2020. 3. 1. 21:24ㆍ카테고리 없음
Sentinels of America #1What a long, strange tripAC Comics started out as Paragon Publications in 1969, and 2009 marksthe 40th anniversary for the independent publisher. Bill Black stoppedby Newsarama to chat about his company that has defied all odds and isnow one of the elder statesmen among comic publishers.Newsarama: Bill, at 40 years old AC is one of the oldestpublishers in the industry today. How has your company endured thehighs and lows of the comic market all these years?Bill Black: By having a solid fan base who have stuck with usover four decades.
Without readers, we wouldn't be here. Over the yearsI have seen the missteps of other publishers and endeavor not to makethe same mistakes. I am a small publisher and part of my longevity isdue to my staying small. I never wanted to be a mega-publisher.
I justwanted to make a living doing what I love to do. At that I havesucceeded. I remain a lone wolf, off in the corner doing my ownthing. And not interacting with the comic book industry.NRAMA: You were a working comic professional at Warren when you launched Paragon Illustrated #1. What was the business plan for Paragon, originally? Were you intending to start your own publishing company?BB: I first submitted artwork to publishers in 1965 while I wasstill a student at Florida State University.
(garganta )(amazing Colossal Woman)
It's fortunate that I wasnot successful because quitting school would have been a big mistake.As it turned out, being at the University was far more exciting thandrawing comics, which provides a solitary existence. In school I wasalways experimenting. Trying new things. Actually having adventuresthat took place outside of my room.
After graduating in 1966, I wasdrafted into the Army at the height of the Viet Nam war in April, 1967.There I first observed that my life seemed to be channeled by some'strange luck' and I went with the flow.As a GI Illustrator I had access to drawing board and supplies and wasallowed to draw comics in my off duty hours. Benefiting from that, Icreated the first issues of Paragon Publications and continued to sendsubmissions to publishers. When I left the Army in 1969 I was hired asa free lance artist by Editor Bill Parente at Warren Publicationsdrawing horror stories for Creepy and Eeriemagazines. I also became employed as an illustrator for an Orlandobased film production company. I did Paragon on the side.
Whereas otherfanzine publishers stuck with one title, I opted to create a line oftitles. Soon I had Paragon Illustratedparagon Illustrated, Macabre Western, Paragon Super Heroes, Captain Paragon and the like.NRAMA: What was the circulation on that first issue? Paragon IllustratedBB: Paragon Illustrated #1, by the end of its first year,had sold 365 copies. These copies were sold one at a timethru the mail to individuals who ordered from ads I placed in othermagazines. Paragon Publications ran from 1969 thru 1982.
By the lastyear the circulation had increased to over 6000, which encouraged me toexpand.NRAMA: Why did you decide to use a pen name?BB: As I started this profession doing horror stories, I considered the name William Black to be fitting.NRAMA: Speaking of those early comics, how were you able to use a Nick Fury pin up in Paragon Illustrated?BB: Your question prompted me to dig out a copy of Paragon #1and to re-live memories. The contents of that issue reflect what BillBlack is all about, actually. It shows the love I have for atmospherichorror movies (not the slasher movies that came later but films withactors. Great villains like Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, ChristopherLee and Peter Cushing). My interest in the comic books of mychildhood that had ceased publication by 1969 like Captain Marvel Adventuresand deep desire to learn about the comics that were published before mytime. But you asked about the Nick Fury centerfold.
Yeah, I like thatpiece, too. It is obviously inspired by the fantastic artwork of JimSteranko whose illustrative innovations in the late '60's set thecomics world on its ear.
I was terribly impressed with Steranko's workthen. I anxiously awaited every new issue of Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.to see what Steranko would come up with next. When he stopped, it was adisappointment. Since then I've never been as excited about anythingdone in comics. How was I able to use Nick Fury?
Allfanzines paid homage to the characters of Marvel and DC. Of courselater, this practice was verboten and fan publishers were required tolicense the likeness of characters they revered.NRAMA: Moving on through the timeline, what was the inspiration for the Femforce?BB: In 1978 I was hired by Roy Thomas to ink some of his books for Marvel.
One book was a What If?set in the 1950’s that featured Venus and had Jann of the Jungle andNamora in a few panels as well. I suggested to Roy that he might comeup with a new group comprised of all female heroines: Miss America,Blonde Phantom, Venus, Jann, Lorna, Namora, Sun Girl Millie TheModel? Roy rejected the concept saying “Female characters don’t sell.”So I adopted my concept for my Paragon Publications and created “FemmeForce One The All-Girl Squad.” I worked with artist Willie Blyberg onthat story which, briefly told, had the villain, Gorgana, incapacitateall the male heroes so that the super heroines had to band together tostop her. This team appeared in the Paragon title Femzine #1. Iwas working up additional heroine stories with artist Mark Heike whenthe opportunity presented itself to create AC Comics. Later, in 1984, Ipulled out those stories from the file cabinet, wrote bridgingsequences, and published Femforce Special #1. To my surprise, that book was our best seller for 1984.
That success encouraged us to launch Femforce as a color series in 1985. Super heroines have 'not been selling' for me for over 25 years now. Fem Force #1NRAMA: As you mentioned, in addition to this being the companies40th Anniversary it is also the 25th anniversary for Femforce, what doyou have planned to celebrate?BB: First off let me say that AC will be going in new directionsthis year. I have formed a new company, Nightveil Media, INC., whichwill have AC Comics, Smarty Pants Entertainment and other entitiesunder its umbrella.
2009 will be the biggest Femforce year ever. Forseveral years I have been producing Femforce videos on the side. Theywill be released this year. Mark Heike is ramroding the Femforce comicbook. AC has hired John Gotschall, who recently designed our newweb site, to create new web sites engineered to premier our new digitalFemforce products. These include CGI stories and picto fiction(fumetti) as well as videos.
John and I createdwhich was launched in February. Through this site, we are renewing ourefforts to introduce Femforce and other Golden Age characters to a newaudience. Many of our early issues are now rare and difficult to find.ACCOMICS.NET provides over 1800 pages of downloadable content from thefirst 50 issues of Femforce and the Sentinels of Justice, which is anextremely affordable way for new readers to meet our characters andjump in on the ground floor. ACCOMICS.NET also provides an opportunityfor us to bring the AC Universe to life through digital media such asdownloadable videos and photos, color editions of comics that havepreviously only been published in black and white, as well as the newFemforce CGI WebComic.
It is a pay-for-view download site that isloaded with tons of Femforce material. It features a whopping huge100+ page picto fiction story starring our lead actress, Maria Paris,reprising her role as The Blue Bulleteer.
This section of the site hasproven to be very popular with our customers. I did the photography(shot over 600 photographs!) and John wrote the script which has BBmolested by the villain, Dr. Switching off, I wrote the storyfor a CGI comic that John executed. This features Synn, Ms. Victory,Stardust, ProximA and some surprises. We are pleased with the successof the site and additional sites will be added throughout the year.NRAMA: What is planned for Femforce #150, and when does it come out?BB: We must first get through Femforce #149.
That will bereleased in May and features a plot that has Femforce nemesis, GeneralGordon, running for President. It guest stars Stormy Tempest, crimefighter from the future.
150 will come out later in the year,probably in August. It will be a jumbo-sized edition featuring anadditional 40 pages.
Mark Heike will write and edit this and he hasmany plot lines to wrap up. For many issues a continuing plot line hasrevolved around the finding of a mystical artifact so evil that totouch it is to die. Stardust touches it and is destroyed.
Nightveilusing her own mystic energies discovers microscopic hidden circuitry inthe dagger artifact. She learns that this is a tool sent by the OldDark Ones, omniscient beings currently trapped on a distant planet.
Forcenturies the Old Dark Ones have tried to get free to devour all lifeon Earth. Now Nightveil decides it is time to take out this evil onceand for all.
She gathers the most powerful paranormals (The Shade, TheHaunter, Synn, Firebeam and others) and they travel to the planet ofevil for a cosmic showdown. And to avenge Stardust. This is the bigone! Actually this story line goes back to the story I did entitled'Blackjack' featured in Paragon's Bizarre Thrills #1. Also I'mtoying with writing a story entitled “The Mystery of the ScarletScorpion” in which the Paragon version of the Scorpion suddenlyreplaces the AC version. Femforce members will, in turn, attempt tosort it all out. Fem Force #149NRAMA: Tell us more about Femforce CGI.BB: Femforce CGI is a downloadable online publicationavailable through ACCOMICS.NET.
We use a variety of computer modelingprograms to construct posable, digital 3-D versions of the Femforce,their adversaries, some of my old Paragon creations and popular GoldenAge characters such as the Black Terror, Yankee Girl, etc. Softwareis then used to position these characters within a computer generatedenvironment to construct colorful scenes that become the panels of acomic book story. Place the panels on a page, add word balloons andsound effects and the result is a vivid downloadable comic withtexture, depth and full color. It sounds high-tech and fancy, butFemforce CGI is just a new way for us to tell fun stories.
These arebrand new stories that will appear only at accomics.net and will neverbe printed in a comic book. I think its amazing the depth and realitywe can get into these stories. It's great to be back in color, too.These will be just like the Femforce comic book as far as keeping upthe personalities of the characters but now they will have the addeddimension of CGI graphics.NRAMA: Will there be more than one CGI issue?BB: Definitely! The groundwork is already in place and theinitial reaction to our first 'issue' has been very positive. Ms.Victory, Synn and Stardust get the spotlight in our first installment,but our Golden Age and giantess fans will love the follow up.NRAMA: You said you have launched a new site. What is the difference between andBB: ACComics.com is the official home page of AC Comics.
You'llfind AC's Online Store where you can purchase just about everythingwe've created over the years, literally almost 1000 items from comicsto collectibles to DVD's. It's also where you will find the latest newsabout all of our books and videos and where you can join our newsletterto keep in touch. If you can't find AC at your local comic shop or inPreviews, you can always find us at ACCOMICS.COM.ACComics.net is a new website launched in 2009 that will be the hub ofour digital publishing efforts. This is where you will find 50 issuesof downloadable Femforce comics, the Femforce CGI Web Comic, a liveaction 'photo comic', pinups and more. Currently the long-awaited Blue Bulleteer: Captured by the Cloakmovie is available for immediate download for a limited time and manymore downloadable movies will follow. There are also trailers toup-coming Femforce movies and hundreds of photographs of all theFemforce models.NRAMA: You wrote, directed, and produced the Nightveil movie.
What was that experience like? Fem Force CGIBB: Nightveil: Witchwar was the first of current movieson video that I have produced. Six others will be released in 2009.Prior to Witchwar and dating back to my high school days, I have alwaysmade amateur movies. This led to a career in film production during the1970’s and early 1980’s. This first Nightveil movie came about throughmy involvement with Mary Capps who had a spectacular Nightveil costume.Steven Johnson commissioned costumes of the entire Femforce and enteredthe team into a San Diego Convention costume contest in the early1990’s. Mary then went on to dress as Nightveil at many comicconventions throughout the country.
As a tie-in with Superbabes, theFemforce role playing game, Mary was brought to Florida to appear at agaming convention. Taking advantage of this I made a film telling theorigin story of how the Blue Bulleteer became Nightveil. The entiremovie was shot during that long weekend of the gaming show.
We had ablast making the movie. Of course it was an amateur production as Maryand others in the cast were not actors. All involved were real troopersenduring 12 hour shoots in 30 degree January weather.
Years later, whendigital video became available, I added much more footage to it andhired real actors. The additional footage extended the length of themovie to around 60 minutes. I will be re-cutting it soon for a downloadversion.NRAMA: How well did the Nightveil movie do?BB: Very well! I believe that it was our best selling productduring the year it was released. It still sells.
Unlike a comic bookwhich has a 30 day shelf life, a movie sells forever.NRAMA: Between the movies and the CGI comic are there any plans for an animated feature?BB: The great thing about creating the digital assets for Femforce CGIis that those same 3-D models can be imported into animation softwareand brought to life. They can speak, walk, dance and fight. The basictechnology now exists to create a short animated Femforce adventurefrom a home computer and we'd love to make it happen, but renderingjust a few seconds of animation takes many hours.
Creating a satisfyingshort feature would take months. But it's definitely something that wewant to do and if our other online publishing efforts continue to besuccessful we might get to see an animated Ms. Victory tossing around atank or a giant-sized Tara stomping through a CGI city.NRAMA: For a relatively small company with a small staff, youhave some interesting merchandise comic out. You had a Yankee Girlstatue and in the works is Miss Masque.
Do you actively seek outlicensees or do they come to you?BB: Yankee Girl has been released and has sold out. This andlast year’s Blue Bulleteer statue were produced by Reel Art Studios.Mike Hudson of Reel Arts came to me. I'm thrilled by the quality ofthese figures and I'm happy with the relationship AC has with ReelArts. Not so our previous dealings with Randy Bowen. I believe thatMike is planning MISS MASQUE next. I'm sure that it will be fabulous aswell.
I have no time to seek out licenses but if anyone is interestedthey should contact Mark Heike at AC Comics. We have already licensedforeign editions of Femforce and Golden-Age reprints. Men of Mystery: Black TerrorNRAMA: There has been a lot of interest in the public domainGolden Age heroes like Black Terror, Daredevil, Miss Masque and GreenLama. They are showing up in comics from Image and Dynamite, yet youhave been including them in your comics for more then 20 years.BB: AC was the first to do so.
Our first use of Black Terror wasin a Paragon book nearly four decades ago. Today The Black Terror ispaired with Rad, Ms. Victory's daughter, in Femforce. Miss Masque wasin Femforce #147 and both she and Black Terror will appear in our Green Lama series.
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Plans are in the works for a Miss Masque statue and video as well.NRAMA: You have a new original Green Lama mini-series coming out now, what type of reaction has that had so far?BB: We released two Green Lama comics in 2008. They werevery successful. I tapped James Ritchey who revamped the Golden-Agecharacter that I have had running in AC Comics for over two decades tocontinue is Man of Might story line.
Jim writes and pencils and MarkStegbauer and Jeff Austin are inking. If the property continues to dowell, can a Green Lama video be far behind?NRAMA: AC does a lot of Golden Age reprints, with superheroes, horror and jungle girls. How do you decide what to reprint?BB: I reprint material that I want to see in print.
All of our Golden-Age reprint books are available on our web store at. There are 78 issues of Men of Mystery which presents a wide cross section of heroes and heroines. There are 71 issues of Best of the Westavailable.
That title has its focus on masked Western characters which,during the 1950's, filled in for the super heroes who had almost becomeextinct. Crypt of Horror with a variety of pre-code horrorcomics is our best selling reprint. It's now published bi-annually andwe may move it up to three times a year.NRAMA: Finally – tell us a little more about the Femforce moviesBB: When I was a young man it seemed that I had a choice offuture careers: comic books or the movies. I chose comics. Now I havethe chance to travel down that other road and I am having a blast. Backin the 1970’s I made a film entitled Astron.
It was shot in16mm sound with a professional crew. It cost $6000.00 for the initialtwo day shoot. But finishing it would have cost another $20,000.00. So Astronand so many of my other early film efforts have remained unfinished fordecades.
Now with digital video and computers, I can at last completethese projects for pennies on the dollar. Digital video is extremelyinexpensive.The second film that I completed and released on DVD was Amazing Colossal Woman.
It cost $250.00 to produce, with most of the budget going to my talented star, Brenna Barry. It was released after Nightveiland became AC’s biggest money maker the following year. Idiscovered that making a Femforce video was far more fun and lesscostly than making a Femforce comic book. With success to spur me on, Iwrote and directed The Sangor Syndrome, a vehicle designed to incorporate an earlier film shot on 16mm, Bloodsuckers From Outer Space,which featured my characters Synn and The Shade. It starred Maria Pariswho had impressed me with her performance as villain Alizarin Crimsonin the first Nightveil movie.
Maria is an actor with severalIndependent films and many plays and TV commercials in her credits.Maria introduced me to many other actors all of whom have worked withbe in the projects that you mentioned. Fem Force OmnibusI also got up with local horror actor Mike Acord who portrayed the deadpan TV anchorman in Amazing Colossal Woman.It had been Mike’s lifelong desire to become a TV horror host and tothat end he had created the character, Lon Midnight. Working togetherwe have completed 20 Lon Madnight segments for our Crypt of Horrorseries. Mike created and portrays our main video villain, The Cloak,delivering a dead-on Vincent Price impersonation. Special effects haveheld up Sangor’s completion so Blue Bulleteer: Captured By The Cloak became my third original video production in release.
It is currently available at accomics.net.Amazing Colossal Woman was designed to be a teaser for a full length Garganta movie, Ghost Of Garganta.This is my magnum opus a feature-length giant woman movie. BrennaBarry reprises her Garganta role, Maria Paris is her nemesis and MikeAcord returns as the newscaster. Because of its length and the degreeof difficulty bringing it to completion, GOG will not be released forsome time. Near completion is Planet Of The Damned, the storyof a spaceman who crash lands on a forbidden planet that’s onlyinhabitant is a giant vampire woman (Amy LoCicero). This will be ournext release. Following PoD will be Stormy Tempest: Perils In The Past.This stars Nicola Rae, a beautiful 6 foot tall beauty, as StormyTempest, law agent from the future who chases an Alien menace back intime to present day Earth.
We shot this in February, 09. John Gotschallis now helping me with the videos. He wrote the Stomry script and we co-filmed it uses two cameras. John also wrote Nightveil: The Sorcerer’s Eye which we filmed in August-September, 2008.
Besides creating our CGI stories and picto fiction adventures, John will be editing Sorcerer’s Eye and Stormy while I work on completing Planet Of The Damned, Sangor and Garganta.In addition, we will launch by this summer, a new website devotedexclusively to our video productions. It will feature re-workedversions of Nightveil: Witch War and Amazing Colossal Woman as well as an extended version of Blue Bulleteer: Captured By The Cloak.
Other original videos on this site available for download will be Carnage Of Dracula, Cheeseorama,the above mentioned Femforce films as they are completed and many otherold Bill Black productions from the forgotten past like The Conqueror Worm, Astron and House At The End Of The World. Did I mention that I'm excited about all this?