ANDREW DABB ON ICE

[MattBrady]

by Benjamin Ong Pang Kean

When your future is still bright and you’re only 26 years-old, writing Ghostbusters, loved Sandman, Grendel, Son of the Gun, Miracleman, A Contract with God, The Dreamer, The Spirit and Sin City and is currently enjoying Stray Bullets, The Goon, Hellboy, Optic Nerve, Top Ten, Conan and Fables, what’s the next logical move in your pursuit of comics excellence?

If you’re Andrew Dabb, you’d hook up with the Koreans.

Considering the fact that the manga explosion is still, well, hot and it was announced that this year’s San Diego Comic-Con reportedly saw more than $1.3 million worth of deals for Korean comic book (manhwa) and cartoon licenses made, Dabb thinks that working with the guys at Studio ICE, a division of a much larger publishing mega-house in Korea, are, well, cool.

“About a year ago I got an e-mail from Kevin Landry at ICE asking if I’d like to work with some of their artists,” Dabb told Newsarama. “Thing is, I have no idea how he got my name. I assume it was through some of the advance press we were doing for Ghostbusters at the time but I’m not really sure how it happened. I’m glad it did though.

“Anyhow, Kevin showed me some of their artists’ stuff, I started to drool a lot and begged him - in a cool, nonchalant way of course - to work with these guys. Honestly, at that point I would have mopped the floors. After seeing some of Kano, Zack and Mark’s previous work there was no way I was going to turn down an opportunity to write for these guys. ICE is like Korean comics’ all-star team; it’s an amazing group of artists. Me getting to work with them would be like a writer coming into the U.S. market and being handed books drawn by Frank Quietly and Alex Ross, they’re that high profile and that good.

“I assume buried somewhere in ICE’s contracts there’s a clause that says I’ve sold my soul to the devil in all this. But if I get to keep working on books that look this great, I can live with that.”

Depending on how you look at it, the “devil” could be in the form of Studio ICE partner, Devil’s Due.

Dabb, who holds Bachelor’s degrees in both History and Anthropology, has written for comics, movies, animation and role-playing game supplements over the last five years or so. His first work in print was a self-published comic called Modern Grimm in 1997. His first professional sale was Happydale” Devils in the Desert which came out through DC/Vertigo two years after Grimm.

His favorite manhwa are: “Priest by Min-Woo Hyung, an epic supernatural western that just gets better as it goes, Demon Diary by Jee-Hyung Lee and Kara Lim, a new, and very interesting twist on the old “war between Heaven and Hell” cliché [and] Ragnarok by Myung-Jin Lee, a fantasy series that draws on Norse mythology for its characters, it’s a fast-paced, fun adventure story.”

His influences include the likes of Alan Moore, Matt Wagner, Will Eisner, Zhang Yimou and Alexandro Jodorowsky.

“I don’t think manwha will replace manga, but I do think it can piggyback off manga’s boom and generate some interest that way. In fact, both Priest and Ragnarok, manwha series published by Tokyopop, have done just that. Most people that read them assume they were created in Japan, but they’re done by Korean artists. I think other manwha books can have that sort of success; the quality is just as good and in some cases better.

“Of course, what ICE is doing is not traditional manwha. Traditional manwha is black and white and digest size, ICE’s books are full color and American format. Actually, the books we’re doing are considered gallery caliber fine art in Korea. Which says a lot about how comics are viewed over there.

“To be honest, sometimes it can be hard to tell manwha and manga apart, visually both share very similar influences. I think the major differences in the stories come from the point of view. Manga, or at least most of the manga that gets re-printed in English, tends to be produced by a very corporate culture; it’s done by an artist coordinating an army of assistants and trying to make an extremely commercial product. A lot of manga companies operate like big movie studios, they want blockbusters that they know will succeed and spawn an anime film, a video game, a MMORPG or any other cross-media tie in. Manwha on the other hand is generally the product of one artist working, for the most part, without assistants. And while manwha companies want cross-media tie in’s as well, the industry is new enough that those aren’t the overriding goal. They’re nice, but you can’t really expect them. As a result the finished product tends to be a little bit edgier and experimental. That’s not true for every book of course (some manwha are corporate, some manga are deeply personal), but in general I think it’s pretty accurate.”

Over at Studio ICE, the writer handles Megacity 909 and MU.



Movie producer Ronald Shusett, who’s also co-creator of Alien, and comic book specialist Daniel Alter have optioned the feature rights to Megacity even before the first issue of the comic book version hits the stands Thursday, September 9th.

Describing the series as “The Exorcist on steroids with a dash of Alien thrown in,” Megacity 909 follows the exploits of an elite team of soldiers called Phobia, whose job is to stop psychic parasites from possessing and turning innocents into monsters. “The story takes place in the far future where, after a century-long war, Earth is finally, totally at peace. Then it all goes wrong. Pulses start appearing, psychic parasites that turn the people they possess into monsters capable of devastating cities and murdering millions of people. No one knows what they are or where they came from but they have to be stopped, and that’s where Phobia, an elite commando team, comes in. It’s their job to hunt people possessed by Pulses and kill them before they can do too much damage. And they’re very good at it.

“So when Inzen, a research lab studying the Pulses, explodes leaving a blast crater seven miles wide, Phobia is sent to it. But this isn’t a routine job, it’s one that will take the team to the source of these monsters… all the way to Hell. And things only get weirder from there.

“The Phobia team is lead by Vasrio, a legendary mercenary who considers Pulses the ultimate big game. He commands Jaeminae, an empath with a dark and twisted past, Baenshe, an adrenaline addict and the ultimate warrior, Taep, a by the book soldier who has no tolerance for supernatural mumbo jumbo, and Hoek, a survivor of Pulse possession who at times isn’t quite sure if he’s a monster or a man.”

Working with Korean writer Jacob Lee and artists Kano and Zack have been “remarkably smooth given that I speak zero Korean (I can read Latin though, go Rome!). I’m just dialoguing Megacity, so what happens with that book is that I’ll get sent the finished pages and a rough translation of Jacob Lee’s script. It’s then my job to polish up the dialogue so it looks good in English. I’m not so much re-writing as just putting a few finishing touches on each issue. I’ve never done anything like this before, but I really enjoy it, especially because I’m a fan of the story Kano, Zack and Jacob are telling, it’s cool and warped in just the right ways.

“For MU, I write full scripts which are then translated into Korean for artist Mark Lee to draw. I was a little nervous about that at first, worrying that something would get screwed up in translation and instead of an epic battle between goblin armies I’d end up with six pages of dancing gerbils or something, but it’s gone extremely well. I’m very happy with the end result, I knew Mark’s pages would be good, but they’ve far exceeded my expectations. MU is going to be a beautiful book.

“MU is based on the Mu Online game that is hugely popular in Asia right now with 45 million players. But I want to emphasize that you don’t need to know anything about the game to understand the comic (though, if you want to play the game you can download it free at muonline.com). We’ve gone to great lengths to make MU accessible to everyone. If you’re a fantasy fan, and especially if you’re a fantasy fan who’s looking for a story that’s a bit more layered and harder edged than most out there, this is a book you will enjoy.

“MU is a fantasy epic starring a fairly unlikely main character, a librarian named Icarus Estro. Deep in the libraries of the wizard city Arukar, Icarus discovered a long forgotten tome that prophesizes the return of the dark god Secneum. The problem is that the rest of the wizards consider Icarus something of a nut, he predicts the apocalypse about once a year, so they don’t really believe him. But this time Icarus is right and it’s up to him to stop the end of the world which, as we all know, isn’t easy even for your average god-like hero, much less a guy who’s only used to wielding a quill and knows spells to move books, not shoot fireballs. Icarus is in way over his head, but he’s Mu’s only hope.

“Toss in a thousand year old legend of triumph and sacrifice, a misguided rogue who’s on the run from his future, an arrogant king convinced Mu should bow to him a lot of big, gory action and that’s MU. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

“And, yes, I realize a lot of people that read the above are going to be reminded of Lord of the Rings but, really, any fantasy novel, comic or movie reduced to two paragraphs is going to have touches of Tolkien. I think, ultimately, the story we’re telling is something fairly new to the fantasy genre, and a lot more far-reaching than most. I’m really interested to see how people react to the story as it evolves. Those expecting standard fantasy clichés are going to be in for a surprise.”

Megacity 609 and MU are not Studio ICE’s only projects, though. “On the horizon are Ghostface, the story of a lone warrior who may be a great hero -- or the devil himself, drawn by Min-Woo Hyung, who also does Priest for Tokyopop and is one of the most popular artists in the world today. And Angel Doll a supernatural tale that mixes religion and horror, adapted by James Hudnall with art by Silvester S.

“Also working for the ICE, doing covers and some character design, is a who’s who of Korean artists including: Hyung-Tae Kim (Magnacarta), Juno (Lineage 2) and Ropie (Kingdom Under Fire). It’s a great line-up, people are going to be blown away by what these guys can do.”

Megacity 909 #1 is available in two cover versions: Cover A (by Kano Kang & Zack Suh (of Defiance) and Cover B (by Korean artist sensation Hyung-Tae Kim).

MU is scheduled to debut later this year.

[FIG]

Like I said, these Studio Ice books are going to be so awesome and it was cool to meet Andrew Dabb at the San Diego Comic Con.

[Derek Ruiz]

I'll be checking the Studio Ice books out they look awesome...

[Landry]

The Lost Continent Of Mu
http://bodyreadings.homestead.com/fi...tical_Past.htm


In 1868, Colonel James Churchward, who was then a serving officer in the British Army in India, befriended the high priest of an Indian temple, who showed him several sets of ancient, inscribed clay tablets which had lain concealed in the temple vaults for many centuries, unread and neglected by most of the temple priests down the ages.


With the aid of his new-found friend, Churchward learned how to decipher the ancient Naacal tablet inscriptions. As Churchward translated them, and grasped vast fund of information they contained, he realized that he had stumbled upon the amazing history of a long-lost continent which had been the first great civilization on the Earth. They told of a huge civilization that had arisen, flourished and decayed long before any of those known to modern scholars! It was the great continent of Mu, the Motherland of all the races of the Earth!


The Legacy of Mu.

Although Mu herself was no more, her splendid civilization continued on for several generations in her colonies, before eventually fading away due to lack of cohesive central support from the vanished motherland. No doubt, we owe much of our modern civilization today, to that ancient Motherland in the Pacific Ocean, by way of the various great civilizations which she spawned first in Atlantis, then India, the Americas, China, Egypt, and finally, in Greece and Rome.


It would seem that many of the inventions and skills that were common to the Muvians and Atlanteans, are now simply being re-discovered by modern man, who probably still has a great deal yet to re-learn - if indeed he is willing to also learn from the mistakes of the past, and thus avoid having to repeat them!