Yammering about Redakai

from friendly ghosts...

I recently had the opportunity to talk to Drew McCabe of the kids-comics-focused column, “From Friendly Ghosts to Gamma Rays” on Comic Attack. I, along with writer Terrance Griep and artist Zack Turner, was selected for a special feature focusing on the Redakai graphic novels from Viz.

Drew did a really great job coming up with questions, going far beyond the typical, “What did you bring to this project? What does it mean to you?” rigamarole, for which I was really grateful. Hell, he even dug deep and asked me questions about kaiju monsters, my past work at Marvel and my current work with WWE Games.

Enjoy the interview!

Redakai Vol. 1: Invasion of the Gilfreem on sale now!

 

It’s here! After months of me pimping it online, Redakai: Invasion of the Gilfreem is now available. BuyBuybuy!

Redakai: Invasion of the Gilfreem is both my first outing in the Redakai universe, as well as the first volume in Viz’s new line of Redakai comics. I had a blast writing for a younger audience and getting to know the series’ characters. If you’re not familiar with the television series and card game on which the comics are based, it’s about three kids on a quest to obtain a magical energy source called Kairu. Like all good concepts, it sounds simple at first, but allows for a lot of variation based on characters and themes within.

My story has refugee aliens, thinly veiled environmentalist messaging and most importantly, art by Ray Anthony Height, Nate Lovett and Zack Turner, all of whom drew the ever-loving bejeezus out of this thing. Best of all, even if you hate me, my writing and everything I stand for, there’s still something to love in this volume, as the back-up story is by Mike Raicht and Dan Ciurczak.

Again: BuyBuybuy!

Skullkickers #18 on sale now!

Any time a new issue of Skullkickers hits the stands is cause for celebration, but today is cause for extra-special-super celebration. Why? Because Skullkickers #18, “Son of Tavern Tales” includes a story written by ME.

Entitled “Dues or DIE!”, Chief Skullkicker himself, Jim Zub, described the story as being “about union rules and special songs,” so it’s pretty much exactly like the second season of The Wire. But it’s actually even BETTER than The Wire because it’s drawn by the incredible Ivan Anaya, with colors by the equally amazing Owen Gieni.

That’s a panel from the story itself up above (with lettering by the aforementioned and multi-talented Jim Zub), but you should check out the entire issue, especially seeing as it contains a murderer’s row of independent comics talent, including: John Layman, Rob Guillory, Justin Jordan, Tradd Moore, Blair Butler, Enrique Rivera (of “Living with Edo” “fame”), J. Torres, Alberto Alburquerque, Charles Soule and Michael Mayne.

Wander down to your local comic shop and request, nay, DEMAND a copy. Or just direct your browser over to Comixology and buy your comic book there, as if we were living in some kind of crazy future where all content was made available digitally.

WORTH on iFanboy!

It went up last week during post-San Diego Comic Con craziness, but because I’m bad at updating my website, I’m only telling you about it now. Prior to the official announcement at SDCC, I had a chat with the always-awesome Josh Flanagan at iFanboy about the upcoming graphic novel, Worth, from Roddenberry Entertainment and Arcana – drawn by Chris Moreno and written by your pal Shitterson.

In the interview I talk about superheroes, Detroit, Karl Marx, the MC5 and how g-d awesome Chris Moreno is at drawing things well. More importantly, if you scroll down through all my yammering, you even get to see the first five pages of Worth – check them out and tell me I’m wrong about the science Chris is dropping here. TELL ME I’M WRONG.

Interview: Aubrey Sitterson on Worth

Pre-San Diego Comic Con interview-o-rama!

It’s true – I’ve been working as the Community Manager for WWE Games for the past couple months, and my posts here have been…less than regular. BUT! That doesn’t mean that I don’t care – never think that I don’t care – and while I’ve not been doing Raw Recaps or lists of whatever-the-balls, I’ve also been plugging along on comicbook stuff.

“Where’s the proof?” you say, kinda shittily? Why, it’s right here, with two, count ‘em TWO separate interviews with your pal, good old Shitterson about doing comics stuff. Check it:

First, I stopped by “Talking Comics with Tim” over at the Robot 6 blog, conveniently housed at Comic Book Resources. Tim O’Shea was kind enough to chat with me about Gear Monkey, moving from full-time to freelance and back to full-time, switching sides of the editorial desk and, of course, because it’s me, WRESTLING.

Elsewhere, Trevor Roth {COO and Head of Development for Roddenberry Entertainment [As in Gene Roddenberry (As in the Star Trek guy)]} and I talked with Rus Burlingame of the appropriately named ComicBook.com, announcing a NEW graphic novel called Worth, written by, you guessed it, me.

Stay tuned for more information, especially on Worth, as we’ll be debuting interior pages from my (hopefully) willing collaborator, Chris Moreno, at SDCC this weekend.

Gear Monkey now available at DoubleFeature Comics!

A few months back, I told you a little bit about Gear Monkey, a comics project by myself and the tremendously talented Nate Lovett, who, incidentally, is also one of the artists on Redakai: Invasion of the Gilfreem, also written by moi. Now, the long wait is over, and you can finally read the first-ever Gear Monkey story over at DoubleFeature Comics.

DoubleFeature is a really awesome webcomics publisher that sells “books” that contain two eight-page stories for only 99cents. You even get an option of how to purchase them: Either buy it through the web and get a digital rights management-free PDF that you can read anywhere on any device, or get it via the DoubleFeature Comics iPad app and you’ll also be treated to a bevy of special features, including early sketches and commentary from the writers and artists.

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I won the Skullkickers Tavern Tales Contest!

Jim Zubkavich, A.K.A. Jim Zub, A.K.A. that guy who makes awesome action-humor-fantasy comics at Image just announced it on Twitter this morning, so I’m finally free to talk about it: I won the Skullkickers Tavern Tales Contest!

I submitted my story idea, “Dues or DIE!” about three months ago, right after I first heard about it, again, via Zub’s Twitter. There were a bunch of other writing submissions – more than 250, in fact – but thankfully, Zub saw something in mine, which means that I’m being teamed with a Tavern Tales Contest-winning artist for six-page story based on my idea in September’s Skullkickers #18. It’s one of the series’ regular anthology issues, meaning I get to rub shoulders with some more established writers, who are just as excited as I am to get their hands on Baldy and Shorty. Handling art duties on “Dues or DIE!” is the incredibly talented Ivan Anaya – rest assured that if you haven’t heard of this guy yet, you’ll be hearing a lot about him in the very near future. He’s that damn good.

Skullkickers is one of my must-buy titles each month, so I’m thrilled to have a chance to play around in that particular sandbox. For those unfamiliar, Skullkickers follows the adventures of two, erm, “Skullkickers,” violent drink-loving mercenaries fighting, stabbing, slicing and shooting their way through a tabletop RPG-influenced fantasy landscape. If you like adventure, fantasy, pretty art, a few laughs or even just want to see what I’m yammering on about, you could do a lot worse than picking up some copies from your local comic shop. Or, you can even buy them digitally through Comixology – the series’ zero issue is a free download so you don’t really have any excuse not to try it out.

Keep your eyes peeled for more deetz, and make sure to head over to Skullkickers Headquarters to check out the art submission that won Ivan the gig.

Redakai interview at Anime Vice

One of the projects I’m really excited about hitting this year is vol. 1 of Redakai. Editor Joel Enos first got in touch with me last year about adapting the hit cartoon show to comics, and brought me on to write for two volumes (so far). I really enjoyed getting a chance to try and explore what makes manga work differently than American comics, and while what we ended up with is still very much the work of a guy whose bigegst influence comes from western work, I like to think some more manga-esque elements might shine through.

So, I was delighted when Tom Pinchuk of Anime Vice asked me to talk about the perceived differences in the genres, and, just as good, the natural relationship and similarities between superhero comics, shonen fight manga and one of my other great loves, professional wrestling. Mr. Pinchuk was kind enough to indulge my rambling about face-turns, One Piece, Junko Mizuno and more, and he even asked follow-up questions, so you should go check out how patient he is now, with this interview over at Anime Vice.

Who cares if the Ninja Turtles are neither teenage nor mutant?

Nothing dark and gritty here.

If you’ve been anywhere on the internet for the past week, you’ve probably heard a lot of folks getting all bent out of shape because of Michael Bay’s plan to reboot the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as aliens which are neither mutant nor alien (though presumably still somewhat turtley). Now, I’m not particularly looking forward to the Bay-produced Ninja Turtles flick, but that’s on account of the fact that those Transformers movies did nothing for me – NOT because of some deep-seated, righteous anger that someone would dare tamper with the bastion of sacrosanct perfection that is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Thing is, I, like most fans of the property, originally came to the TMNT as a fan of the cartoons, toys, movies and video games, and the nature of their appeal was far different from that of the original comic. For more detail, check out my article over at IFC.com.

And, as a special DROPKICK OUT THE JAMS bonus, some extra thinking I’ve been doing about TMNT that just refused to fit into that IFC piece…

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The harmful myth of comics for non-comics-readers

A panel from the wildly successful Walking Dead comic

Was this aimed at "non comics readers"?

Pretty frequently a rallying cry will go up in the comics industry for “comics for non-comics readers!” or “comics for kids!” or “comics for middle-aged women!” or any variation of the above. If the intent is to expand readership, move units and get more eyeballs, fantastic and good on you, but I have to wonder about the course of action being taken, because frankly, making comics for people who don’t read comics is no way to do any of that.

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