The Future is Futurequake

I'm getting a bit bored of mainstream comics lately.  In fact, I feel like mainstream comics are getting bored of mainstream comics; what other reason could there be for the endless reboots and reimaginings and re-whatever-the-hell-else's?  And for the first time since when I first got into comics way back when, it feels like all of the interesting stuff is happening elsewhere.  I mean, would anyone seriously argue these days that Marvel or DC are putting out better books than, say, Image?  Well, perhaps, but they'd be wrong.

In other news, the UK still has a comics industry.  Okay, maybe not an industry, but it still has more than enough talented creators to support one; all that's lacking is the publishers and the readership.  As far as I can judge, there's 2000AD and then there's Futurequake, and honestly, in my experience, your chances are a great deal better of getting published in the latter.  But you know what, that's okay, because Futurequake is seriously impressive in its own right, and has grown all the more so since I last had work in there a few years back.  It's a proper indy comic that looks as good as just about anything out there, and it's a hundred pages long, which makes for a particularly cheap graphic novel in this day and age.  And those pages are packed full of quirky, original work of the sort that's becoming so vanishingly rare in the world of comic books.

For example: Conservationists.  The first draft of my script dates back a heck of a way, and was one of those nonsensical ideas I never know when to let go of.  The short version is, what would an alien invasion look like from a nonhuman perspective?  In this case, the nonhuman is an urban fox just trying to get by, and in my original draft the invasion was very much background detail; after all, what would a fox give a damn?

Dave Evans, Futurequake head honcho, liked the notion but wanted to see a bit more action, and then Anthony Summey - who'd soon after because my co-conspirator on C21st Gods - was heavily into the alien designs and the violent, explodey stuff, and the end result was not a great deal like what I originally had in mind.  Which, lest it sound like I'm complaining, is undoubtedly a good thing.  What Anthony, and to a lesser extent Dave, nudged this little story towards being is a heck of a lot more fun than what I first envisaged, while still maintaining that core concept of how the alien annihilation of humankind would seem like much, much less of a big deal if you're weren't a human.

Should you be up for reading it, along with lots of other stories by a whole load of talented writers and artists, you can grab a copy of Futurequake 2017 from their website; it should be available by the time I post this or very soon after.