Having Ben show up as an awesome persnickety history teacher is a step in the right direction, though. (END SPOILER) If you enjoy Lost, definitely read the insights of someone who really doesn't, my friend Kiel Phegley's mother Lynn. Trust me, it's hilarious.

• How do you know you're on the wrong side of history? If you're cheering and chanting for Dick Cheney to run for President, that's a strong hint.

• If my last blog post about thirtysomething piqued your curiosity, you should know the first two seasons are now available on instant streaming on Netflix. It's worth checking out!

• My wife is knitting me a scarf. It's fantastic. I'll post a pic when it's done. Thanks, Brooke. Love you!

Shallow Thoughts - 1/28/10

2010-01-28T10:39:00.000-08:00

My commute from my idyllic suburban town to big ugly Manhattan normally takes two hours. Now I know that if I attempt it when it’s snowing, it takes closer to three. This is good for blogging, but terrible for every other conceivable reason. Oh well. Here we go.

• Everyone’s abuzz about yesterday’s iPad announcement. I have very little to add to the discussion about how terrible the name is or how it will or will not revolutionize comics or publishing or any other industry I’m involved in. On a personal level, it hits me in the “it would be neat to own it but I can certainly imagine my life without it” zone. But I’m definitely not the target audience—other than the computers I use at work, I haven’t owned an Apple product since the IIGS that was my very first computer. No, not even an iPod. Yeah, I’m the one. I think part of the reason I’m not fully drooling over it is that I prefer electronics that fold up and offer some sort of protective outer shell – like the laptops, Nintendo hand-helds and cell phones I’ve owned over the past several years. It’s a fundamental departure point between me and the way Apple has been designing products, and it’s also why, in the realm of e-reader type things, I’m more excited about Microsoft’s rumored Courier than the iPad. Something about how book-like it seems appeals to me more than the admittedly sexy and futuristic iPad. Not that I’ll end up owning either one, mind you. But I think it would be cool.

• Don’t forget: other than my renewed focus on blogging here, I’ve also been blogging a lot more on the day job blog. Yesterday you could have seen me link to some new Transformers toys, wax poetic about Marvel’s new Heroic Age, and share the wackiest press release I got on that particular day. I get a lot of wacky press releases, and I’m going to be posting them over there whenever possible.

• I really want to hope that last night’s State of the Union address actually does usher in a wave of politicians acting like adults, and I’m trying really hard not to put a qualifier on this sentence. It’s the post-cynical age. Conan said so.

• Brooke and I have been watching thirtysomething (it’s spelled with a lower-case t) on DVD, and we’re in the middle of the second season now. It’s been really interesting to watch for a few reasons. First, because we are—if not the same age as the characters (we’re a bit younger)—at least in the same boat as some of the characters, as regards children, homeownership, etc. Secondly, because when the series first aired (which seems like 100 years ago, but is just over 20), our parents were just about the same age/same boat as the characters. So it’s interesting to note which things remain utterly relatable one generation removed (primarily the many ways in which having kids sets you apart from your childless friends and changes every facet of your life) and which are unrelatable. In the latter category, I find the characters’ preoccupation with authenticity pretty amusing. I’m sure there are people out there my age who can relate to these former hippies-turned-yuppies and their anxiety over selling out to corporate culture, but I certainly can’t. My aspirations always involved making a living doing what I love and being able to support a family, and never involved (for better or worse) changing the world or bringing down “the man.” On a side note, every single male character on the show is various shades of despicable, although Brooke and I figure they must have counted as “sensitive New Age guys” at the time the show aired. Apparently, the ruler for what constitutes a sensitive guy has slid considerably in the last 20 years

Shallow Thoughts - 1/24/10

2010-01-24T17:10:00.000-08:00

My long-form blogging is tending to be pretty...long. So here's an experiment in short, bite-size blogging.

• First and foremost, happy "dating anniversary" to my lovely wife. 15 years ago today she asked me out in between high school midterms. It is my sole mission in life to make her happy that she made that decision.

• Despite the fact that we could have caught it any time in the past couple of months, we watched the Caprica pilot when it aired on SyFy on Friday. Before it aired I wasn't sure I even wanted to venture back into the Battlestar universe, after so much closure was achieved in the finale (I'm one of those people who really, really liked the finale). After watching it I think it'll be interesting, but I can't see how it can sustain as a series for much longer than a season. It seems (and I'm basing this at least partially on the teaser poster I've seen everywhere around the city) that they're going to be exploring the "original sin" that started the Human/Cylon war, or at least the most recent iteration of it. The thing that most struck me after watching it was realizing how there were absolutely no teenagers on Battlestar, and how they play such an important part on this show. Teenagers are annoying.

• It was actually weird to watch SyFy again - I've barely turned it on since they lost Doctor Who to my new favorite cable channel, BBC America. Right now they're showing my favorite Hitchcock film, Rear Window. I love you, BBC America.

• If you're still interested in buying a copy of my book, it's now in-stock and shipping from Barnes and Noble. Thanks again to all my friends who Tweeted about it.

• I didn't watch Conan's last episode, but I read the transcript of his farewell speech. That guy is a class act.

• My buddy Sean T. Collins just put up a downloadable mix of his Best Songs of 2009. Even though our tastes don't seem to overlap...barely at all...it's definitely worth checking out. This set off a spate of mix-making amongst my friends that I'd love to get in on, but I've literally just been listening to the latest albums by Vampire Weekend and Phoenix over and over and over lately.

• And finally, I got really depressed this past week about events in the political realm, but I found a comforting thought Friday night that helped me, and I figured I'd share it in case anyone else out there is having a hard time. Basically, it occurred to me (and it's fairly simplistic) that if you pay attention to every election and poll and decision and all that, things can seem very discouraging. But if you pull back...WAY back...and just look at the flow of human history, things are always improving. I look at it this way: if you could be living in any time period, not as a royal but just as a regular person, when would you live? I think I'd choose right now. Brooke says that she'd live as a Baby Boomer, because they got everything easy and then kind of ruined everything for the rest of us. She might be onto something there...

Doctor Without Borders

2010-01-21T07:18:00.001-08:00

I know the rest of the world took a break from writing about Doctor Who a couple of weeks ago, but what can I say? I’m slow. I will say that even though we saw the end of David Tennant’s reign as the Tenth Doctor back in early January with the broadcast of “The End of Time, Part 2,” Brooke and I haven’t stopped thinking about Doctor Who since. If anything, it’s gotten more intense.

I’m a Johnny-come-lately to the world of the Doctor, but for Brooke it’s part of her earliest memories. She can remember the show being on around her, if not her actually watching it, from very early childhood, and the haunting theme song and the blue box feel like they’ve always been a part of her life. So back in 2006 when I got my hands on an early set of the DVDs for the first season of the Who reboot, even before it aired on SciFi Channel here in the U.S., I knew it was a chance to get in on the ground floor with Brooke on a show that could potentially mean a lot to her.

It ended up meaning a lot to both of us. Fans certainly have their complaints about Russell T. Davies’ recently completed run on the show (I could have done with fewer farting aliens myself), but he certainly made the show come alive for a new generation of fans. If nothing else (and there’s plenty else—his method of slowly weaving hints to the final conflict for each season throughout every episode has had a big impact on how I’m approaching long-form storytelling), his casting instincts were impeccable.

I’ve since learned that, from our vantage point in the States, it’s hard to understand how big an institution Who is over in England, or how crazy some of his ideas must have seemed at the time. We first met Billy Piper as Rose, but in England she was a washed up teen pop star, and Catherine Tate (Donna Noble) was a well-known comedienne. Imagine if someone over here were to make a sequel to the Star Wars trilogy, then cast Joey Fatone as Luke Skywalker and Kathy Griffin as Princess Leia and you’ll get the idea.

But both Rose and Donna (and Martha, and Mickey and even Donna’s grandfather) were excellent companions. And as for the Doctors…I know Brooke and I thought that Chris Eccleston would be irreplaceable by the time they did replace him at the end of the first season. It’s to Davies’ credit as much as David Tennant’s that, now that he’s left, the fact that he’s being replaced seems not just unthinkable, but heartbreaking.

Brooke and I rewatched the Christmas Invasion recently, which is Tennant’s first full episode, and Davies uses a really amazing device to get us past our initial reticence about Tennant—he spends nearly the entire episode comatose. By that point we’ve gotten to know and care about Rose, and she’s feeling just as cagey about this new guy as we are. But when she and her family our placed in danger, she comes to want the Doctor to save them, no matter what he looks like. By the time Tennant finally wakes up and swashbucklingly saves the day, we’re so thrilled we don’t care what he looks like, either.

Over at his blog United Monkee, I recently got into a comment discussion with my friend TJ Dietsch about the Series 3 two-parter Human Nature/The Family of Blood. TJ had high hopes for it because it was written by Paul Cornell (writer of fantastic comic books like Captain Britain and the MI-13—if you’re a Who fan reading this, go pick up the trade paperbacks!), but he found himself let down by it, because (again, much like Christmas Invasion) the Doctor is absent for much of the two hours, even though this time Tennant is onscreen the whole time. For me, this is one of my favorite storylines in the whole series, and when Brooke and I recently went back and started rewatching episodes after End of Time aired, it was the first one I chose. (And Brooke went along with it, bless her, even though she finds the end truly heartbreaking and upsetting.)

If nothing else (and, again, it’s plenty else), it’s certainly an acting showcase for Tennant, who reminds us he can do much more than just play brilliant and scattered and on top of things. Here we see the Doctor as a mere man, not very brilliant and definitely not on top of things. And though, once again, we need him to come back by the end of the second episode and fix things, we’re not quite so thrilled to see him come back this time. Because this human persona, John Smith, has developed a life and a love of his own, and he’s not so thrilled with the idea of forfeiting it all just so some wacky alien can take over.

TJ’s main complaint about the two-parter was that it’s one of those things, like Christmas Invasion, where they keep the main character away from it to make you realize how cool he really is, but by this point the audience is well, well aware of how cool the Doctor is. I feel it’s the opposite—the audience is SO used to the Doctor being cool, that it takes an episode like this, showing you what the Doctor ISN’T, to remind you that his coolness and brilliance and zaniness and everything we love about him sometimes disguise one important fact. He’s alien, more alien than he seems sometimes, and though he admires humans he can’t really understand us on an emotional level, and in some way that makes him even more frightening than his Time Lord powers and near-immortality. He claims that humans look like giants to him, but here he’s given a chance to lead an amazing but normal life as a man, and he can’t bring himself to take it. Like I said, heartbreaking.

Now Tennant’s all done, and it’s up to the new kid (and I do mean kid—he’s younger than me!) to carry on however he can. I (and much of the rest of the world) would be a lot more nervous if the man taking over for Davies weren’t Steven Moffat, who’s been responsible for a lot of the best episodes of the recent run (not to mention the BBC mini-series Jekkyl, which I believe is available on Netflix Instant Watch and you should really go instant-watch it right now). (Speaking of Moffat and Instant Watch, is anyone else having trouble getting his episode Blink to load on their Xbox? We wanted to rewatch it, but for some reason it’s the only episode we can’t get to work).

Part of the reason I’ve spent so much time thinking (and now writing) about the older episodes in the past couple weeks is that I found Tennant’s last two-parter, the End of Time, so disappointing. (BEGIN SPOILERS NOW FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN’T CAUGHT UP) I could go on and on about it, but suffice to say: the villains were anti-climactic, the scene with the face-off and the gun made absolutely no storytelling sense because either of the people the Doctor was pointing a gun at could have blasted him at any time at no harm to themselves, and the long, drawn-out death scene, although obviously intended as a victory lap and acting showcase for Tennant, did him no favors. Eccleston’s regeneration was brief, memorable and dignified. Tennant raged against the dying of the light and ended up coming off as petulant, nearly souring some of his tenure in retrospect. Which is why I choose to ignore The End of Time and pretend it didn’t happen, starting…now. Boy, wasn’t it great when Davies wrapped up all his storylines at the end of Series 4’s The Stolen Earth/The Parting of the Ways (he did), and then Tennant regenerated? SO dramatic. (END OF SPOILERS)

That’s the great thing about time travel (and DVDs)—you can always go back and revisit your favorite periods. And that’s just what we’ll do.

Once more, with feeling...

2010-01-12T17:43:00.000-08:00

Non-Hero House blogging will resume soon, with my tragically late thoughts on the David Tennant Doctor Who finale and his tenure as the Doctor. It'll no doubt be epic.

But in the meantime, I wanted to bring you some actual important Hero House news. The graphic novel will be out in stores tomorrow. Yes, I know I said something similar two months ago, but that didn't pan out. This time, though, it's showing up on Diamond ship lists, which gives me extra confidence that it's actually happening this time.

Same rules apply as last time - if you're going to try to pick it up, call your local comic shop first and make sure they're stocking it. Not every single shop ordered it, but if you find it you can be as happy as those two happy fellows at the top of the post. Anyway, thanks for putting up with me talking about it for this past year (or, if you're my wife, these past six years). Stay tuned for me talking about other stuff!

In This Metaphor, the Movie Theater is the Frog

2010-01-07T17:58:00.000-08:00

Brooke and I took our newly four-year-old daughter to see Disney’s ‘The Princess and the Frog’ recently – her first film. It got me thinking about my first film –1983’s ‘Return of the Jedi,’ when I was approximately three. In retrospect it’s a little hardcore for a three-year-old, and on later viewings as a kid I’d always have to leave the room during the Rancor scene. Not because I was scared of the Rancor, but because it always upset me when Luke kills it and the Rancor Keeper starts sobbing for his buddy. I was a weird, sensitive kid.

‘Jedi’ kicked off a lifetime of movie viewing for me that’s only been slowed in recent years by having kids. I always loved the idea of going to a theater, even if a film wasn’t great – just the idea that you’re sitting in a room, in a building even, that’s entirely devoted to entertaining you. I always enjoyed it. But lately, and I know I’m not the only person to be saying this, the nature of going to the movies has changed, and the cost/benefit analysis seems to be swinging against it. I can’t help but wonder if my daughter’s first film won’t lead to a lifetime of filmgoing like it did for me.

Or, it did for me for a while, at any rate. I’ve had my share of movies ruined by uncooperative audiences and compared the price of two movie tickets to the price of a DVD enough that I barely even miss going to the movies anymore. And I was, admittedly, a little nervous about bringing our daughter to the movies. Would the screening be hampered by screaming kids? Would our kid BE one of the screaming kids?

I needn’t have worried. Not only was the audience quiet and cooperative, my our daughter was a wonder. She sat quietly through the entire movie, and the look of wonder on her face just during the previews was worth the price of admission. It took my own princess (groan, ugh, sorry) to remind me that, under the right circumstances, there’s still something about sitting in a darkened theater with a giant screen that no TV, no matter how large nor high-def, can yet duplicate. And when we left, she was already asking to go see another.

As for the movie itself, I loved it. John Lasseter deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor for bringing back 2-D animation at Disney, and giving it just a touch of that Pixar magic. When I need to feel inspired, I tend to watch one of the making-of documentaries on my Pixar DVDs. The way those guys talk about and approach storytelling always make me want to write, the way seeing a great band live makes me want to make music (only I can actually write and I’m a terrible musician).

Brooke was impressed with what a beautiful film it was, especially in the Bayou scenes, and it’s true. There’s an organic quality to 2-D animation that CGI still can’t capture. I was really impressed by the themes of the movie, which I found a lot more mature (in a good way) then typical Disney princess fare, which usually is about dreaming big or not judging a book by its cover or something to that effect. Basically, the two main characters are the hard-working New Orleans cook Tiana, who never has any fun because she’s too busy working towards a dream she’s had her entire life, and the shiftless Prince Naveen, who never takes any responsibility because he’s always been too fabulously wealthy and handsome and charming. And the film advocates a middle ground – Tiana has to learn how to enjoy herself, Naveen has to learn how to work hard and care about someone other than himself, and they both learn that no pursuit in life is worthwhile without someone to share it with. It’s not quite a message of “love conquers all,” but that love is the spice that makes a great dish perfect. That’s a message I can get behind.

My Comics Decade

2009-12-29T13:25:00.000-08:00

Over at their blog the Cool Kids Table, my friends Ben Morse, Rickey Purdin and Kiel Phegley are doing a series called Our Comics Decade, where they're going year by year through the decade and spotlighting a comic from each year that meant something to them, especially as it related to their life and their journey in comics (which resulted in each of them eventually working at Wizard, and now at Marvel, DC and Comic Book Resources, respectively). It's a great series and well worth checking out.

I'd love to do something similar, but my memory is so crappy I'm not sure I could pinpoint a comic I read each particular year. Suffice it to say that I read a lot of great comics and a lot of not-so-great comics (to put charitably), and I still love reading comics as much as I did in the beginning of the decade, back before I knew how the sausage was made.

But if I could get a little introspective (hey, it's New Year's Eve), my personal journey, both in comics and, you know, life, is simply astounding to me when I think back on this decade. In 2000 I was a college sophomore with a lot of ambitions but barely any actual work done towards fulfilling those ambitions, and I simply wasn't the person who I wanted to be. Now, at the end of the decade I'm married to a wonderful, wonderful woman (shout-out to the most important person in my life - Brooke Price Aclin). I've got two incredible daughters (which still surprises me sometimes when I phrase it like that). I've been working at what's basically my dream job for over seven years, writing one of Year-2000-Justin's favorite comedy comic strips (that would be Twisted ToyFare Theatre, as seen at the top of the page). I wrote and got published an actual comic book (fulfilling my biggest lifelong dream). This has been, without question, the most amazing, most life-changing decade of my life (out of all three of them).

That said, I'm looking forward to my next decade in comics (and, you know, life) even more. For one thing, I can take the lessons I spent a long decade learning and start applying them to my life from the get-go, so I can be the best husband and father I can possibly be. Over in comics, we've got Hero House finally coming out sometime in the early part of 2010 in comic shops (yes, I know I said November. It didn't happen. Not sure why, and I'm not dwelling on it. The point is, it's coming.)

And now it's onto bigger and better. I'm not quite ready to talk about my first post-Hero House comic book project yet, but rest assured - there is a post-Hero House comic book project. If all goes according to plan, it'll be the most exciting thing that's happened in my comics career yet...and with any luck, it'll hopefully be just the beginning.

Of course I'll be talking about it here on AclinCorp, but as we transition out of the Hero House year, I want this blog to be more than just me talking about my comics. So one of my New Years resolutions is to blog more, and to blog about more stuff - pop culture, life, whatever it is that makes me feel like picking up the laptop and writing.

So even if you've grown weary of hearing me talk about Hero House (and lord knows, I'm almost at that point myself), subscribe to AclinCorp. Like everything else in my life, I'm hoping it's going to be waaaaaay better in 2010 than in 2009. Happy New Years, folks.

The Countdown Begins...

2009-11-22T18:04:00.001-08:00

[Above: Mike's one-and-done design for Langley, one of Nate's fellow freshman pledges]

The big week has finally arrived! Before you stuff your face on Thursday, hit the comic shop on Wednesday to pick up Hero House! Make sure to call first to ensure they have Hero House in stock. If you're unable to find a comic shop that carried it, try Amazon.

Planning on picking up Hero House on release day? Proud as hell about this fact? Why not RSVP to the official Facebook event?

If all goes according to plan, there should be a new interview and hopefully a big preview of the book up online this week, which I'll link here when it happens. Also, the fun doesn't all end on Wednesday - artist Mike Dimayuga and inker Frank E. Stone are planning some West Coast in-store signing, and I'm working on getting one or two going on the East Coast. Again, check back here for details as soon as they're available.

And hey, when you buy your book, tell us about it! Leave a comment here or send an email to herohousecomic [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks for your support!

'War Rocket' Explodes!

2009-11-09T17:38:00.000-08:00

Hero House Month continues with a new appearance on a comic book podcast! This time it's me, Rob Bricken, TJ Dietsch and Jon Gutierrez on War Rocket Ajax, the awesome new-ish podcast from The ISB's Chris Sims and People You Don't Know's Eugene Ahn. We discuss Twisted ToyFare Theatre, toy movies, balloons full of feces and, of course, I take the opportunity to plug Hero House (out in comic shops on November 25th, motherlovers!). Click the awesome Rusty Shackles art above to check it out, or click here. (If you're the impatient type, the Twisted ToyFare segment starts around the 17-minute mark, and continues for well over an hour after that).

If you've clicked over here from WRA, welcome. Start here to find out more about Hero House. If you enjoyed listening to Rob and I get interviewed by Eugene, check out my appearance on The People You Don't Know and Rob's appearance, which also happens to contain the first meeting between WRA co-hosts Eugene and Chris! Oh, and definitely check out the "Is He-Man really a magician?" letter at ToyFare's blog!

November is Hero House month!

2009-11-07T17:22:00.000-08:00

On November 25th, my first graphic novel hits comic shops. As such, I am officially declaring November Hero House month, by the power vested in me by ownership of this domain name. November's such a big month, in fact, that I went ahead and took the entire month of October off from blogging. You know, just to save up energy.

In all seriousness, though, on behalf of myself, Mike, Frank, Brian and Shawn, we couldn't be more excited that our nearly six-year journey is finally nearing an end. I'm going to try to post as much as possible this month leading up to the book's release, both to tell you when we've got promotional stuff going on (check back Monday for a link to a new podcast interview!), and to try to finish up the behind the scenes stuff.

Which brings us to today's post! See that sketch at the top of the page? That was Mike's ninth and final take on the team jacket (you can see the final colored take on Ed's cover, as well as in various places throughout the book). My original direction to Mike was that I wanted the jackets to make the Eps look like superheroes when they needed to, but to look casual enough that they could leave them unzipped and wear them day to day. Plus, I wanted a team insignia that was based on the Greek letter Epsilon and Psi. Not too tall an order, right?

Mike's first take (above) used E and P instead of the Greek letters Epsilon and Psi.

Version 2 used the Greek letters, but it was a little too bulky, a little too ski jacket and not enough motorcycle jacket, in retrospect.

This is a rough design for a more form-fitting shirt that Nate was going to wear, the thought being that the speedster wouldn't wear a bulky jacket. You can see the final design we settled on in the cover, but Nate never actually ended up using it in the book.

Now we're getting closer to the final design. I think it was probably this point where I looked at the shapes of the Epsilon and the Psi and said, "what if we turned it on its side and kind of stuck the Psi in the middle of the Epsilon...?"

...Which is exactly what he did here, the final version before the final version. You can see that between this one and the final jacket we kind of merged the top and bottom layers of the shape, but it's all basically here. It was a tall order, but when you see the guys in the book wearing it over regular clothes with it unzipped, it totally passes for a regular jacket. And when it's zipped up, they look like badass superheroes ready for business.

So check back Monday for the latest interview link, and I'll have at least one more concept art round-up before the book launches. See you then!

New interview (with me!)

2009-09-28T18:07:00.000-07:00

Hey, folks. Sorry it's been a while since I've posted. I could say that I wanted to leave the ordering instructions up for a long time to make sure everyone knew how to order, and that's at least part of the story, but I've also been unspeakably busy lately.

One of the things I've been busy doing is giving interviews! Here's an interview with my patrons at Arcana Comics that just went out in their latest email newsletter (hopefully they don't mind me reprinting it). Give them a click and check out all the great books they've got coming out in addition to Hero House.

Now, onto the interview:

This month, Arcana's Vice President of Operations, Mark Poulton interviews Justin Aclin, writer of the upcoming superhero frat graphic novel, Hero House, which is currently in this month's Previews (SEP09 0592).

MP: For those unfamiliar with Hero House, how would you pitch it to them and where did you come up with the idea for such a fun book?

JA: The central concept of Hero House is really easy to explain: it's about a college fraternity for super-powered students, working together to be the heroes of tomorrow. Once you get past the high concept, though, it's really all about the characters. So our entry point into Epsilon Epsilon Psi - the titular frat - is a freshman named Nate Hedges, who was a big-time small-town teen superhero who just feels completely lost and directionless at college. He gets tapped by the university president to pledge the Eps and make sure they're not getting up to super-powered shenanigans, and a lot of the story is about how he interacts with these characters he'd never normally be interacting with. We also learn early on that there's a black sheep ex-member of the frat, Poltergeist, who had some sort of falling out with his fellow founders early on, and that's a bit of a mystery that gets explored. If I've done my job correctly, when someone's done with the book they'll have read a fun, funny superhero action story, but they'll also have met some characters that are either familiar to them or that they've felt like at some point in their lives. I think, even if you've never been in a frat or been a superhero, the feeling of starting out in college or someplace new and not knowing exactly who you're supposed to be in relation to who you used to be is extremely universal.

How I came up with the idea is almost stupid. I remember I was just in my living room one day, probably looking at my DVD collection, when it occurred to me that both super-teams and fraternities, at least as seen in Animal House, are groups of people who band together for a common goal and give each other code names. And that was it. From there I knew I'd write about a frat that was also a super-team, and all I had to do was figure out who they were and what the whole thing would be about. You can read a lot more about the development of Hero House and see pre-production art and that kind of thing at my blog, www.aclincorp.com.

MP: Did you attend college? If so, did you pledge a fraternity? Any wild stories you can share?

JA: I did attend college at Boston University, home of the Terriers, but I did not pledge a frat. Shocking, I know. But even though I don't have that specific experience, almost all the frat stuff in Hero House - what it feels like to pledge a group, coming in as a freshman when there are already established group dynamics - all that stuff was based on real experiences. My freshman year I tried out for a sketch comedy group and performed with them for all four years of college. And just like a frat or a super-team, each member got their own codename. I was Hemlock. So even though I was never in a frat, all of that stuff was drawn from my real life.

I don't think we got to any Animal House-level wildness, though. Most of our parties were right after performances, and consisted of getting drunk and telling each other how awesome we did.

MP: Longtime Arcana fans may remember Hero House from the company's early days. It was one of the earliest titles signed by the company. After years of work, what was it like to finally see the comic in printed form?

JA: Yeah, this book's been cooking for a long, long time. At this point, it's been five years since Arcana even announced they'd be publishing it. I've had my fantastic penciler, Mike Dimayuga, from almost the very beginning, but it's taken us a very long time to get the rest of the art team put together and get the art completed. But it was definitely worth it - Frank E. Stone on inks and Brian Gabrillo on colors are a fantastic addition to the team, and the final product really pops. To finally see it printed and hold in my hands was amazing. It's the culmination of a life-long dream for me.

MP: Your'e also the head writer on Wizard's Twisted Toyfare Theatre, which is hilarious by the way. Who would you say is your favorite Mego figure to write for?

JA: Thanks! Yeah, I've been writing Twisted Toyfare for about seven years and I've been the head writer for the past several, since the Robot Chicken guys left to go work on that show. I was a fan before I started working on it, so I love writing for the classic characters like Doom, Hulk, Thing and especially Spidey. Mego Spidey is the everyman as exasperated jerk and he's very fun to write for. As far as less established characters, I've got a soft spot in my heart for Electro and Mysterio, for some reason. I established this kind of adversarial friendship for them and I love when they appear together. I really need to make that happen more often.

MP: The creative team attended SDCC. How was the fans' reaction to the book?

JA: We did really well at SDCC. Arcana brought a small early print run, but we were completely sold out by the end of the con. Hero House was actually making its debut at the show, so the fans I got to speak to were picking it up for the first time and hadn't actually gotten to read the book yet. A lot of them were Twisted Toyfare fans who were willing to take a chance on the book because I'd written it, and I really appreciate that, or else they were drawn in by the amazing Ed McGuinness cover or Mike's awesome art in the interior. The early reviews we've gotten have been very positive, though.

MP: Before we go, do you have any last words for fans?

JA: If you buy Hero House, first and foremost you're getting a solid, well-crafted superhero story with great characters. It's got a concept that's potentially and I'm certainly known for a more gag-based comic strip, but it was important to me to let either of those overwhelm the story. You'll read it and laugh, but this isn't a collection of jokes. It's a story that, hopefully when you finish it, you'll be eager to read the next chapter. And hopefully the next chapter doesn't take another five years.

The Time is Now! Ask your comic retailer to order Hero House

2009-08-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

See those Diamond Previews covers? Well within that issue is your opportunity to order Hero House! Here's what you do.

1) Find a comics retailer near you. You can use Diamond's Comic Shop Locator to find one.

2) Go there and tell them you'd like to order a copy of Hero House. It appears on page 192 in the catalogue and its order number (this is the important part) is SEP09 0592. You might also want to mention how you hear it's going to be really good and the writer writes the very popular Twisted ToyFare Theatre and etc etc etc. You don't have to feel bad about saying these things, because they're all true.

3) Head back to the shop in November and pick up your copy!

It's that simple! If you know any comic fans in your life, definitely let them know about it as well. And if you're a retailer or a reviewer and you'd like a PDF copy of the book, just contact me at herohousecomic[at]gmail[dot]com and it's all yours!

San Diego memories (or...Hero House is actually out!)

2009-08-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

(Above: Your humble creators: Mike Dimayuga (left) and Justin Aclin)

Okay, I think I might finally be recovered enough from San Diego Comic-Con to write about it.

I certainly did a lot of interesting stuff at the show to end all shows (you can read about some of it in this interview with me at CBR's Robot 6 blog), but the most exciting thing was seeing the very first physical copies of Hero House, and getting to sell them and sign them for fans! (Or soon-to-be fans, since they hadn't actually read the book yet...)

Here's a pic of me signing:

And here's the sign we had hanging to help bring in ToyFare fans (it worked, too!):

Arcana only brought 40-50 special first-off-the-presses books to the show, but by early afternoon on Sunday they were totally sold out. That means I get to call the book "SMASH HIT SELL-OUT GRAPHIC NOVEL HERO HOUSE!!!!" With four exclamation points like that.

Anyway, here's the latest stuff you need to know about the comic:

ITEM! We've finally got an official Hero House page on the Arcana Comics site!

ITEM! Apparently the book will be available in September on Amazon, but if you REALLY love me you'll wait to buy it in November at your local comic shop, to better help spread the word about it. Either way, I'll have all the details on how to get it here at AclinCorp.

ITEM! Speaking of spreading the word, I'm a guest this week on the exemplary interview podcast The People You Don't Know. The interview touches on my life and career, Dino Riders and, of course, Hero House. Please check it out, and special thanks to Robert Bricken for tagging me to get interviewed!

ITEM! Even though the book has been released (albeit in a very limited manner), the behind-the-scenes antics will not be stopping here at this blog. Keep checking back for more stuff, like a look at the evolution of the Eps team jacket. It's more exiting than it sounds. Thanks for reading!

AclinCorp Interview: Shawn DePasquale

2009-08-02T15:47:00.001-07:00

(Above: It's complete! Shawn's letters are the final step to completing the page.)

Hey there! I'm ALMOST recovered from San Diego, so expect a full account of our sell-out debut soon. In the meantime, welcome to the fourth and final installment of our "Better Know a Hero House Creative Team Member" series, featuring letterer Shawn DePasquale

1) How did you first become a fan of comics?

The old SuperFriends show got me into super heroes which got me into comics. I had all the first line of the Super Friends toys as well.

2) How did you start getting into writing? How did you start getting into lettering?

Writing started in my Junior year of High School with a focus on movies. A few years after High School a close friend (who was an artist) pitched an idea that i wanted to write for him to draw. When that comic was ready to be published we needed a letterer and I taught myself how to do it. That was almost 10 years ago!

3) What made you decide to take the Hero House assignment?

I'm a whore for money! Just kidding. I really have always loved Twisted Toyfare Theater so I read the script when I found out you were a writer for Toyfare (specifically TTT) and loved what I read.

4) What was your favorite part of working on Hero House?

The last issue was a ton of fun to letter because it had a lot of different font and balloon styles throughout it.

5) Were there any special challenges of working on it?

All of Geist's balloons were a pain in the ass and even though I think they look good I'm sorry I made them so hard to edit (which I found myself doing a lot of). I hope to have them redesigned before we do any more HH books. :)

6) What's next for you?

I have an original graphic novel that is being drawn as we speak and will be available early next 2010 called DETECTIVES IN SPACE. I'm also always lettering books for Arcana.

7) Anything else you'd like to add?

This was a very fun experience and it culminated with me getting a tour of the TTT toy cabinet and getting to hold the Electro doll! There is really no cool job in the world than making comics! I can't wait to work on the next installment of HERO HOUSE or whatever else Justin and Mike work on next. Also special thanks to my family, computer and dual monitors - without those things none of this would be possible for me.

'Twas the night before San Diego...

2009-07-21T18:31:00.001-07:00

Holy crap, people. You can buy Hero House STARTING TOMORROW (if you're in San Diego).

Before this momentous occassion, a few housekeeping notes...

First of all, as you can tell from the image above, I finally was able to do some shirts (and onesies!) in our Zazzle store, thanks to some image help from Brian Gabrillo. Check out zazzle.com/aclincorp to buy the long-awaited Hero House Epsilon Epsilon Psi logo shirt for yourself!

Next, don't forget to come to the Arcana booth, 2415 on Sunday from 12-2 pm for the Hero House signing with me and Mike Dimayuga. Mike will also be sketching for graphic novel purchasers, so you won't want to miss that.

I was going to link to some of our most recent reviews and plugs, but I'm going to be flying across the country soon and I want to spend some time with my wife now. Be back soon!

AclinCorp Interview: Brian Gabrillo

2009-07-21T18:00:00.000-07:00

(Above: Almost done! Brian's colors bring the page to the brink of completion. Come back tomorrow to see the final lettered page and read the interview with letterer Shawn.)

Today's interview is with our colorist, Brian Gabrillo.

1) How did you first become a fan of comics?

It all began when a friend lent me the "death of superman" comic book; I was not a comic book fan until then. After rereading it I began searching for books to read and collect. What really got me hooked, though, was getting a hold of Image titles "Wetworks" "WildC.A.T.S" "Cyberforce" and "Pitt." The art and the story was new so I was able to collect all the issues..

2) How did you start getting into art? How did you start coloring specifically?

I was already drawing when I was a kid, my mom says, but never really looked into it as a profession, even took statistics as a course during college. One time, though, my teachers saw my doodles on the notebook and said that I would be better if I was in an art related course, so I shifted. It was the logical thing to do.

After graduating I entered [the workplace] as a graphic artist, doing lay-out and concept work and designing toys for a major fast food restaurant here in the Philippines. When news came that a comic book talent scout was going to visit the Philippines my girlfriend suggested I try applying as a colorist rather than a penciller, since I have not drawn much due to the work I had, and I followed her suggestion.

I applied as a colorist. The talent scout said I was good but not yet great, but hey, that counts as something! So I practiced everyday after work, also taking in some local independent comic coloring jobs to improve, and there I began as a colorist.

3) What made you decide to take the Hero House assignment?

I was looking for additional work and something to boost my portfolio as well as a colorist, and by coincidence the studio I freelance for, "Big Cat Studios" offered me a 4-issue job. After giving me the information, I took the job. I mean, its not everyday I get a chance to color an Ed McGuinness cover, more so color a whole mini-series that was written by Justin Aclin (We have ToyFare magazine in the office when we want to update ourselves what new toys are out). Plus, it would be of great help for my portfolio.

4) What was the hardest thing you had to do for Hero House?

Well, the hardest part for me was coloring the interior pages, since it had a different style than what I usually do, which I used to color the covers. Nevertheless, I was happy because it had me develop an additional style that I could use and improve my skills.

5) What was your favorite part of working on it?

My favorite part was doing the big splash pages and of course getting the book done. It was the graphic novel I had that was coming out, so I was excited getting it done.

6) What's next for you?

Well right now I plan to study 3d softwares (Maya and 3D Studio Max) to learn new stuff that could help me in my advancement in my day job. For the coloring part, I'm beefing up my portfolio right now. I plan to add more stuff on my DA page (ryjalon311.deviantart.com) to show to publishers.

7) Anything else you'd like to add?

Thanks for the opportunity, Justin! I would also like to thank the guys at Big Cat Studios for the job and of course Mike, Frank, Shawn and Ed for letting me be a part of the Hero House Team.

Thank you, Brian!

Radio, Radio

2009-07-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

Quick note: The interview with Mike and I on Fanboy Radio is now online! You can download it as a podcast and take my dulcet tones with you wherever you go. We talk Hero House, toys and all sorts of current geek news. Big thanks to Scott Hinze for having us on and for such a fun time!

Also, my buddy Andrew Kardon is finally relaunching his comics blog ComicBookMarks, and he used one of his very first posts since coming back to plug Hero House. Return the favor by adding Andrew's site to your RSS feed - this guy wrote the book on comics. Literally.

JA (and MD) on the Radio!

2009-07-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

Want to hear me and Hero House illustrator Mike Dimayuga being interviewed live on the air (in Texas) for an hour this weekend? Then check out Fanboy Radio this Sunday at 7 pm Eastern!

Unlike a lot of other podcasts, FBR actually goes out live on the air, so if you go to the site and click on "Listen to KTCU Live" you'll be able to hear us live! If not, podcasts are usually available on the site the next day. We'll be talking about Hero House, of course, but also probably ToyFare, San Diego, current comics...it should be a blast. Mike and I are definitely looking forward to it.

I've been on FBR once already with the illustrious Zach Oat, but this will be my first time on live. And it is a call-in show, so please listen and give a call in if it sounds like I'm getting boring. Many thanks to Mr. Scott Hinze for having me back on. If you go to the FBR page right now it says that Mark Millar is the guest (he had to reschedule), which is fine with me, because a lot more people will tune in if they think Millar is the guest than my sorry ass. I may or may not start the interview in a Scottish accent, talking about my plans for the Superman movie franchise.

I want to take a moment to thank some of the other folks who've been helping us make the Hero House Insufferable Media Tour 2009 a success. First up my good buddy Casey Schreiner, who plugged the book at the end of his backed-by-a-major-cable network podcast, The MMO Report.

Thanks as well to Comic Book Resources' Robot 6 blog, which mentioned the book's release in a recent San Diego round-up. UPDATE! They also have now posted this interview with me about my plans for San Diego regarding Hero House and ToyFare. Thanks, JK!

Thanks to the folks at the Nerd City podcast, who gave the book a nice plug recently.

And finally, thanks to everyone who's become a fan on Facebook, especially the folks who are clicking the "share" button and spreading the word. As of this writing we're only 13 shy of 100. We can do it!

Shirts...are...GO!

2009-07-16T18:37:00.001-07:00

Okay, I decided to make a couple shirts.

Check out the AclinCorp shop on Zazzle.com. You can get the awesome Hero House San Diego shirt I posted about the other day, as well as the new Hero House cover art shirt you can see above. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to crop the Hero House logo art file to a round shape to get it on a shirt properly. Anyone know how to do that?

Just so you know, we're not earning commission on these. These are purely an opportunity to show your support for Hero House (especially as you walk the floor at San Diego next week).

If you buy one, please tell me how they turn out and take pictures!

T-shirts, Anyone?

2009-07-14T17:47:00.000-07:00

So my multi-talented penciler Mike Dimayuga made me a t-shirt last holiday season, and now he let me know that he's working on a special t-shirt for the creative team to wear to San Diego Comic-Con. And this t-shirt...is awesome.

So what I want to know is, would anybody be interested in ordering the Hero House logo t-shirt, which looks like this:

or would you be interested in ordering the special SDCC shirt, which looks like THIS:
Awesome, right?

And if people would be interested in getting such a thing, does anyone know a good site for getting shirts made? Anyone have any experience with Zazzle or Cafe Press?

Oh, super-important! Hero House now has a fan page on Facebook! Become a fan. It's the cool thing to do!

AclinCorp Interview: Frank E. Stone

2009-07-12T17:50:00.000-07:00

(Above: Above: Hey, Frank sent me the correct page to post! Thanks, Frank! Tune in next time when we see what happens when Brian lays some colors over it.))

A quick note before we get into today's interview with our inker extraordinaire, Frank E. Stone: Now that the San Diego Comic-Con panel schedule has been announced, don't forget to clear some space on SUNDAY from 12-2 PM as Mike and I will be signing copies of the book at the Arcana booth! More details soon! Now, take it away, Frank!

1) How did you first become a fan of comics?

As a kid, I dug newspaper comic strips and paperback reprints of Charles Schulz's PEANUTS. Then the SPIDER-MAN newspaper strip began in the late '70s (yeah, I'm old -- what's your point?), which soon led me to seek out Spidey and his fellow superheroes in comicbooks, and I've been a fan of the artform ever since.

2) How did you start getting into art? How did you start inking specifically?

Like most people, I started drawing at a young age, but never lost interest in it. My earliest subjects were characters from the aforementioned comic strips, as well as my favorite cartoon characters, Popeye the Sailor and Underdog. I'm primarily self-taught, learning mostly through "osmosis" -- observing and practicing, and applying what I've absorbed.

By the early '80s I had started learning about the specific materials and tools used by professional comicbook artists, including bristol board and india ink, so I started practicing with a variety of those items, and developed a fondness for "finishing" my drawings with ink. From there, it was more osmosis to get the hang of the techniques that are unique to the inking discipline.

3) What made you decide to take the Hero House assignment?

Mike offered it! We met in the spring of 2007 when we joined a local artist group (since dubbed the San Joaquin Graphic Arts League), and he liked the inks on the drawings in my sketchbook, so he told me about the HERO HOUSE project and invited me to "try out" by inking one of his drawings. He liked the results, and here we are!

4) What was the hardest thing you had to do for Hero House?

Ink all those brick walls Mike drew! But seriously, folks -- it was probably getting used to the idea of buckling down for a full-length comic art project that wasn't one of my own. Still, I got into the groove pretty quickly -- and by the end of the first chapter, I was really hitting my stride.

5) What was your favorite part of working on it?

The ease with which Mike's drawings lent themselves to inking -- his pencils are pretty tight and clean, so I didn't have to "improvise" much. And this quality was only enhanced by the highly individualistic characters and comprehensive environments. The pages were a real pleasure to work with. And getting to ink (via blueline recreations) Ed McGuinness's cover drawings was a bit of a kick, as well!

6) What's next for you?

Hopefully, figuring out the end of my own graphic novel, THE ASCENDING MAN CHRONICLES, so I can finally finish it. And I'm continuing to collaborate with Mike on commission drawings for one of his regular customers, who pays me an additional fee for inking.

AclinCorp Interview: Mike Dimayuga

2009-07-09T17:30:00.001-07:00

(Above: A page from Chapter 3 of Hero House, pencilled by Mike Dimayuga. As we do these interviews with the creative team, you'll see this page go from pencils to finished product. Neat, huh?)

Things are really moving here at Hero House HQ (HHHQ?), with less than two weeks to go till Comic-Con and the book's physical debut! Tonight I'm kicking off a series of short interviews with the book's creative team, and we start with the man who's the bedrock of the book: Mike Dimayuga! (Forgive the obvious email interview, by the way - we're all busy people!)

1) How did you first become a fan of comics?

As a kid, my friends and cousins would tell me about the adventures of the X-Men or Superman. I was always entertained and the tales intrigued me. When I was old enough to have an allowance, I started buying my own comics. I used to watch a lot of cartoons.

2) How did you start drawing?

In kindergarten class, we would draw and color fruit. I seemed to excel at drawing apples, bananas and oranges. Later, my sisters discovered me copying the Snoopy and Woodstock print on my blanket and doing a good job of it. When i started collecting comics I started copying the art, and as I grew up, I'd fill up my notebooks with doodles and sketches rather than actual notes. It just grew from there.

3) I've already told the story of how I found you, but when I reached out to you, what made you decide to take the Hero House assignment?

Well, shortly before we met, I had just completed a short 8 page story for a small publisher. I felt I was finally ready to do something longer, maybe a 12-pager or even a full 22-page issue. Gradually work my way to the deeper end of the pool, as it were. So when a certain Justin Aclin e-mails me he wants me to do a FOUR ISSUE book, i was flabbergasted. I had just learned to drive a car and already someone wanted to have me compete in the Indy 500. I read the script, and really, really liked the story. and I agreed to do the book shortly after.

4) What was the hardest thing you had to do for Hero House?

Since I was a complete newb when I started the book, I had to learn on the job. Laying out the page, while telling a story, while keeping in mind what you can realistically do was very difficult. Another element I had difficulty were the backgrounds and the props since I wanted to ground the super character and situations in reality.

5) What was your favorite thing to draw?

My favorite to draw was probably the final page. I worked on the book for 3-4 years and I was very satisfying to see it completed. By then i think I'd grown and improved, it was gratifying to see the culmination of all that hard work. Also fun was animale's various animal forms. Ihad fun doing the research.

6) Which of the characters were your favorite to design?

It's a toss up between Nate Hedges and Brutal. Nate because I liked having him "act" and show different kinds of emotions and Brutal brutal because I'm very proud of the design I gave him. I felt it was really close to what Justin had in mind. He has this huge presence that he dominates every panel he's in.

7) What's next for you?

well, the issue of Hack/Slash I did just came out (number 23). Currently, I'm finishing up a 40+ page book with [Hack/Slash creator] Tim Seeley. In July, I'm going to see what projects I can drum up in the San Diego Comic-Con. After that? I don't know, we'll see. I know I want to eventually do my own stuff.

8) Anything else you'd like to add?

I just want to say Hero House was fun to work on. It was a blast designing the characters and the whole HH universe. I learned so much from just doing the book. by the time it ended, I felt I was a better artist than when I started. [Editor's Note: He totally is.]

Review-a-go-go!

2009-07-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

Howdy, folks. Now that Hero House has a few reviews under its belt, I figured I'd collect them all in one place! Just a reminder - if you or anyone you know or anyone you don't know wants to review the book or interview me or the rest of the creative team (except Ed, who I am not the boss of), please email me at herohousecomic [at] gmail [dot] com and we'll make it so!

First up this is not a review, but I think it's kind of cool. It's the first interview I've ever done as a comic author, conducted with new-ish site Comic Hero News. Speaking of CHN, here's the link to their review of Hero House.

Next up is a more personal review by Mike Birnbaum, who I knew from college. He gets some of the little Boston University in-jokes I inserted into the book.

Next up is a bit of a mixed review by Snow Glare for website The Fwoosh. Yes, I'm even man enough to link to my mixed reviews.

Website Super Summaries took a break from their usual practice of reviewing Superman comics to do a review of Hero House where they compare it (favorably) to Buffy.

And finally (so far) Kastor's Korner gives us a nice review that some might consider a little too spoilerific for this stage in the game. You've been warned.

Thanks to everyone who's read or reviewed the book so far, and remember: I'm looking for more. We're only three weeks away from Hero House being available at San Diego. Ca-razy!

Can anything stop...the Animale?

2009-06-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

So reviews of Hero House are slowly starting to come in (look for a round up of the recent ones soon), but I have not yet even begun to plug. I definitely want to get the word out about the book coming out at San Diego, and I need YOUR help. But that's a topic for another day.

At this point probably less than 20 people have read the book, but a lot of people who do respond to two characters, and for (ironically) totally opposite reasons. People seem to like Poltergeist because he's a complicated character with a lot of layers to him. And people seem to like Animale because he's an uncomplicated character: he is a party animal. Literally.

Hero House is, despite its title and concept, in no way "Animal House" with super powers. In my mind, these people are training to be superheroes, and I certainly love Animal House, but the characters in that aren't exactly heroic...futures as senators or not. So I modeled Epsilon Epsilon Psi more on a "service fraternity" that a traditional frat, only the service they do is super-heroics. But I digress.

But Animale is perhaps my one nod towards people's expectations for that. Animale probably would fit right in at Animal House. Here, this basically tells you all you need to know about Animale:

Animale's certainly got a little bit of Bluto in him, but he's got a practical reason for being, in the words of Homer Simpson, a "big, fat party animal." You see, Animale can change his shape, but not his size. Size-changing, I figure, is a totally different power, and it doesn't seem fair that most shape-shifters are also size-shifters. Right? Anyway, Animale always retains the same mass, so he keeps his mass up so that he can shift into more substantial shapes. It also means that if he turns into a kitten (and he does), he turns into a giant kitten (and he does).

And as you can see, Mike just nailed his design on the first pass.

Speaking of Mike and the creative team, come back in a few days when I'll start posting mini-interviews with Mike, Frank, Brian and Shawn. I'll also post links to some of the new reviews. Oh, and check out the print debut of Hero House in any form: there's a half-page ad in the new Wizard that's on shelves today (#214) for Hero House!

Racing to the Finish

2009-06-10T19:02:00.000-07:00

It's done.

Five-and-a-half years after I started writing it originally, Hero House was totally finalized today. The designer uploaded the final high-res files and they'll be on their way to the plant soon, if they aren't already. I almost don't know what to do with myself.

No wait, I do! I'm going to be hard(er) at work on this blog and my brand-new Twitter account, getting the word out about the comic and giving you more behind-the-scenes looks at what went into the making of it. Between now and Hero House's debut at San Diego, look for more posts on Mike's character designs, plus interviews with the entire creative team.

Thanks for everyone's support so far, but stick around - the best is yet to come. And the best is the book. And it's yet to come. But it is. Coming. What was I saying?

Here, in the meantime, check out artist Michael Bencic's take on Hero House's fatale-iest femme fatale, the deadly and sexy Voyd!

Mike's issue of Hack/Slash hits today!

2009-06-10T13:12:00.001-07:00

Quick note: Make sure you pick up Mike's issue of Hack/Slash, issue #23, from Devil's Due when you pick up your books today!

State of the Comic: 6/3

2009-06-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

(Above: The official Hero House ad, courtesy of Arcana Comics! We're mass-communicatin'!)

There's been some changes 'round here. First of all you'll notice the snazzy new AclinCorp banner up top, courtesy of my Photoshop hookup, Wizard Universe Message Board user krypkrwly (aka Larry Joe). Then you'll notice that you're currently viewing aclincorp.com - no blogspot in the URL! Yes, I sprang the $10 for the domain. I feel like a genuine businessman.

Finally, and most disarmingly, you'll find all references to the book coming out in September wiped clean, replaced with November. There's a good reason for this: that's when the book's coming out now. My publisher at Arcana Comics assures me that this will help the book make a bigger splash, and I've never put out a comic book before so I tend to bow to experience.

The plan, however, is still for Hero House to make its debut at next month's San Diego Comic-Con (which plans also currently call for me to attend. Stay tuned!). I'll be back soon with more behind-the-scenes kind of stuff, but watch this space - posting will reach a fever pitch leading up to Hero House's debut. That's the plan, at any rate.

And finally, a question. My buddy Ryan Penagos is the prom queen of Twitter (over 500,000 followers) and he's been pressuring me to join up. Do you folks think Twitter's the logical next step for AclinCorp and its relentless Hero House promotion? Would you follow me? Input is appreciated!

Altered States

2009-05-23T17:24:00.000-07:00

So as you know, Hero House took a long-ass time to come together. But once, way in the beginning of the process, Mike and I considered an alternate course which would have allowed us to burn through the art in much less time. Mike said to me, "What do you think about doing the book in a manga style?"

Now I'm not much of a manga fan, to be honest. And while I think Mike's manga style looks great (you can see some more of his art in that style on his site ), I always envisioned Hero House in an American comic art style. I don't think you can just take a comic book, do it in manga style and have it work out correctly. Manga's got its own storytelling style, even beyond just the art.

So ultimately Mike ended up doing a couple of tests just to see how the characters would look in the manga style (they're the art you're seeing it this post, a-dur), we decided to stick with the original art style, even though we knew it would take longer (and it did). But sometimes good things are worth the wait.

Next up, I'll try to get into the designs of some of our other characters. Because you haven't lived until you've met Animale.

The Art Collector (Me)

2009-05-18T18:45:00.000-07:00

So I had a surprise package waiting for me in the mail when I got home today: my share of Mike and Frank's original art from Hero House! Crazy!

What's really crazy about it is seeing artwork that I've been looking at for a loooong time (in the case of page 18, the first page Mike drew, over five years) up close and personal. Because Frank inked directly over Mike's pencils what I've got now are the inks (like the above page, the first page of chapter 2). Looking through them all together, I realized that what I requested as my souvenir was, by and large, not the big splashy action pages (with the exception of one particularly awesome splash page from issue 3, depicting the Year One team in all its glory) - I really seemed to ask for the pages that contained really great character work and great facial acting from Mike and Frank.

It's a real honor to be the owner of some one-of-a-kind art from a book that means so much to me. And I know that when Mike is a big famous artist, this stuff's gonna be worth a ton of dough. But, uh, I won't sell it. Seriously.

Original Recipe

2009-05-07T14:15:00.001-07:00

(Above: Detail from Mike's first pass at page 18, the first sequential art done for Hero House. You can get a little glimpse of how the finished art changed here)

Now, I'm not saying that Hero House is the most original idea in the history of ideas. I was going for something with excitement and humor and interesting characters, rather than an experimental work that would announce me as the next Alan Moore. However, back when I first came up with the idea (over five years ago, as I tragically keep reminding you), there really weren't any "superheroes in college" books on the market.

However, as soon as the good people at Arcana agreed to publish the book, they started coming out of the woodwork. Robert Kirkman's Invincible went to college. Marvel launched Gravity. Seth Green (who works with some friends of mine, no less, on Robot Chicken) had The Freshmen at Top Cow. Each time I told myself that the premise was different enough, and that there was still room for Hero House in the market...although I died a little bit each time one got announced.

Strangely, the one that never gave me any pause was the web comic Superfrat. I'd heard of it at some point, but it's basically a gag comic strip, not an action comic book. So even though they're both about super-powered fraternities, I was never worried about them competing for the same audience. Although recently it's come to my attention that a friend of one of our creative crew asked him why he was working on Hero House when it was clearly a rip-off of Superfrat, which has been around for years.

So, with no slight to Superfrat, and just in the interest of setting the record straight:

Here is the first Superfrat strip, dated May 11, 2005.

Here is my first public announcement of Hero House on my old blog (which means it had been picked up by Arcana at that point), dated December 13, 2004.

So, yeah. We're not reinventing the super hero wheel, but we're not a rip-off.

Tell your friends. Tell all your friends. I AM the night.

Mike Dimayuga is a HACK!

2009-04-25T18:43:00.001-07:00

It's true! The very talented Mike Dimayuga, penciler extraordinaire of Hero House, is a total hack. By which I mean, of course, that Mike will be making his professional comics debut in the soon-to-be-shipping Hack/Slash #23 from Devil's Due Comics! Check out writer Tim Seeley discussing it here.

You can see some of Mike's Hack/Slash art done before (though not his art for the story - this is some of the art he did for his own edification that caught Tim's eye). Please join me in congratulating him!

The birthing process continues...

2009-04-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

(Above: The final cover for the original graphic novel "Hero House." Thanks to all who gave feedback on the last cover.)

The birthing process for Hero House goes on... I've been told that we haven't yet slipped our deadline to get the book at San Diego, and thank goodness for that. We're just waiting for a few minor designs to come back - title page, my voluminous thank yous, etc. But the pages of the comic themselves are, to the best of my knowledge, totally done. Now I just can't wait to actually have the friggin' thing in my hands. Did I mention we've been at this for five years now? Good news though - I've reread the entire thing several times now for editing purposes, and putting modesty aside for a moment, I think it really kicks ass.

The birthing process for the other AclinCorp project, however, is finally done - AclinCorp CEO (and my wife) Brooke Aclin gave birth to our second daughter last Friday after 23 hours of labor. That makes five years of working on a comic look like child's play.

State of the Comic 4/9: The Almost Done Edition

2009-04-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

Holy Moses, folks (oh, Happy Passover, by the way)...we are SO almost done with the comic. We're so almost done that if we were any more almost done, we'd be all the way done. Think about it.

I downloaded a pretty-much-finished PDF last night of the entire comic...only to find just a few last niggling mistakes that I figured we might as well fix before we shut the door on this thing. But having read the entire book in color, lettered and in one sitting now, I can say with confidence that I'm SUPREMELY proud of how it came out, and of everyone involved with it. I'm going to have a final PDF of the whole shebang no later than next week, so if you're a retailer or blogger who'd like a copy for review, just drop me a note at herohousecomic[little "at" sign]gmail[dot]com.

And now, in keeping with our "almost done" theme, at the top of the post you'll find the almost-done pin-up for the book done by my ludicrously talented brother. (The final version has a slightly less blue Geist...)

The Hero House cover: an AclinCorp premiere!

2009-04-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

That's the thing about having your own blog - you can have all the world premieres you damn well please.

Anyway, it's not 100% nailed down yet, but I couldn't wait to share with you folks our fantastic looking cover.

(Click to expand)

Here are the credits:
Cover Pencils by Ed McGuinness
Cover Inks by Frank E. Stone
Cover Colors by Brian Gabrillo
Hero House Logo by Jairo Leon and Michael Bencic
Cover Design by Jairo Leon

What does everyone think? Striking? Too plain? Awesome beyond words. Let me know in the comments - it's not too late in the process to see if I can't throw some Chromium on there if you think that's what it needs.

State of the Comic: 3/23

2009-03-23T18:35:00.000-07:00

(Above: Mike's layout for Hero House. Thank goodness someone's thinking about this sort of thing...)

So heads up, you guys: posting might slow down over the next month or so as I shift temporarily from promoting the book to going into overdrive to get everything finalized in time to hit our deadline to be at San Diego Comic-Con. (Cross your fingers for us!) On top of that, one of AclinCorp's other projects is about to come to fruition: my wife (and AclinCorp CEO) Brooke might be having our second child literally any second now. So between those two things, I might not be checking in quite so regularly. But keep checking back, because there's still a bunch of cool stuff to share.

Brutal: Crafting the big guy

2009-03-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

(Above: Ed McGuinness' tight-as-hell pencils to the Brutal cover, originally intended for issue #1.)

Let's face it: most of the characters in Hero House just look like a bunch of dudes. So I knew that Brutal--the President of Epsilon Epsilon Psi and the only non-human-looking member--would have to be memorable. Which is why he went through more designs than any other member before Mike and I finally hit on one we liked.

First things first, here's Brutal's description from the issue #1 script:

BROTHER BRUTAL stands in the center, a mammoth, strong-looking man at least eight feet tall in a suit with horns growing from his temples.

Here was Mike's first pass:

I wasn't crazy about the demon nose, and the horns weren't quite where I wanted them to be yet - I wanted the horns to basically look like Brutal's big gnarly eyebrows.

The next couple of sketches got a bit closer:

I wasn't quite digging the inhuman eyes, though. Around this time I also came up with the idea of giving Brutal a scar down the middle of his face between his horns, as if his skin had sort of split open when his horns first started growing in. You can see a bit of that in the penultimate sketch, where Brutal is wearing a very sporty vest...

Add slightly broader soldiers and voila! The finalized design sketch:

I think the scar ends up being less pronounced in much of the final art, but I think we accomplished what we set out to do - to create a visually memorable character that when you see him (or even his sillhouette), you'll immediately think of Hero House. It's why Brutal was going to appear on the cover to issue #1, before we decided to release as an OGN. Plus, as a bonus, he looks like he was born to be drawn by Ed McGuinness.

I'd like to take this opportunity to officially apologize to Mike for being such a hardass about Brutal's design all those five years ago, but I'd like to think it paid off.

The state of the comic - 3/9

2009-03-09T18:04:00.000-07:00

Well, the finishing line is in sight. It has to be - we've got a firm deadline for getting all files in and completed if we want to have the book at San Diego (and I want to have the book at San Diego). This evening I'm going to be paginating the book - making sure that everything fits and all the cliffhangers come on a left-facing page. Luckily, it's something I'm very used to doing for the day job.

The other thing I need to do is figure out what bonus art to include in the book, out of the five years of material we've amassed. This one's a shoo-in: a pin-up Mike drew for me for a holiday gift a couple years back featuring a couple of super-villains you won't be meeting for a while in the book, so I won't say anything else about them at the moment...

Poltergeist: 13-year-old Justin is vindicated

2009-03-02T18:00:00.000-08:00

(Above: Ed McGuinness' Poltergeist art, originally intended for the cover to issue #3)

So like I said, I'm not much of an artist. And before I hooked up with Mike, he was employed as a character designer for a video game company, so he was totally aces on the character designs (you'll see them all eventually on the blog). But I can say with pride that there is one character who I helped design. And I helped design him when I was 13 years old!

Like most other comic book dorks who dream of growing up to become comic book writers, I created a whole universe of superheroes and villains when I was a teenager. Most of them had names that would not have been out of place on Grant Morrison's list of pseudo-Image character names from Doom Force (there was a Hellweb and a Death Claw, and I'm not proud). I also drew all these characters in an art style that's basically exactly like my current art style, which, as you know, sucks.

But there was one character at least who was destined for greater things:

When the time came to add a disgraced former member to the Eps in Hero House, Poltergeist emerged from the depths of my memories. So what you see above is remarkably similar to the character you see in the book: same white skin. Same blue eyes. Same long grey hair. Same long trailing legs effect when he flies. Only, you know, it doesn't look like crap in the book.

Mike's first stab at Geist (the cool kids call him Geist) played up the haggard and drunken aspects of the character just a little too much. Geist's had some hard living when we meet him, but he's still only about 21 years old.

The next sketch was perfect, though. It captured something about the character that I hadn't quite articulated at the time. He's drunk and he's destructive, but he's convinced that he's a real great time to be around, and it totally comes off in Mike's second sketch:

Geist's big entrance is basically the first extended action sequence of the book, and it was the first sequence Mike drew (for our pitch packet, waaaay back when). And as you can see from the color panel above, Geist practically leaps off the page when he first appears. He's simultaneously a tragic character and a fun character, and he's definitely one of my favorite characters in the book. And not just because I drew him sometime around my Bar Mitzvah.

Finding Mike

2009-02-23T18:40:00.000-08:00

Somehow, despite making up a bunch of crap off the top of my head, I managed to complete a rough draft of a script for Hero House. So now the question becomes...who's going to draw this thing?

Here's the irony: My father is a professional artist. My brother is a professional artist. I am not a professional artist. I used to hand storyboard sketches into my editor-in-chief and he'd say he felt like he should be hanging them on his refrigerator.

Clearly I needed to find an artist. I didn't feel like my dad or brother could devote the time I knew it would take, so I decided to hit them web - specifically the Digital Webbing message board, which I'd heard had an entire section devoted to writers trying to find artists, vice versa and etc. And that's where I found Mike Dimayuga.

It was a total stroke of luck...probably the biggest single bit of luck that lead to the comic actually being able to come out. I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, but I knew I wanted someone who could draw superhero action, but who also had the character drawing skills to tell stories with the facial expressions of the characters - important, if I was going to try to do any sort of comedy.

That's when I saw this piece of art that Mike had posted on the board:

I hadn't known what I was looking for, but here was exactly what I was looking for: a Hawkman that had elements of Art Adams and Steve Dillon. A Harvey Birdman whose expression leapt off the page. If one guy could do both these figures, he could absolutely draw Hero House.

Luckily, Mike was just as excited about the project as I was for having him aboard. And over the subsequent five years, Mike's enthusiasm and tireless dedication to the book have truly kept it going in its darkest days. It's no exaggeration to say Hero House wouldn't exist without Mike, and there's no way it would look half as good as it does without him.

I know that Mike's next project is something very exciting, and while it's not for me to reveal it here, I'll say this: keep your eye on Mike Dimayuga. Oh, and buy Hero House. I've gotta throw that in there, as well.

The Curious Case of Brother Nozzle, OR, the Perils of Stream-of-Consciousness Comic Book Writing

2009-02-19T21:08:00.000-08:00

Other than Nate and the basic premise, I really didn't have much of the plot decided when I sat down and started writing, and I certainly didn't have any of the characters mapped out. So I did something weird, and I'm not exactly sure why I did it, other than there was a spirit of "anything goes" happening at the time: I made up all the members of Hero House off the top of my head.

When it came time to mention a member in the script, I just wrote their name down. Sometimes this worked out really well. Brutal, Animale, Pseudopod...they were all just off the cuff, and their characters and backgrounds got filled in later. Sometimes this didn't work out so hot, and that's where Brother Nozzle came in.

Brother Nozzle was entirely invented to serve a joke. He was going to be serving the punch, and it was going to gross Nate out. Because Nozzle's power was...to absorb and then redirect liquids. So he was going to be spraying the punch out of his finger into the punch bowl. Great gag...terrible, terrible character.

I got as far as getting Nozzle down on the page, when I stopped and thought about it. What the hell kind of power was absorbing and redirecting liquids? How could that help the Eps in a battle? How would that be in the least bit interesting to write about?

The answer, of course, is that it wasn't. It was incredibly stupid. However, given the fact that I made at least six heroes up on the spur of the moment and only one of them was a total dud...that ain't bad!

Even Pseudopod, if you stop and think about it, is kind of a weird name and power for a hero, even though I decided to keep him. But I could, at least, see how his power would be helpful in battle. And, perhaps in honor of his fellow strange-powered brother, Nozzle, who will never come to be, Pseu was even given Nozzle's gag in the final book:
So rest in peace, Brother Nozzle. You will never appear in a comic book written by me.

Nate Hedges IS Turbine the Turbo Teen!

2009-02-11T20:48:00.000-08:00

(Above: Ed McGuinness' art of Nate. When Hero House was going to be a four-issue mini-series this would have been the cover to issue 4. Now that it's an OGN, all four pieces of McGuinness art will be combined for the cover).

When my mom read the first chapter of "Hero House," she said to me, "So, Nate's supposed to be you?"

Not exactly, although I can see where the confusion lies. First of all, we spend the majority of the book inside Nate Hedges' head, hearing his internal monologue, so there's a natural tendency to think that must be the author's voice. And I do have a bit in common with Nate, even though our differences run far deeper than the fact that he's a super-speedster and I can't do much running at any speed.

When we first meet Nate Hedges, he leads a public double life as Turbine the Turbo Teen, teen superhero and idol of his small town of Jeffersonville. He's also about to head off to college, and when we pick him up a few months later, his life has taken an entirely different turn. He's no longer anyone's idol. He's just another superhero in a city that has plenty of them, and without that self-identification, Nate really doesn't know who he is.
(Art at left: The original character design for Nate by Mike Dimayuga, circa early 2004.)

I was definitely never a superhero, and I never quite lost my identity like Nate does. But I had carved out a very comfortable niche for myself in my small town by my senior year of high school, and I had a very strong self-identity that took a blow when I went to college. I could no longer count on being one of the handful of "smartest" people in the school - not by a long shot. Luckily I never felt as aimless as Nate (I made friends quickly, and I found my Hero House-inspiring comedy group within the first couple of months), but I definitely saw people who struggled to the same degree that Nate does.

I love superhero comics, and I love superhero comics that are about something else, as well. The X-Men have been going for over 40 years with superpowers being a metaphor for alienation, for being different, for being discriminated against, etc. With Hero House, I wanted to create a different metaphor. For some of the characters, superpowers are freedom, in the same way that going to college for the first time represents an almost supernatural amount of freedom for young adults. For Nate, superpowers are what used to make him special, but what no longer make him quite special enough.
(Left: Nate facial study by Mike Dimayuga)
Nate probably never would have joined Epsilon Epsilon Psi on his own. But in his purposeless state, he found himself considering the offer from University President Mayhew he might not have ordinarily: pledge the Eps, spy on them for the administration and get your grades boosted. At the very least it gives him a temporary purpose, even if he's got a bad feeling about it from the start.

I can specifically remember thinking that I didn't want the book to have a "point of entry" character - the guy who's coming in new to the situation so the rest of the characters get to explain things to him (at its most successful, think Winston in "Ghostbusters." At its most shoehorned, think the boring human guy who joins the BPRD in the first "Hellboy" film). Even though Nate is joining the frat, and the other characters do end up explaining things to him, I don't view him as a Winston character. The book is about his journey as much as it's about the rest of Hero House, so there's no way you can accuse him of being shoehorned in. I hope. Well, people can probably accuse anyone of anything. But in my mind at least, his essentialness lets him off the hook.

This ended up being a long-ass post, which actually leads me to a question - what would you most like to see on AclinCorp about Hero House? Sketches and pre-production art, like the stuff peppered throughout this post? Final art and preview pages? Long-ass philosophical rants about what I like superpowers to represent? All of the above? This is my first time blogging in this fashion, so I'm open to all suggestions. Just leave them in the comments!

The state of the comic - 2/10

2009-02-10T18:24:00.000-08:00

Since this blog is primarily going to be concerned with how the comic came together, it's going to be mostly living in the past. But every once in a while I'll share with you what's going on right now.

For instance, I just sent Shawn the letterer an email saying the last bit of corrections for chapter 3 are good, which means the book is now 3/4 of the way done. And since we're so close and we've got a fairly firm release date, I decided it's time to strut:

Here's me at this past weekend's New York Comic Con, rocking the very latest in fashion: my Hero House t-shirt (a very thoughtful X-Mas gift from my very thoughtful penciller, Mike Dimayuga). I could be spotted sporting the shirt on two panels that I moderated, as well as walking the floor, like I was when I got my pic snapped here with my buddy, Marvel.com editor R y an Penagos.

(Please forgive my weird facial expression - Ryan's friend was trying to snap the picture on Ryan's super-futuristic phone, and as a result we were standing like that for about 90 seconds, unaware of exactly when the pic might get snapped.)

So that's where we are right now - the book's almost but not quite done, and the merchandising has already begun.

Welcome! And Preview Pages

2009-02-07T14:15:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the official launch of AclinCorp, a production blog dedicated to the superhero OGN Hero House. Before we get started, you can go here to learn more about Hero House, and here to learn more about this website.

From now until the book's September release and beyond, I (I'm Justin, by the way) will be posting sketches, designs, rough artwork, humorous anecdotes and exclusive first-looks, all related to Hero House. In honor of the website's official launch, I'm going to lead off with a first look at the first three pages of Hero House. You don't get to see the actual Hero House in these pages, but it should give you a good idea of the tone of the book and introduce you to our most important character, Nate Hedges:

Update: Due to whatever vagaries of the posting process, the colors for these pages ended up looking a little more...intense than they will in the finished product.

Secret Origins

2009-02-05T19:02:00.000-08:00

All my life, I've wanted to write superhero comics. And while my experiences writing fart jokes for the Hulk's action figure helped scratch that itch a little bit, it's not the same as writing a full-out, illustrated action comic.

So five years ago I realized that I was never going to get an offer to write the X-Men based on said fart joke writing skills, so I decided that I was going to create my own comic, get it illustrated and get it published. That's not such a tall order, right?

But ah...what the hell to write about? Luckily, one day I had a flash: Super-teams. College fraternities. My college sketch comedy group. All three were groups of people who came together for a common goal and called each other by special code names (I was Hemlock DaRosa, btw). I could write about a college frat that was also a super-team, and I could draw on the experiences I had in my sketch comedy group. (You'd be amazed how applicable sketch comedy group experience is to both frat life and being in a super-team.)

That just left the small matter of plot. My mind immediately started to go to murder mysteries and terrible conspiracies, and I had to stop myself and think, "Hey, idiot - if people know you for anything, it's for dumb comedy. Nobody wants to read a depressing murder mystery from a comedy writer." (Unless it's Woody Allen, which I'm not.) So I set about coming up with a plot that had some drama in it, undoubtedly, but also left plenty of room for humor and would be, above all, fun to read.

And the first thing that plot needed was a main character. So the next post (after our preview pages - see above) will deal with Nate Hedges, formerly known as teen hero Turbine the Turbo Teen. Yeah...he's embarassed by the name now, too.

About Hero House

2009-02-01T11:12:00.001-08:00

Hero House is an original graphic novel coming in November from Arcana Comics. It's character-driven superhero action with a sense of humor and a simple concept: a college fraternity for the superheroes of tomorrow.

Written and created by: Justin Aclin (Twisted ToyFare Theatre)
Pencils and character designs by: Mike Dimayuga (Hack/Slash)
Cover by: Ed McGuinness (Hulk, Superman/Batman)
Inks by: Frank E. Stone
Colors by: Brian Gabrillo
Lettered by: Shawn DePasquale

Epsilon Epsilon Psi is a fraternity with a unique mission: to prepare the super-powered students of today to become the best superheroes they can be. Nate Hedges was a teen superhero and the star of his school, but at college he feels like a nobody. So when he's tapped by the university president to go undercover and investigate the Eps, will he find the super-powered hazing the administration fears? Or will he find a place where he finally belongs?

Hero House is slated for release on November 25th 2009 in comic shops and on Amazon.com. Stay tuned to AclinCorp for all the Hero House news you need!

About AclinCorp

2009-01-31T19:16:00.000-08:00

"ACLINCORP does a lot. It also does a lot of good."

My wife wrote that on her Facebook profile, appropos of nothing, and I loved it so much I had to steal it for the name of a blog.

Welcome to AclinCorp! My name is Justin Aclin, and if I Google myself, it turns out that I'm the editor for ToyFare Magazine and current head writer for Twisted ToyFare Theatre. This blog will cover the projects that my wife Brooke and I create together (which, for the time being, are primarily children), as well as the comic book projects I'm developing myself with the help of some very talented artists.

So here are some links to get you started:

Here's where you can learn about Hero House, the original superhero graphic novel I have coming out this September from Arcana Comics.

Here's me on Facebook.

Here's me on MySpace.

Here's me on ComicSpace.

And here (here meaning where you are right now) is where you'll find the latest updates, behind-the-scenes art and anecdotes about Hero House. Subscribe now!