May 26th, 2008
CHRONOS BATTALION
Hey hey pals. Man the new Indiana Jones is the biz. Went to see it on Saturday as part of Stephen Mooney’s Stag party. Great day, great film. That scene with the ants, I just keep replaying it in my mind, it gets me all worked up.
So two weeks ago I came up with an idea for a new comic and have decided to put it through ZUDA, DC’s web comics thing. I hoofed through it, wrote it and did the character designs in a day and have alot of it drawn already. It’s tricky because you are limited to 8 screens. A lot of the entries on zuda have no ending, they just stop after the 8 screens so I really tried to have action, exposition and a definite ending.
That’s the mock up logo, looks good so far.
Like Hitler himself who kept raising new divisions and directing resources into stupid projects while losing a winnable war, I know I should be finishing up my Twisted Tales for 2000AD and marketing Amperduke. But this is fun! Well lettering it isn’t fun. God Bless silent comics.
This chap is an Albino Negro. Much like the scary reggae star Yellowman
This lad is Bulgarviest, the leader.
The synopsis: A fugitive scientist escapes to PreHistory with an instrument vital to Nazi Germany’s victory. The Chronos Battalion is formed to pursue him. So it’s Nazi’s vs Dinosaurs vs Robots. Wahey!
It should be finished and if accepted, live in July. More info as it happens.
There’s an Irish entry in this months competition by Brendan Mc Ginley so go vote for him here
May 26th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Dude this looks brilliant already! Is there a $$$$ prize for Zuda comics?
May 26th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Wahey! Beautiful drawings man. love all the detail work. Concept looks like a winner to me.
May 26th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Excellent!
May 26th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Cheers lads. No Stewbie, no cash but great exposure and it’s a bit of fun. The comics on Zuda get thousands of hits so hopefully a few readers will dig my stuff and pick up an Amperduke.
May 26th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
They look awesome! Nazi’s vs Dinosaurs vs Robots has got to be the best combination since Ryall & Wood’s comic “Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons”. Indy was pretty swell. “Put your hands down. Your embarrasing us.”
May 27th, 2008 at 12:22 am
I’m aware of how glib it can sound, especially in these modern times of every 2nd comic either being about zombies or vampires. Yep there will be a Tiger tank vs a T-rex but the tone isn’t all wanky.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:11 am
looks like a fecking deadly comic premise.
especially the black albino lad.
yeah,Zuda`s a good way to get yourself known and there are a fair few gems among the lot,as well.
would you consider carrying on with it even if it wasn`t accepted?
May 27th, 2008 at 4:30 am
Hmmm, if anyone can get something worthwhile out of “cult” subjects like the pirates/ninjas/zombies/nazis/dinosaurs/aliens (as is the current fad) I’d say it’s you. Zuda is a cool notion in terms of promoting yourself but at the time of launch there were a lot of misgivings about what happens with the rights to the material.
Also, that robot design reminds me of the weird spacesuit in Sunshine. Was that coincidence or a deliberate effort on your part?
May 27th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Yeah I was writing the second installment last night and I’d love to continue it. Apparently some non winners have been picked up by real comic companies. Feels weird writing dialogue after years of silence! The alien is a Dogu Alien, do a google image search, I’ve loved the look of them for years. What’s Sunshine?
May 27th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Sunshine is this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/ a decent little sci-fi flick, the whole “horror” aspect is a bit silly but there’s some good stuff in there and it looks fantastic. (That said, I saw it in the cinema first and there are some sequences that just won’t look as good on the small screen…)
May 27th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Bob - that must have been the gayest stags ever - did you have a magician as well? interesting to see that you liked the indy flic as its being roundly slated.
May 27th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Is it being slated? Fuck all them idiots. As a big fan of the first three I wasn’t disappointed at all. Yeah there are some gay bits and outlandish cgi stunts but I loved it. The Stag was deadly, Mario Kart league in the morning, Indy for lunch, dinner for dinner then some drunken mutts for supper.
May 27th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Like the look of your new comic. I’ve noticed a bit of an obsession with Nazis, Bob. Does that stem from Indiana Jones? I know the new one doesn’t have Nazis in it, but Cate Blanchett is pretty much a Nazi in Soviet clothing. And hitler was well into the occult.
May 27th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Haven’t seen it yet but the complaints seem to be people saying that the new one didn’t live up to their expectations, which is hardly a fucking surprise when most of the reason people want to see a new Indy is nostalgia for how cool the originals were, back when we were all kids. On the other hand, that skidstain Shia Lebouf or whatever the fuck his name is was involved, so maybe the naysayers have a point…
May 27th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
What’s not to love about Nazis? Nah, I’m fascinated with WW2 and love reading stories from the German perspective. Yeah they’re the baddies but in the new comic you’ll grow to love them. Or they’ll commit genocide on your ass!
May 27th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
I once tried explaining how i really like the dramatic imagery associated with Nazis. The uniforms, the inperial symbols, etc, as an artist i just think that’s all cool. However as i was drunk, i didn’t really explain myself right and it came out as “AH MAN, I LOVE NAZIS!!!’
Those character designs are great Bob.
Dec.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:39 am
The thing with the Nazis is that they’re a great foil for a hero - you’ve got the massively organised military structure, some aesthetically striking uniforms with very cleverly-designed colour schemes and logos/iconography, and at the back of it all there’s a scary scary ideology that sets them apart from the “they’re not all bad” kind of villains because, well, the Nazis *were* all bad.
Mind you, they get so over-used that in comics at least a lot of the time I feel like nazis are present because the writers can’t think of any convincing “evil” characters of their own, so sticking a swastika on a character’s armband is visual shorthand for them being evil, rather than putting the effort into explaining why the character is evil in the first place. (Not saying you’ll do that, Bob, just one of those things I notice a lot. Like the way there are a lot of comics about ninjas which seem to not know much about the actual history of ninjas with the whole Hanzo Hattori myth and stuff…)
Dec, admit it - you just love nazi sex midgets, don’t you? It’s ok man, we’re not here to judge you…
May 28th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
But they weren’t all bad, the vast majority of the average soldiers weren’t committed nazis, even some of the higher ups weren’t nazis, they were in the army long before Hitler came around. My favourite book, ‘The Forgotten Soldier’ is about a French kid who joins up and has to fight alongside equally normal lads. Get it, I’ve read it 6 times now.
I’d love to expand upon ‘are we the evil baddies?’ conversations between the soldiers. So far out of the 50ish men in the battalion only 8 are die-hard nazis, the rest just want to defend their country. From dinosaurs!!!
May 28th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
You can get some really interesting ideas out of the situation though; is it bad to be a soldier who goes along with orders unquestioningly? Is it bad if you do horrible things with good intentions? Is it bad to try and ignore what you suspect might be going on if it makes life easier for you?
I mean, sure, not every German in the country at the time was a committed Nazi, but horrible stuff still happened to people organised by those that were Nazis. In the same way that not every American is a xenophobic idiot, but there are still people being arrested, jailed and tortured in Guantanamo Bay. Some really uncomfortable ideas come out of there if you poke around long enough….
May 29th, 2008 at 9:21 am
They do pay you for Zuda work if you’re picked as a winner. $250 a page for 52 pages (or screens as they call them). That’s for all the art, writing and lettering though.
May 29th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Deadly! I skimmed through the submission crap and didn’t spot that, cheers Mr Thompson.
Kyle I hear ya. We’re getting ahead of ourselves though, I only have 8 screens to tell my story so there won’t be any in depth ethical talk. Writing comics is a piece of piss by the way everybody
May 29th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Damnit, Bob, you should rebel against the conformity of the comics that Zuda has featured so far and make your 8 pages a lengthy essay on the ethical dilemnas faced by the German footsoldiers during WWII! You could put little cartoony doodles in the margins to make sure it counts as pictures and everything.
Also, bear in mind that with the current state of the dollar, 52 * $250 is still only about the price of a pint and a packet of pork scratchings…
May 31st, 2008 at 2:14 am
I just saw the movie today. The ants were cool in a wierd way