UNREAL CITY: How long has the idea for Peter Panzerfaust been kicking around in your noggin?

KURTIS WIEBE: It was an idea that came about from an e-brainstorming session three years ago with the series artist, Tyler Jenkins. We’d been throwing ideas back and forth for a while, trying to drum up concepts we’d love to put together. He mentioned some ridiculous idea about kid resistance fighters in Vietnam, to which he added, “kids like the Lost Boys.”

I didn’t like that much. So I made it World War II. That made much more sense.

UC: I guess we now know your favourite war! Is WWII an interest of yours or did you have to do a bit of research?

KW: I’ve always been a massive history nut. Thousands of stories with thousands of character, I can honestly never get enough. WWII is a special era that I’ve always found fascinating. The many stories of brotherly camaraderie. So, while I was already fairly knowledgeable in general about the events of the war, I definitely had to research in depth to ensure a high degree of historical accuracy. That attention to detail is really important to me.

UC: How much of a parallel can readers expect between PP and the actual Peter Pan story? It occurs to me that Captain Hook could also be the name of a military character.

KW: We’re going to be using all the characters remade to fit into the WWII setting and doing homages to certain scenes from the book as well. So, have a favourite Peter Pan character? That character will be present in the series, but probably not in the way you would expect. That’s half the fun for us.

UC: Cool. This isn’t your first rodeo with Tyler Jenkins. Has your collaborative process changed much? How much input does Tyler have storywise?

KW: I take care of most of the story elements and adapting the Peter Pan mythology, but I always run it by him to get his feedback. From there we try to develop it together, brain storm until we get something a bit more solid. Out collaboration this go around is pretty different because Snow Angel was a work-for-hire project that we were both significantly less involved with on a personal level.

This series is ours from the ground up, so we’re more invested.

UC: PP is an ongoing series and, correct me if I’m wrong, that makes this your first (since Green Wake was initially a mini that got the green light for more issues). Did you have to take a different approach to plotting, or have you found yourself using a similar process?

KW: The plotting process is pretty much the same, but with a wide scope planned. I’m aiming this to be about 30 issues, if we can manage to keep the series alive long enough. I’m a bit cynical these days.

UC: Any moments in issue 1 that were particularly fun to write?

KW: Probably my favourite sequence is right in the middle when the group of boys are trapped on a roof and are about to get shot at by a tank. There’s danger, but also a sense of a flight and fantasy that makes it a real joy to read, especially after seeing the pages come to life through Tyler’s vision.

UC: When can we expect to see Grim Leaper?

KW: The first issue comes out in May, though I haven’t received confirmation about the actual date. There should be some announcements coming out fairly soon, and I know Jim Valentino has put together a formal announcement for the Image Expo next weekend.

UC: Are you headed to any cons in the near future?

KW: Yeah, lots of conventions. Image Expo next weekend in Oakland, Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle at the end of March, Calgary Expo at the end of April and the Saskatoon Blitz in June. I’m also doing quite a few signings in between and after those events. It’s a busy start to 2012.

UC: Awesome! Well, here’s to the best in the future: success-wise, creative-wise and otherwise.

-Brendan Flaherty

Wiebe lives in Saskatoon and is the critically acclaimed writer of Green Wake and The Intrepids.   He also made his Marvel comics debut last year in the Marvel Holiday Special with a story about Wolverine teaching some young X-Men how to play hockey.

Meet one comic’s rising stars and get your signed copy of Peter Panzerfaust #1 from 7 to 9 pm on Thursday, February 16th. 

Featuring 18 rad designs by artists new and old, Series 3 pushes the platform like never before.  With a custom show feel, each member of the series reaches beyond the boundaries in graphics and sculpt, making FatCap crazier, hairier, cuter, meaner, and more human.  Artists in this series include Flying Fortress, Jon Paul Kaiser, Julie West, KaNO, Kronk, Queen Andrea,  Shok 1, and Sket One.

Scott Kowalchuk will return to Unreal City for an exhibition of comic art in June.  The opening reception will take place on Friday, June 8 from 7 to 10 pm.   Scott is from Saskatoon and lives in Calgary.  He was the artist for the Image comic series The Intrepids with Saskatoon writer Kurtis Wiebe.   Scott is currently working on a project for Oni Press, publisher of the Scott Pilgrim comic series.

This will be Scott’s second show at Unreal City.  For his first show in 2010 Scott created a limited edition print inspired by The Big Lebowski.   He will doing a new print for the launch in June.

See more of Scott’s art here

Join us at Unreal City on Saturday, January 28th at 7 pm for The Pink Penguin Book Launch.  The Pink Peguin is a graphic novel by Lillian McHugh and Kate Hodgson which tells the story of Darwin, a penguin who realizes he is different and leaves his northern home to find himself.

Produced by Happy Leapord Capbooks, proceeds from the sale of The Pink Penguin will benefit the Farmers Helping Farmers.

Refreshments will be served and art from the book will be on sale.

Nobody really wanted me to like the book, either. Marvel launched it with virtually no publicity. No hype, no preamble, maybe 1 house ad for the series. There don’t seem to have been any positive reviews; just buckets and buckets of hate from the Comics Internet. Take this for example. Wow. Nobody really wanted me to like the book.

I wasn’t aware of any of this, however. Through it’s 12-issue run, Wolverine: The Best There Is became one of the books I most looked forward to. Up there with The Walking Dead, Morning Glories, DeadpoolMAX and Fables. Through Juan Jose Ryp’s ludicrous art and Charlie Huston’s even more ludicrous writing, I came to understand a few things about modern superhero comics.

After all, on paper there’s nothing about this book that should have made it unpopular, but unpopular it was. This was a book with a notable creative team. This was a book with one of the biggest characters in the Marvel roster. This was a book that offered up exactly what the readers seem to demand on a Wednesday-by-Wednesday basis: blood, guts, boobs, more blood, in-jokes, obscure characters, dirty jokes and yet more blood. I personally didn’t like it for those things. I wasn’t familiar with the obscure characters. I don’t need excessive sex and violence to make me like a book.

What really got me was the sheer audacity of Huston’s undertaking. Here was a crazy, unhinged story that was the comics equivalent of Russell Crowe in Gladiator committing stone cold murder and screaming “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED???”.

In Wolverine: The Best There Is everyone’s favourite hairy Canadian with an x-gene is targeted by a crazy villain and forced to overcome inhuman amounts of torture by virtue of his healing factor, going on to withstand enough to kill regular people many times over. He is given every disease known to man simultaneously and faced with a gauntlet of unkillable villains, all in the name of some silly plan for world domination (or, in this case, world genocide). He eventually wins, with a bit of help from the X-men. If you take it’s most basic elements, this could be any Wolverine comic ever, really. There’s nothing about this book that should have made it unpopular.

This comic took the exact things that make a popular comic and cranked them up so far past 11 that I imagine the average reviewer was forced to confront their own irrational obsession, the same irrational obsession we all share. What seemed alright in the middle of the night and a few dozen beers deep didn’t look so good in the harsh light of day.

At least to them. Personally, I have no problem with my love of comics. It’s for this exact reason that I don’t tend to read a lot of comics reviews, especially before I read the book on my own. Not to pay attention to comics reviews before making a purchase is probably not the best advice to give on a website that prominently features comics reviews, but I stand by it. Do yourself one better. Go to your local comic shop (*ahem* Unreal City) and ask about what’s good. Not enough people do that. There’s a reason why this series only lasted 12 issues.

I’m not saying Wolverine: The Best There Is was the best there is in comics. I’m saying it was pretty darn good, a cyanide pill laced with more ideas than a reader knows what to do with, tongue-in-cheek cyberpunk torture porn that makes you hate yourself in the best possible way. I’m going to miss it.

Read comics.

-Brendan Flaherty

Incredible Hulk #1 / Incredible Hulk #2

by Jason Aaron (W); Marc Silvestri (A)

Modern supercomics don’t see a lot of endings. Unless a character doesn’t have enough clout to maintain a monthly series, fans are subjected to story after story after story with very little closure from year to year.

Greg Pak’s excellent run on various books of or relating to a certain “incredible hulk”, though marred by editorial interference, was an exception to this rule. We saw Hulk at his best, Banner at his worst, and a true family sprung up around our protagonist. From a planet where Hulk could be seen as a hero, back to Earth where he exacted his near-villainous revenge on those who had banished him. At long last both Pak and Hulk threw in the towel. The story had been told. The End.

This is comics, though. How long is this end going to last?

One month, it turns out.

Now we have a new book, once again called The Incredible Hulk, written and drawn by Marvel superstars. Herein, we find the newly separate Hulk and Banner dealing with things as best they can. Hulk is living underground, with the Moloids, eking out a simple existence, enjoying not being thought of by those around him as a monster, growing a beard. Banner is on an irradiated island, trying to re-create Hulk, experimenting on the animals around him in monstrous fashion, growing a beard. Where one is the beard of contentment, the other is the beard of crazy. The book is already asking good questions about the nature of these two.

Set aside for a moment the fact that the story borrows heavily from The Island of Dr. Moreau (and The Intrepids, even), set aside the fact that the heavily touted “superstar” artist isn’t even penciling the whole book by issue number 2; this book is worth it.

Much in the same way he has done in Wolverine, in Hulk Jason Aaron wastes no time cutting to the chase, to the core of this iconic character. No massive supporting cast, no stupid science mumbo-jumbo. Just a story about a monster trying to redeem himself and about a man desperate to cling to the only scrap of identity he thought he had.

But it’s comics, so there are also gamma-sharks, talking warthogs and a floating brain.

-Brendan Flaherty

Hear me out. I understand that comics shouldn’t be pigeonholed like that. I know that there are some really stellar comics in the new 52. There are also a whole lot of big guns, big *ahem* bosoms, big bloodstains and big clichés – enough to evoke the feeling that that new album Nevermind you just bought from the local thriving CD store is going to be a big hit.

I don’t have a problem with this. It makes sense for DC, in a time when deforestation puts comics at risk of being worth less than the paper they’re printed on; when online downloads deprive those whose livelihoods depend on the sales of comics from retaining said livelihoods; when Silly Bandz and sexting and Charlie Sheen all have more cultural clout than one of the most creative mediums in existance, to turn to some of the people who have made them the most money in the past and say, “Hey, why don’t you take another kick at the can?”. Peter Milligan,George Perez, Rob Liefeld, Dan Jurgens, Scott Lobdell, and Paul freaking Levitz are all working away; mind you, most of these folks don’t need to sell copies to put their kids through college because their kids have already finished college. But it makes sense. It makes sense to bring back popular characters from the ’80’s and ’90’s (a definite boom period for sales), with Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Firestorm, and the O.G. Batgirl all featuring prominently with books of their very own.

After a while, though, it becomes difficult to separate the necessary books from the novelties. Anyone can pick up a book like Superman #1 and instantly recognize it as the updated version of classic books of yore. In being so, it lends itself a timelessness (references to Twitter be damned) that makes DC’s decision-making process seem sound. It’s alright to model your comics line after dusty relics, as long as those relics are priceless.

Pick up something like Voodoo #1, however, and the opposite is true. Unless you aren’t aware of the copious amount of naked female flesh on the Internet (it’s true, folks – I can’t make this stuff up), this book serves no purpose. It’s a story about an alien who passes herself off as a stripper while biding her time for an alien takeover… or something. At the end of 20 pages, the reader has been treated to an unlikeable protagonist, uninteresting antagonists, and 18 pages of drawings of strippers. Y’know, for kids.

Equally unpleasant, Green Lantern: New Guardians #1 seems to have 3 purposes: making the timeline of the DCU confusing due to Kyle Rayner’s rookie status even though the rest of the GL continuity remains untouched, giving Tony Bedard a GL book to write as a token instead of outright firing him from the former Green Lantern Corps book, and turning the number of GL books in the DCU from 3 to 4. Storywise, this book accomplishes nothing, proving that even bright rainbow colours can’t distract the reader from noticing a void where a something could be.

Perhaps I’m too harsh. I don’t think so though, because I do enjoy the return of Firestorm to the DC front lines, a fine example of why retro isn’t always a bad thing. This book’s formula is to take the concept a lot of DC fans already know and turn it on it’s head. There’s no way to predict what will happen next in The Fury of Firestorm, except that it will likely involve some sort of…. fire… storm…  At any rate, the writing team of Ethan Van Sciver and Gail Simone are way better than they have any right to be, demonstrating that editorially-controlled comics (come on, you know they had to have been assigned to work together) aren’t always a bad thing.

Maybe, for the time being, it’s alright to revel in the comicbook tropes of the ’80’s and ’90’s. Maybe, for the time being, I can let The Shade tell me that Starman never ended, I can let Batgirl tell me that The Killing Joke wasn’t quite as depressing as all that, I can let Swamp Thing and Animal Man try to give Alan Moore and Grant Morrison runs for their incredible amount of money, I can let Keith Giffen do just enough of a Jack Kirby impression to get me to fork out $2.99 a month, and maybe I can even ignore the fact that Scott Lobdell and J.T. Krul (two of my “faves”) collectively control almost a tenth of the DCU.

Maybe.

For the time being.

I know if I wait long enough through this comics “re-boom” where the comics feel like they did during the last actual sales boom, what happened next before might happen next again. At the end of the 1990’s, Marvel Comics almost went bankrupt, and was saved almost overnight by a brash young crop of newcomers with names like Quesada and Bendis who helped reinvent The Medium for a new generation. Maybe the “New 52″ is just what the comics-buying public needs to help us realize why we’re into these things in the first place, and one day we’ll look back on this initiative as the start of something truly altering. Here’s to being the past.

-Brendan Flaherty