The global pandemic had a lot to do with that, which should come as no surprise; after all, how better to pass the time than by catching up on your reading?
And as I mentioned last week, a number of our titles are available to those very same libraries, and OverDrive specifically, through e-book distributor Smashwords: my young adult, dark-urban-fantasy novels Blood Feud and Blood Reign (books 1 and 2 of The Saga of Pandora Zwieback), and Richard C. White’s Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination (a how-to book for writers and RPG gamemasters currently on the syllabus for the Interactive Media Design program at Becker College in Worchester, Massachusetts), Harbinger of Darkness (a fantasy adventure novel starring a female protagonist), and For a Few Gold Pieces More (a story collection starring a swashbuckling Thief With No Name).
So if you’re a librarian interested in adding some great titles to your digital bookshelves, head over to OverDrive and place your order today. You’ll be glad you did!
According to the calendar site Happy Days 365, today is International Kiss a Ginger Day, a holiday created in 2009 as a “karmic counter event” intended to offset negative comments made about fiery-haired people (e.g., that gingers have no souls, that someone who’s unpopular is treated “like a redheaded stepchild”).
What’s the best way to observe this unusual holiday? Well, around here at ’Warp Central, we celebrate it by honoring our favorite redhead: the flame-haired succubus Lorelei, StarWarp Concepts’ first lady of horror, who stars in two comic books and a graphic novel, and who does quite a bit of kissing of her own—after all, how else is she supposed to steal the souls of her prey?
Lorelei: Sects and the City is Lori’s critically acclaimed graphic novel adventure, in which she battles a cult of Elder God worshipers who are trying to unleash their monstrous masters on the world. It’s a tribute of sorts to classic 1970s horror comics and movies, from writer Steven A. Roman (that’s me!) and artists Eliseu Gouveia, Steve Geiger (Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection: Kraven’s Last Hunt, Incredible Hulk Epic Collection: Going Gray), and Neil Vokes (Flesh and Blood). Cover art is provided by the legendary Esteban Maroto (Vampirella, Zatanna: Come Together), plus there’s additional art from two more legendary artists from the Warren Publishing era: a frontispiece by original Vampirella artist Tom Sutton (Werewolf by Night, Star Trek) and a history of succubi illustrated by Ernie Colon (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld).
Lorelei Presents: House Macabre is Lori’s first outing as the hostess of a horror comic anthology, in this one-shot special that contains four tales of horror, behind eye-catching cover art by fan-favorite artist Louis Small Jr. (Vampirella, Vampirella Strikes). “The Old, Dark Manse” is written by me, penciled by Uriel Caton (JSA Annual, Heartstopper: The Legend of La Bella Tenebrosa), and inked by “Chainsaw” Chuck Majewski (Harvey Kurtzman’s New Two-Fisted Tales), and has Lori welcoming readers to this special. “All in Color for a Crime” is another tale from me, with art by Lou Manna (T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Young All-Stars), in which two comic book collectors clash over a rare back issue—and only one of them will be adding it to their long boxes! “The Basilisk,” from me and artist John Pierard (Graphic Classics: Horror Classics, My Teacher Fried My Brains), is a “Lori’s Feary Tale” that examines the history of a supernatural creature that’s a cross between a deadly snake and a…chicken?! Wrapping up the special is “Requiem for Bravo 6,” by New York Times bestselling author and comic writer Dwight Jon Zimmerman (She-Hulk, Steve McQueen: Full-Throttle Cool) and artist Juan Carlos Abraldes Rendo (Bloke’s Terrible Tomb of Terror), in which a special-ops team goes on a life-or-death mission…but will they be prepared for what awaits them at mission’s end?
Lorelei: Genesis is our latest release—and, in its own special way, is also our first. You see, Lori originally made her debut in the pages of the Lorelei One-Shot Special, published in January 1989; not only was it StarWarp Concepts’ first comic and first-ever publication, it was also the first comic I ever wrote—and drew! Behind a brand-new cover illustration from me (with awesome colors by Eliseu Gouveia), this digital-exclusive comic reprints that debut story, “In the Midnight Hour,” along with an eight-pager that shows a typical sort of day in Lori’s life as a succubus living in New York City. And best of all, it can be yours to download for the low, low price of just 99¢.
Lorelei: Sects and the City and Lorelei Presents: House Macabre are available in print and digital formats. Lorelei: Genesis is a digital-exclusive comic. Visit their respective product pages for ordering information.
So if you’re a ginger, or if you know a ginger, be sure to celebrate International Kiss a Ginger with the gift of reading!
Even with the usefulness of the Internet, it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with events in the publishing industry. Which is why it came as such a surprise last week when I learned of the passing of Michael Z. Hobson on November 12, 2020, at age 83 due to heart failure. (The fact that the sad news broke over Thanksgiving Day weekend probably had a lot to do with that announcement being overlooked.)
Mike had been a Harvard graduate, a literary agent, and an executive at Little, Brown and Company and Scholastic Publishing before joining Marvel Comics as an executive vice president from 1981 to 1994.
He was also Pandora Zwieback’s first advocate.
As I often say, get comfortable—it’s a lengthy tale…
Our association started in 1997, during my time as a book editor, when my boss at the time, Byron Preiss, had hired Mike to be executive vice president of publishing for Byron Preiss Multimedia Company, which not only produced screensavers and the like but also co-published a highly successful line of original novels and anthologies based on the Marvel Comics characters (my three X-Men: The Chaos Engine novels, published from 2000 to 2002, were part of that line). It didn’t taken Mike very long, however, to discover that as EVP he wasn’t really allowed to make a lot of final decisions; as president and publisher, Byron held on to that position. Over time, Mike grew tired of the situation and decided to move on—the line of wellwishers on his last day stretched down the hall.
But in the time he was at BPMC, we’d gotten to be friendly. Mike was an easily likeable guy: he didn’t put on the sort of superior attitude you’d expect from someone who’d been in the business as long as he had, and who’d been a top-level executive for just as long. He was attentive, encouraging, and a firm believer in letting creative people be creative.
It was those qualities that made him one of the most respected people in publishing; adding Mike to your roster was considered a major get. So it was no surprise that after he departed BPMC there was news in 1998 that he’d landed as the new president of Parachute Properties, whose book-packaging company, Parachute Publishing, was the home of R.L. Stein’s bestselling Goosebumps and Fear Street series (also books starring the Olsen Twins, but…meh).
That summer, after he’d had time to settle in at the new place, I got a call from Mike, and an invitation to lunch. Hey, who was I to turn down a free meal?
At a bistro not far from Parachute’s offices, Mike explained the reason for the get-together: he was looking for new titles. As he put it, he’d sat down with management and told them that Goosebumps and Fear Street were all well and good, but if Parachute was to remain successful, it needed to expand its lineup, and that meant bringing in outside projects—creator-owned outside projects.
That was a huge step. Book-packaging companies like Parachute—as well as Byron’s Byron Preiss Visual Publications—typically owned the projects they assembled, and hired authors and artists through work-for-hire contracts, which meant that what they wrote and drew was wholly owned by the company. For a packaging company to start offering deals in which they were profit participants on projects but owned no part of them would be a game changer.
Mike went on to remind me that he greatly enjoyed my writing and my approach to editing, which was why, given the praise he’d just heaped on me, I thought he might be headhunting me to join him as a Parachute editor. But he had an even better proposal to offer:
“So…do you have any project of your own you think would fit in at Parachute?”
Well, no, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t have one for him in record time!
A couple weeks later I presented him with Heartstopper, a proposed six-book series of young-adult novels starring an immortal monster hunter named Sebastienne Mazarin and her teenaged Goth-girl sidekick, Pandora Zwieback. I even included character designs, courtesy of Pan and Annie’s co-creator, artist Uriel Caton, who had collaborated with me on the original-but-failed Heartstopper mature-readers comic published in 1994. (Hey, there’s nothing wrong with recycling a title and a character and adding a teen assistant to get it into the YA market. Oh, and you can download those issues for free, by the way.)
Mike loved it. He loved the title—Heartstopper was a short, memorable title like Goosebumps, easy to sell. Even more, he immediately saw its potential—not just YA books, but comics, movies, TV shows, merchandising…yes, this was exactly the sort of new Parachute title he was looking for. By mid-1999, after some fine-tuning of the proposal and a series of editorial back-and-forths, a deal was reached and contracts signed—Heartstopper was now one of the half-dozen (or so) creator-owned properties that Parachute Publishing was going to package. Even better, Mike had put me in touch with one of the other property owners, an artist who needed a writer to help develop his storyline; so now I was looking at two writing projects!
“Off we go!” Mike wrote in his cover letter to the final executed agreement.
But then a few months later I got another call from Mike, and another invitation to lunch. When we got together, Mike explained he had some very bad news to deliver: the new line of books was being scuttled. He couldn’t tell me exactly why that was—that was in-house politics not open for discussion with outsiders—but my impression was that Parachute soured on the idea that they weren’t going to own any of these new properties and thereby reap all the benefits. And possibly they hadn’t realized at the start just how successful Mike would be in launching his plans, or how quickly he’d be able to line up talent for them.
So now they were killing the program, and Mike was placed in the position of having to go back to all us creators and apologize for having us do all this work for no reward. (Since we owned the properties, none of the creators were paid for developing them; the money would have come from eventual sales and a 50/50 split with Parachute. But we all understood that going in.)
For someone with Mike’s standing in the industry, it was a major embarrassment.
The good news, though, was that with the publishing deals dead the creators were free and clear to do what we liked with our projects, hopefully finding homes for them at other publishing houses. Mike even later reached out to some of his contacts to see if Heartstopper could land somewhere (unfortunately, everyone passed on it).
After that, I’d occasionally run into Mike at trade shows like Book Expo America, although in 2000 he went above and beyond just hoping I’d become successful as a writer and editor by convincing Marvel Comics’ licensing division to make me an unusual offer: If I was interested, they’d hand me the publishing rights to all their supernatural characters—which Byron had turned down because he disliked horror—in order to create my own line of original novels and anthologies. Doctor Strange, Blade, Dracula, Ghost Rider, Man-Thing, Werewolf by Night, Satana the Devil’s Daughter, Morbius the Living Vampire, even the superheroic mercenary Moon Knight—all those and more, mine for the taking because Mike had such confidence in me. Of course I was interested, but things just didn’t work out, unfortunately. That’s a story for another time, though.
Ghost Rider, Man-Thing, Werewolf by Night, and Morbius the Living Vampire in their only team-up.
By 2003, Mike had retired to become a part-time consultant in publishing, but every time we met he’d ask if anything was happening with that Heartstopper thing. Over time I let him know that the title had changed to The Saga of Pandora Zwieback—the teen-girl sidekick having shifted to the lead position—and he’d encourage me to keep at it.
The last time I saw Mike was in 2011. Elated over the fact that I’d finally taken the plunge and self-published the first Pandora Zwieback novel, Blood Feud, I got ahold of him and asked if he’d be interested in my mailing him a copy (especially since I’d dedicated the book to him). Instead, he invited me to lunch so we could catch up. Well, who was I to pass up a free meal?
Mike was in fine spirits that day, complimenting me on the book and remembering the potential the property still has for ancillary development. It was a fantastic two-and-a-half hour get-together as we talked about old times and the projects we were currently involved with, and as we left the restaurant he shook my hand and wished me continued success.
Like I said, Mike was an easily likeable guy, attentive, encouraging, and a firm believer in letting creative people be creative, and I’m glad I was able to know him, and to be encouraged by him.
A few years ago, I once had a conversation about e-books and libraries with Richard C. White, author of a growing number of SWC titles: the supernatural graphic novel Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings; the noir-fantasy story collection Chasing Danger: The Case Files of Theron Chase; the pirate-fantasy digital comic The Chronicles of the Sea Dragon Special; the fantasy-adventure titles For a Few Gold Pieces More and Harbinger of Darkness; and the popular how-to book for writers and gamemasters, Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination.
Rich had been a guest at a science fiction convention and had spoken with some school librarians who were interested in adding Terra Incognito to their lists of e-book titles. But how, they asked, would they be able to obtain it? As librarians, they’re required to order books from distributors, not from publishers; that applies to e-books as well.
Well, it just so happens that one of The ’Warp’s digital distributors, Smashwords, makes our titles available to libraries through Baker & Taylor’s Axis360 and OverDrive e-book programs. To quote from Smashword’s arrangement with the programs:
“Library patrons are able to check out only one copy at a time. The books are wrapped in DRM so they time out after a specific period of time. The library can purchase multiple copies if they decide demand warrants multiple simultaneous checkouts. Otherwise, the library purchases a single copy and allows only one copy at a time to be lent out. If a library patron wishes to obtain a book that’s already checked out, the patron is sometimes given the option to purchase a copy through a retailer.”
In the case of OverDrive, “If a library patron wishes to obtain a book that’s already checked out, the patron is sometimes given the option to purchase a copy direct through OverDrive (for libraries that utilize OverDrive’s ‘Buy it Now’ feature).”
Via Smashwords, the following titles can be ordered through Axis360 and OverDrive:
Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination is our popular how-to book for writers and gamers in which bestselling fantasy author Richard C. White (Gauntlet: Dark Legacy: Paths of Evil, The Chronicles of the Sea Dragon Special, Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings) takes you through the step-by-step process of constructing a world for your characters, from societies and governments to currency and religion. Included is an interview with New York Times bestselling author Tracy Hickman (Dragonlance) that discusses his methods of world building, as well as his creative experiences during his time as a designer for gaming company TSR, the original home of Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, the book is so popular that it’s currently being used as a textbook in the Interactive Media Design program at Becker College in Worchester, Massachusetts!
For a Few Gold Pieces More collects Richard C. White’s fantasy short stories about a Rogue With No Name who travels a world of epic-fantasy adventure, looking for treasure—and revenge against the woman who sent him to prison for a crime he didn’t commit (but she did). Think Lord of the Rings meets the “spaghetti Westerns” of director Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly). It’s “entertaining, old-school sword and sorcery, in the tradition of [Fritz Lieber’s] Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser,” according to author Jim C. Hines of the Magic ex Libris book series, and we at SWC couldn’t agree more!
Harbinger of Darkness is Rich’s third title, and his first original novel for SWC. In it, a thief named Perrin steals an extremely valuable—and magical—gem from the evil king ruling her home country. With thugs and fellow thieves and the king’s assassins hot on her trail, Perrin finds just staying alive is becoming a full-time occupation, which directly conflict with her secret life—and identity—as a humble bookseller’s daughter. It’s sword-swinging adventure at its finest!
You can also obtain our Saga of Pandora Zwieback young adult novels, Blood Feud and Blood Reign—written by yours truly, Steven A. Roman. You know how popular young adult books are these days, don’t you? Well, here’s another series your patrons might be interested in!
Pan is a 16-year-old Goth girl who’s spent the last decade being treated for mental health problems because she can see monsters. It’s only after she meets an immortal monster hunter named Annie that Pan discovers she’s never been ill—her so-called “monstervision” is actually a supernatural gift that allows her to see into Gothopolis, the not-so-mythical shadow world that exists right alongside the human world. You’ll find Pan battling her own brand of evil dead in the following titles:
Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1: This critically acclaimed novel isthe beginning of Pan’s story, explaining how she, her parents and friends, and Annie are drawn into a conflict among warring vampire clans searching for the key to an ultimate weapon (or so the legend goes)—a key that just so happens to have been delivered to the horror-themed museum owned by Pan’s father. It’s a character-driven action-fest that leads immediately into the second novel:
Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2: Pan and Annie face even greater challenges as the vampire clans draw up plans to go to war with humanity. Leading the charge is a fallen angel named Zaqiel, whose previous attempt at subjugating the world was stopped by Annie—who, back in the day, was Zaqiel’s lover!
So if you’re a librarian interested in adding those titles to your digital bookshelves, head over to Axis360 or OverDrive and place your order today!
In case you’re wondering who we are, StarWarp Concepts is a publisher of dark-fantasy and fantasy novels, comic books, and graphic novels that are available for sale in brick-and-mortar stores and through select online booksellers and distributors (as well as our own webstore, of course).
We launched in 1993 with the release of the comic book Lorelei, Vol. 1 #0, which introduced readers to the world of Laurel Ashley O’Hara, a woman destined to become the soul-stealing succubus called Lorelei, and in the twenty-eight years since then we’ve grown into a publisher of novels, graphic novels, sketchbooks, writers’ guides, and classic reprints.
Currently, our backlist consists of the following titles:
Dark urban fantasy: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback is a young adult, dark-urban-fantasy novel series written by Steven A. Roman (that’s me!). It stars a 16-year-old Goth girl who’s spent the last decade being treated for mental health problems because she can see monsters. It’s only after she meets a shape-shifting monster hunter named Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin, in the first novel, Blood Feud, that Pan discovers she’s never been ill—her so-called “monstervision” is actually a supernatural gift that allows her to see into Gothopolis, the not-so-mythical shadow world that exists right alongside the human world. But before Pan can learn more about what she can do, she and her parents are drawn into a conflict among warring vampire clans that leads into Blood Reign, the second action-packed novel, in which Pan must deal with even greater threats. It all leads to the exciting conclusion in the upcoming Blood & Iron, in which Pan and her allies unite to stop a monster takeover of the world that’s led by a fallen angel intent on destroying humanity.
Chasing Danger: The Case Files of Theron Chase is author Richard C. White’s collection of fantasy-noir, pulp-detective tales starring a private eye working the supernatural beat in the city of Calasia. From a sexy chanteuse who literally turns into a beast when the moon is full to a string of pearls that kills its owners, and from the ghost of a dead woman seeking justice to the Grim Reaper’s little girl seeking her stolen chicken, Theron Chase certainly has his hands full—of danger, death, and dames!
Nonfiction: Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination is perfect for budding authors as well as RPG fans interested in building their own fantasy and science fiction environments. In this how-to book, author Richard C. White (Gauntlet: Dark Legacy: Paths of Evil) takes you through the step-by-step process of constructing a world for your characters, from societies and governments to currency and religion. Included is an interview with New York Times bestselling author Tracy Hickman (Dragonlance) that discusses his methods of world building, as well as his creative experiences during his time as a designer for gaming company TSR, the original home of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s become such a popular book that it’s even become part of the syllabus for the Interactive Media Design (i.e., game design) program at Becker College in Worchester, Massachusetts!
From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures, by Steven A. Roman, is a nonfiction history of Vampirella that takes an extensive look at her early days, from the debut of her series in 1969 to the death of Warren Publishing in 1983. In addition, you’ll find the tale of Hammer Films’ unproduced film adaptation of the 1970s that was to star Barbara Leigh and Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin of Star Wars); an in-depth guide to all her Warren stories; a checklist of all her Warren appearances (plus the publications from Harris Comics and Dynamite Entertainment that reprinted her Warren adventures); an overview of the six novelizations by pulp sci-fi author Ron Goulart that were published in the 1970s by Warner Books; and a look at the awful 1996 direct-to-cable-TV movie that was made, starring Talisa Soto and Roger Daltrey. There’s also a peek at Mr. Cushing’s personal copy of the ’70s Vampirella screenplay; a foreword by Official Vampirella Historian Sean Fernald, a frontispiece by Warren artist Bob Larkin, and photographs from the personal archives of Forrest J Ackerman.
Fantasy adventure: For a Few Gold Pieces More is a collection of ten critically acclaimed short stories by Richard C. White. Think Lord of the Rings meets the “spaghetti Westerns” of director Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly), as a Rogue With No Name travels a world of epic-fantasy adventure, looking for treasure—and revenge against the woman who sent him to prison for a crime he didn’t commit (but she did). Harbinger of Darkness is Rich’s original novel in which a thief named Perrin steals an extremely valuable—and magical—gem from the evil king ruling her home country. With thugs and fellow thieves and the king’s assassins hot on her trail, Perrin finds just staying alive is becoming a full-time occupation, which directly conflict with her secret life—and identity—as a humble bookseller’s daughter. It’s sword-swinging adventure at its finest!
Comic book and graphic novels: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1 features stories by author Steven A. Roman and comic writer Sholly Fisch, with art provided by Eliseu Gouveia, Elizabeth Watasin, and comic-art legend Ernie Colon. Lorelei: Sects and the City is a Mature Readers graphic novel involving a succubus battling a cult of Elder God worshipers, written by Steven A. Roman and illustrated by Eliseu Gouveia, Steve Geiger, and Neil Vokes. Lorelei Presents: House Macabre is a one-shot anthology comic containing tales written by Steven A. Roman and Dwight Jon Zimmerman, with art by Uriel Caton & Chuck Majewski, Lou Manna, John Pierard, and Juan Carlos Abarldes Rendo. Lorelei: Genesis collects Lori’s original small-press comic appearances from 1989 and 1991, written and drawn by her creator, Steven A. Roman, whose other digital-only title, Heroines and Heroes, collects the superhero comic stories he’s drawn. Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings is a graphic novel starring a group of supernatural superheroes for hire on their first mission, written by the husband-and-wife team of Richard C. and Joni M. White, with art by Reggie Golden and Randy Zimmerman. And The Chronicles of the Sea Dragon Special is a digital-only, 48-page pirate-fantasy adventure by writer Richard C. White and artist Bill Bryan.
Comic art books: The Bob Larkin Sketchbook is a collection of rarely seen pencil drawings by the acclaimed cover painter for Doc Savage, Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel Comics, and our own Saga of Pandora Zwieback. Included is a pair of original Doc Savage–related pinups done especially for this book.
Classic literature: Know a reader with a passion for genre literature? They might be interested in our line of Illustrated Classics. King Kong is the 1932 novelization by Delos W. Lovelace that adapts the screen story by Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper used for the classic monster movie, enhanced by six black-and-white illustrations by Paul Tuma. Carmilla, by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, is a 19th–century paranormal romance between a vampire and her next intended victim—or lover—that contains six black-and-white illustrations by Eliseu Gouveia. A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is a science-fantasy epic about Civil War veteran John Carter, who finds love and adventure on the planet Mars; black-and-white illustrations are provided by Eliseu Gouveia. Snow White is the timeless Brothers Grimm fairy tale, made even more enchanting by a collection of full-color illustrations first published in 1883.
We also have SWC Horror Bites, a digital-exclusive series of classic tales. White Fell: The Werewolf, by Clemence Annie Housman, is considered the first feminist werewolf story. And Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is the Halloween classic about schoolteacher Ichabod Crane and his unfortunate encounter with the terrifying Headless Horseman.
Most of our titles are available in both print and digital formats, so visit their respective product pages for further information.
According to the National Day Calendar, National Science Fiction Day was launched in 2011 and was meant to correspond with this being the birth date of legendary sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov—author of the Foundation Trilogy (now the basis for the upcoming Apple TV+ streaming series), I, Robot (the short-story collection, not the Will Smith movie that borrowed its title and some of its concepts), The Caves of Steel, and the Galactic Empire series—who was born in 1920. It’s a celebration, the NDC says, that “encourages reading or watching science fiction.”
Well, if you’re looking for some quality sci-fi to read on this special day, might we suggest a classic novel that inspired works like Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, George Lucas’s Star Wars, and James Cameron’s Avatar…
A Princess of Mars, originally published in 1912, is the first in the “John Carter of Mars” ten-novel series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, best known as the creator of the pulp-fiction jungle lord, Tarzan. Unlike Tarzan’s African adventures, Princess is the story of a post–Civil War era American who suddenly finds himself transported to the Red Planet, where he must constantly fight to stay alive against all sorts of alien threats—and where he falls in love with Dejah Thoris, the titular Martian princess.
A Princess of Mars served as the basis for Disney’s 2012 film adaptation, John Carter, a movie that didn’t deserve the poor treatment it got from the studio and is definitely worth checking out, if you’ve never seen it.
The StarWarp Concepts edition of A Princess of Mars features six incredible illustrations by SWC artist supreme Eliseu Gouveia (Carmilla, Lorelei: Sects and the City), and a special introduction by Mars-fiction expert John Gosling, author of Waging the War of the Worlds. Here’s the back-cover synopsis:
Captain John Carter thought his days as a fighter were over. The South had lost the Civil War, and as a soldier now without a battle to fight or a cause to believe in, he journeyed west in search of a new life.
But not even Carter could have expected that his new life would begin with his death in the Arizona desert, and his inexplicable arrival on the barren plains of the planet Mars. Or that he would find love in the eyes of the beauteous Dejah Thoris, princess of Helium.
A prisoner of the giant, green-skinned warrior race called the Tharks, Dejah Thoris is meant to be used as a pawn in the ongoing war between the Tharks and her people, the red Martians—unless the gentleman from Virginia takes sword in hand to free her…and thus unite a divided world.
Once more, John Carter has a cause to fight for—and this time, a love to win, as well….
A Princess of Mars is available in print and digital formats. Visit its product page for ordering information.
2020: Not a time that will ever make it onto a “Best of” list, historically speaking, with a worldwide pandemic that’s killed hundreds of thousands and sent global economies into a tailspin; forced office businesses to scramble to create work-from-home setups for their employees and crippled the restaurant industry; rocked the comics industry with stores closing, some permanently, coupled with the monopolistic Diamond Comic Distribution briefly ending shipping product to those stores, and then the abrupt departure of DC Comics from Diamond to help launch a new distribution company; and made genre conventions either cancel their 2020, shows, reschedule for next year, or close permanently. And for a big finale, 2020 ended with a U.S. presidential election that only widened the political division between parties.
And yet, despite the madness, we here at ’Warp Central managed to get some work done.
An examination of the history behind one of comics’ most enduring bad girls during her original run of stories from Warren Publishing from 1969 to 1982, it ran into some problems at the start: Diamond Comic Distribution—the comics industry’s sole means of getting books into comic shops—refused to carry it because it’s an unauthorized history of a character currently published by one of their front-of-catalog clients; and once the pandemic exploded, some book reviewers who’d requested copies forgot all about reading it once everybody moved to a work-from-home environment (which, for example, cost a review in the high-profile sci-fi magazine Starburst). Still, the reviews it did get were all highly positive and old-school Vampi fans have enjoyed it.
That same month, Lorelei: Genesis—also by yours truly—was released as a digital-exclusive collection of the earliest Lorelei comic book stories that I wrote and drew in her small-press days (1989–1991). Lori’s creation was inspired by Vampirella (as well as by Marvel Comics’ Satana the Devil’s Daughter and the works of Marvel writer Bill Mantlo), so if you’re interested in checking out the first appearances of our soul-stealing succubus, give it a look.
It’s a 24-page, black-and-white comic that’s available for download for just 99¢.
But then in March the world got swept up by the coronavirus pandemic, and suddenly we all had more important things to focus on than publishing books—like surviving a real-life version of Stephen King’s The Stand. Bookstores and comic shops were forced to temporarily close for months since they weren’t considered “essential” businesses by local governments; unfortunately, some of those “temporary” closures became permanent.
The pandemic, of course, continued through the summer and into fall, and even the convention industry felt its effects as venues as large as San Diego Comic-Con and New York Comic Con and as small as Connecticut Horrorfest and Cradle Con were forced to either go online with their festivities or postpone their shows until next year. BookExpo and BookCon—two of the book industry’s biggest shows—announced their closure.
After a fairly disastrous appearance at Pow Con in January, our only other con “attendance” was at SiouxperCon’s web-based iteration, SiouxperConline, in September, but that didn’t really appear to do anything for us sales-wise. At least the showrunners tried to keep their fans happy, and appeared to succeed based on the online comments, so that was a positive takeaway.
(As for 2021 shows…we’ll probably be sitting out the year until the vaccines have had sufficient time to do their work and enough people have been immunized. Besides, there are already conventions that have canceled their shows that normally run in the first half of the year; a few have even moved to the end of 2021. So, I can wait. After all, since genre shows have for decades been notorious for the spread of “con crud”—that post-convention experience when you get hit by the cold or flu bugs that were passed along to you by ill people who should have stayed home rather than selfishly overlook common sense and common decency—why put the health of the SWC crew at risk with an even deadlier virus?)
In May, I made an appearance on the YouTube series Indy Comics Explained, hosted by friend and fellow comic creator J.D. Calderon (The Oswald Chronicles, Tall Tails), to promote From the Stars…a Vampiress and discuss my history as a publisher, writer, and professional editor. That episode, “Talking with Steve Roman,” is still available to view on the Indy Comics Explianed channel.
Facebook became a problem for us over the summer: for some unknown reason, it became impossible to sign into my accounts for both the Pan and SWC business pages from my work computer. They weren’t hacked, as far as I can tell—no unexpected entries have been posted, and I can still access the account from my iPad—but Facebook being Facebook, it’s pretty much impossible to get an answer as to what’s going on.
Turning back to publishing, we didn’t release any titles during the spring-to-early-fall period, because after From the Darkness…a Vampiress and Lorelei: Genesis came out, I made the decision to move all new titles in the pipeline to next year—it’s hard to promote the company when there are no conventions to attend and folks have other concerns on their minds.
Still, in October we popped up with the spooky classic The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the second title in the digital-exclusive SWC Horror Bites line of chapbooks, this one a 200th-anniversary ebook edition of Washington Irving’s Halloween story about schoolteacher Ichabod Crane and his fateful encounter with the noggin-seeking Headless Horseman.
And to wrap up 2020, just this past Sunday I returned to J.D. Calderon’s Indy Comics Explained YouTube series to do the virtual panel “Sunday Night Talking Comics” with fellow creators Evan K. Pozios (Time Grunts), Joe D. McFee (Amazonia: The Continuing Adventures of E), Randy Zimmerman (Tales from the Aniverse, SWC’s Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings), and Ray Felix (Bronx Heroes), and publisher/podcaster Varian Grant (Indie Volt), to discuss the pros and cons of self-publishing.
Three releases and a pair of interviews: Not our busiest year, but right now we’ll settle for the satisfaction of having made it all the way through 2020 alive!
So as this awful year comes to a close, our New Year’s wish to all of you is to stay safe, stay well—and keep reading!
Hey, comic fans, it’s time to promote an upcoming project involving one of the StarWarp Concepts crew!
Available for preorder right now from online retailers and your local comic shops is Morbius Epic Collection: The End of a Living Vampire, a Marvel Comics trade paperback collection of the late ’70s/early ’80s adventures of the scientifically created vampire who made his debut in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #101. Scheduled for release in May and featuring stories by writers Doug Moench, Bill Mantlo, David Anthony Kraft, it’s part of Marvel’s promotional push for the upcoming Morbius film from Sony Pictures, starring Jared Leto (Suicide Squad) as the Living Vampire, Tyrese Gibson (the Fast and the Furious franchise), and Matt Smith (the 11th Doctor Who).
And while that’s a spiffy reproduced front cover by the late, great Gil Kane and inker Dan Adkins, what’s got our interest is the back cover: a reproduction of the cover art from the June 1975 Vampire Tales Annual #1, painted by our friend Bob Larkin!
For StarWarp Concepts, Bob has provided cover paintings for my Saga of Pandora Zwieback novels Blood Feud and Blood Reign, and also did the frontispiece illustration for my latest book, the nonfiction comics history From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures. Outside of SWC, Bob painted the covers for my X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy novels, back in the early 2000s.
It’s not just his painting skills that are impressive—Bob’s also one hell of a pencil artist, as you’ll see if you order a copy of SWC’s The Bob Larkin Sketchbook. It’s a collection of some of Bob’s incredible pencil drawings, and what you’ll discover when you see them is how wide-ranging his subjects are. Sci-fi, horror, Westerns, pulp adventure, crime fiction, movie merchandise, even wrestling stars—as we say on the book’s back cover, there really islittle that he hasn’t painted. And the sketchbook features three pieces created especially for it: the Pandora Zwieback cover art; a portrait of Patricia Savage, the fightin’ cousin of pulp fiction’s top-tier adventurer, Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze; and a two-page spread in which Doc faces off against another Golden Age crimefighter—The Shadow!
The Bob Larkin Sketchbook is available in print and digital formats. Visit its product page for ordering information, as well as sample pages.
This past Sunday night, I made a return appearance to J.D. Calderon’s YouTube interview series Indy Comics Explained, joining fellow comic-creating guests Randy Zimmerman (Tales from the Aniverse), Evan K. Pozios (Time Grunts), Joe D. McFee (Amazonia: The Continuing Adventures of E),and Ray Felix (Bronx Heroes), and publisher/podcaster Varian Grant (Indie Volt). (Sorry for not posting an advance notice, but it was sort of a last-minute invitation to join the chat.)
(J.D., by the way, is the writer/creator of the fantasy series The Oswald Chronicles and the anthropomorphic fantasy comic series Tall Tails, both published through his Dream Weaver Press company. He’s also been a friend of mine since we met back in the 1990s’ days of the indie comics explosion.)
On the show, we discussed a variety of topics related to comics publishing: the pros and cons of crowdfunding; the best money we’ve ever spent as publishers; the best and worst publishing advice we’ve gotten; dealing with printers and the rising cost of paper; the problems of getting comics distributed, and whether there are alternatives beyond crowdfunding; the difference between young adult and middle grade reading audiences; and whether changes in the comics industry will eventually lead to the demise of comic shops.
The panel runs a little over two hours, so find a comfortable chair and settle in for “Sunday Night Talking Comics,” the latest episode of Indy Comics Explained.
And in case you missed it, back in May I made my first appearance on the show, where I promoted my critically acclaimed comics history From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures, and talked about my time as a professional book editor (and the troubles associated with such work, especially in licensed publishing), my history as a writer and as a self-publisher, the Saga of Pandora Zwieback series, my current work as scripter for Oniric Comics’ Sideral: The Last Earthman, and, if I were offered the chance to write comics for Marvel and/or DC, which characters I’d want to work on.
“Talking to Steve A. Roman” is still available for viewing at Indy Comics Explained. If you’ve got an hour, click on the link and head on over to check it out.
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