MattBrady
12-11-2002, 10:58 AM
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/strangers_coverb.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/strangers_coverb_t.jpg" width="175" height="270" align="right" border="0" alt="Strangers #1, cover b image - final will have Image trade dress"></a>With importing Jack Staff from the UK, Image has jumped to the continent with Strangers, a six-issue miniseries debuting in March which debuted in September as part of France’s ‘Semicverse’ line. Written by Jean-Marc Lofficier, the series is decidedly science fiction, and, for Semic fans, a long-awaited teaming of popular heroes. Newsarama spoke with Lofficier about the series, as well as the rest of the ‘Semicverse.’
First – like many other European comic publishers which are largely unknown to mainstream American comic fans, Semic isn’t a new operation.
“Business-wise, Semic is the successor of Editions Lug, one of the oldest French comics publishers, which began in 1950,” Lofficier said. “In the early 1980s, Lug was sold to the Scandinavian publishing group Semic, which changed its name. Later, the Scandinavian resold it to a French concern, which kept the rights to call themselves Semic. It’s sort of like Marvel who's changed owners but is still Marvel.
“Creative-wise, Lug's founder, editor-in-chief and writer - its Stan Lee if you wish - was Marcel Navarro, who created or co-created 300 or so series, which were scripted & drawn by a variety of French, Italian and Spanish artists. Most of the material was very comparable to what DC published in the 1950s.”
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page02color.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page02color_t.jpg" width="175" height="248" align="left" border="0" alt="Strangers #1, page 2"></a>The attempt to unify the various Lug series, similar to what DC did, began in the late ‘70s with a writer named Claude Legrand – but was short-lived. “When Lug was sold a few years later, the publisher decided to stop commissioning new stories, and Semic went on to a reprint-only line for most of the 1980s and all of the 1990s,” Lofficier said. “It is only in 1999 that a newly-appointed editor-in-chief, Thierry Mornet, our ‘Joe Quesada,’ decided to restart the line, and hired me to revamp the universe, its characters, create – that is, either write or edit other writers, new stories, etc. In the last two years, a considerable amount of new stories have been published, either in Semic’s regular black and white line of digest-sized comics, or like Strangers, in color in the comic-book format, and next year, in graphic novels as well.”
Strangers’ arrival at Image occurred through a combination of factors, but was largely due to Semic’s good relationship with the American publisher, something which led to Image reprinting the Semic-produced Alone in the Dark adaptation earlier this year.
Overall, the setup of the series should be familiar to American comic audiences – the team of Strangers is a collection of heroes that have been published by Lug (and Semic) since the early ‘60s. “Marcel Navarro had something about aliens stranded on Earth - before the Silver Surfer! - and we thought it would be clever to bring these various characters together into a single series - sort of like the Avengers at the beginning,” Lofficier said.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page03color.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page03color_t.jpg" width="175" height="248" align="right" border="0" alt="Strangers #1, page 3"></a> “Strangers is a science fiction oriented group,” Lofficier said. “Its members are as follows: Homicron is a NASA physicist whose body is inhabited by a powerful alien. Starlock is the former servant of awesome cosmic entities, now a fugitive. Futura is a mysterious woman from another dimension. Jaleb is the secretive agent of a race of telepaths. Jaydee is the deadliest killing machine in the universe. These characters are brought together by Tanka, an ‘invariant’ empowered by an unfathomably distant future to safeguard our world.”
Along with the lead feature (drawn by Manuel (Daredevil: The Movie) Garcia), issues of Strangers will include back up stories by Jay (Jetcat) Stephens and Timothy (Star Wars Tales) II. “In addition Steve Rude, Steve Bissette, Jose Ladronn, Stuart Immonen and Chris Gossett have very kindly contributed either pin-ups or covers,” Lofficier said. “Finally, each issue will include ‘who's who’-type of material for a number of characters, featuring art by a number of guest artists.”
While Timothy II’s back-up, The Time Brigade will focus on a Time Patrol that operates out of the 41st century, Stephens’ back-up feature in Strangers #2 will be of particular note to Nexus fans – it’s the never-before translated Nexus/Wampus crossover (see below for a sample page).
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page04color.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page04color_t.jpg" width="165" height="233" align="left" border="0" alt="Strangers #1, page 4"></a>Nexus is a fairly well-known commodity in the American market: created by Mike Baron and Steve Rude, the character is charged by an alien presence to hunt and kill mass murderers, but what’s a Wampus? Good question.
“Wampus is Semic's Darkseid or Doctor Doom, meaning that it's probably our most popular recurring villain,” Lofficier said. “He’s an alien shapeshifter who starred in his own series starting in 1969, and has been popular ever since. I just completed a string of stories with him. We're going to be publishing Nexus in France for the first time next year, and it made sense to introduce the character to our public by co-starring him against Wampus - sort of like Batman/Judge Dredd. Jay Stephens drew that 9-page story.”
Lofficier hopes that, with a strong enough response for Strangers, more of the Semicverse chartacters will make the jump across the Atlantic and show up through Image in the coming months and years. He already has the lineup of trans-Atlantic contenders ready:
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page07color.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page07color_t.jpg" width="165" height="233" align="right" border="0" alt="Strangers #1, page 7"></a> “One of our most popular series right now is Kabur, a heroic fantasy character that is a little bit more like Prince Valiant in terms of personality, but exists in a pre-diluvian world like Conan's,” Lofficier said. “I'd very much like to see it translated. I think it would appeal to Conan readers. It's doing well enough that we're going to launch a separate King Kabur graphic novel next year.
“The other series I’d like to see come to the U.S. is Phenix, a Huntress/Black Widow crime-fighter. The current saga is drawn by a Mexican artist in a style halfway between Dick Giordano and Stan Drake or Dan Spiegel - the French public is more receptive of art styles that are sometimes considered old-fashioned here - and it's very popular with readers right now. I'm also writing a series called Dick Demon which is somewhat similar to the AngelTV series. That one will start in the spring 2003, so there are plenty of other works where Strangers came from, if people want to see them.”
<center><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/BT05.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/BT04_t.jpg" width="140" height="186" border="0" alt="The Time Brigade, page 4" hspace="2"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/BT05_t.jpg" width="140" height="186" border="0" alt="The Time Brigade, page 5" hspace="2"></a><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/NexusWampus03.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/NexusWampus03_t.jpg" width="140" height="186" border="0" alt="Nexus/Wampus, page 3" hspace="2"></a> <center>
First – like many other European comic publishers which are largely unknown to mainstream American comic fans, Semic isn’t a new operation.
“Business-wise, Semic is the successor of Editions Lug, one of the oldest French comics publishers, which began in 1950,” Lofficier said. “In the early 1980s, Lug was sold to the Scandinavian publishing group Semic, which changed its name. Later, the Scandinavian resold it to a French concern, which kept the rights to call themselves Semic. It’s sort of like Marvel who's changed owners but is still Marvel.
“Creative-wise, Lug's founder, editor-in-chief and writer - its Stan Lee if you wish - was Marcel Navarro, who created or co-created 300 or so series, which were scripted & drawn by a variety of French, Italian and Spanish artists. Most of the material was very comparable to what DC published in the 1950s.”
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page02color.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page02color_t.jpg" width="175" height="248" align="left" border="0" alt="Strangers #1, page 2"></a>The attempt to unify the various Lug series, similar to what DC did, began in the late ‘70s with a writer named Claude Legrand – but was short-lived. “When Lug was sold a few years later, the publisher decided to stop commissioning new stories, and Semic went on to a reprint-only line for most of the 1980s and all of the 1990s,” Lofficier said. “It is only in 1999 that a newly-appointed editor-in-chief, Thierry Mornet, our ‘Joe Quesada,’ decided to restart the line, and hired me to revamp the universe, its characters, create – that is, either write or edit other writers, new stories, etc. In the last two years, a considerable amount of new stories have been published, either in Semic’s regular black and white line of digest-sized comics, or like Strangers, in color in the comic-book format, and next year, in graphic novels as well.”
Strangers’ arrival at Image occurred through a combination of factors, but was largely due to Semic’s good relationship with the American publisher, something which led to Image reprinting the Semic-produced Alone in the Dark adaptation earlier this year.
Overall, the setup of the series should be familiar to American comic audiences – the team of Strangers is a collection of heroes that have been published by Lug (and Semic) since the early ‘60s. “Marcel Navarro had something about aliens stranded on Earth - before the Silver Surfer! - and we thought it would be clever to bring these various characters together into a single series - sort of like the Avengers at the beginning,” Lofficier said.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page03color.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page03color_t.jpg" width="175" height="248" align="right" border="0" alt="Strangers #1, page 3"></a> “Strangers is a science fiction oriented group,” Lofficier said. “Its members are as follows: Homicron is a NASA physicist whose body is inhabited by a powerful alien. Starlock is the former servant of awesome cosmic entities, now a fugitive. Futura is a mysterious woman from another dimension. Jaleb is the secretive agent of a race of telepaths. Jaydee is the deadliest killing machine in the universe. These characters are brought together by Tanka, an ‘invariant’ empowered by an unfathomably distant future to safeguard our world.”
Along with the lead feature (drawn by Manuel (Daredevil: The Movie) Garcia), issues of Strangers will include back up stories by Jay (Jetcat) Stephens and Timothy (Star Wars Tales) II. “In addition Steve Rude, Steve Bissette, Jose Ladronn, Stuart Immonen and Chris Gossett have very kindly contributed either pin-ups or covers,” Lofficier said. “Finally, each issue will include ‘who's who’-type of material for a number of characters, featuring art by a number of guest artists.”
While Timothy II’s back-up, The Time Brigade will focus on a Time Patrol that operates out of the 41st century, Stephens’ back-up feature in Strangers #2 will be of particular note to Nexus fans – it’s the never-before translated Nexus/Wampus crossover (see below for a sample page).
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page04color.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page04color_t.jpg" width="165" height="233" align="left" border="0" alt="Strangers #1, page 4"></a>Nexus is a fairly well-known commodity in the American market: created by Mike Baron and Steve Rude, the character is charged by an alien presence to hunt and kill mass murderers, but what’s a Wampus? Good question.
“Wampus is Semic's Darkseid or Doctor Doom, meaning that it's probably our most popular recurring villain,” Lofficier said. “He’s an alien shapeshifter who starred in his own series starting in 1969, and has been popular ever since. I just completed a string of stories with him. We're going to be publishing Nexus in France for the first time next year, and it made sense to introduce the character to our public by co-starring him against Wampus - sort of like Batman/Judge Dredd. Jay Stephens drew that 9-page story.”
Lofficier hopes that, with a strong enough response for Strangers, more of the Semicverse chartacters will make the jump across the Atlantic and show up through Image in the coming months and years. He already has the lineup of trans-Atlantic contenders ready:
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page07color.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/Strangers01page07color_t.jpg" width="165" height="233" align="right" border="0" alt="Strangers #1, page 7"></a> “One of our most popular series right now is Kabur, a heroic fantasy character that is a little bit more like Prince Valiant in terms of personality, but exists in a pre-diluvian world like Conan's,” Lofficier said. “I'd very much like to see it translated. I think it would appeal to Conan readers. It's doing well enough that we're going to launch a separate King Kabur graphic novel next year.
“The other series I’d like to see come to the U.S. is Phenix, a Huntress/Black Widow crime-fighter. The current saga is drawn by a Mexican artist in a style halfway between Dick Giordano and Stan Drake or Dan Spiegel - the French public is more receptive of art styles that are sometimes considered old-fashioned here - and it's very popular with readers right now. I'm also writing a series called Dick Demon which is somewhat similar to the AngelTV series. That one will start in the spring 2003, so there are plenty of other works where Strangers came from, if people want to see them.”
<center><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/BT05.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/BT04_t.jpg" width="140" height="186" border="0" alt="The Time Brigade, page 4" hspace="2"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/BT05_t.jpg" width="140" height="186" border="0" alt="The Time Brigade, page 5" hspace="2"></a><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/NexusWampus03.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Image/NexusWampus03_t.jpg" width="140" height="186" border="0" alt="Nexus/Wampus, page 3" hspace="2"></a> <center>