lowland_rider ([info]lowland_rider) wrote,
@ 2008-06-30 00:25:00
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El Gorgo! #1
El Gorgo!



Go. Read. It is awesome. (And why I have been so antisocial.)

It is also considerably bigger on the site. Like. A LOT bigger. You'll have to scroll up and down the pages, because at present they are treasury sized (and look much better than I've ever seen them, because the book kind of wants to be treasury sized). Later it'll be back in PDF form, complete with cover (!), and there'll be a blog and stuff, too, and whatever else, but at present we have only twenty-four huge pages to offer. Also, it could read better in IE. Here is the solution: DO NOT USE IE

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[info]john_flint
2008-06-30 06:01 am UTC (link)
Hot damn but that's good shit.

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[info]lowland_rider
2008-06-30 10:06 pm UTC (link)
Thank you, sir!

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[info]chateau_noir
2008-06-30 09:25 am UTC (link)
You know what? That IS awesome.

I'm being completely honest, this is absolutely brilliant. And it could sell now to the Hellboy/Goon market in an instant. Superb art - two parts Kirby, two parts Allred, one part Romita Jr - and great characters. Never tries to be TOO funny or parodic, which would kill it, and always hitting the right notes nostalgia/homage-wise. Plus it tells a story all in itself, very reminiscent of Eric Powell without aping (sorry) him. And a word for the lettering too, which is gorgeous.

Superb. You must be utterly chuffed with this.

(Just promise me you'll remember us all when you're Somebody, 'kay?)

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[info]frac_ture
2008-06-30 04:45 pm UTC (link)
Have to agree with everything Meri said, Mike -- El Gorgo is super fucking bad-assed! I ended up being late for work because I misguidedly made the call to take a quick look at LJ before hitting the shower, and got sucked into your mighty work big-time -- couldn't walk away until I'd finished the entire first batch of pages you posted. You have a great sort of consciously retro feel to the proceedings, but as Meri said, it isn't overdone or all self-congratulatory or anything, and your writing hits all the right notes. I also thought there was some definite Kirby influence coming through in the art, but again, in a cool way, and I agree that there are vague similarities (from what we can tell so far) to the Hellboy stuff, which means you'd have a market for it (vaguely similar in overall concept if boiled down to a one- or two-sentence capsule summary, that's all, not "similar" as a euphemism for "rip off")...and damn, it's just really well done! You should send a copy off to Chris Sims ( www.the-isb.com ) because he'd eat it up with a spoon, and maybe to other review sites, too, like Randy Lander's site, Comic Pants ( www.comicpants.com ), or Don McPherson's Eye On Comics ( www.eyeoncomics.com ), where you can maybe beef up the buzz for the project. Anyway, it rages, it rocks, I'll buy it, and will totally be looking forward to more!

P.S. Damn, Tom is one versatile guy -- I remember being very impressed with all the covers he did at Frontier, but the art styles of those were *way* different, and yet all his stuff is excellent.

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[info]lowland_rider
2008-06-30 10:45 pm UTC (link)
Heh! You know it's a success when it makes someone late for work. Thanks, Steve! And, um...I'm sorry?

Tom and I have both been pretty immersed in Kirby for a while now (which is, thankfully, easier to do now than it ever has been before, since it seems everything Kirby ever did is either in print or getting there), and Kirby -- particularly the Fourth World -- is definitely the main influence on Gorgo. It is deliberately retro, yeah...the idea is basically that the world of the book is an early 21st Century as it might have been imagined by Silver Age comics creators (e.g., surf music is apparently the world's most popular art form, which of course it ought to be, really). So even though it's set in contemporary times, it's also kinda...not, and is effectively a faux relic of the mid-to-late '60s. Hence, we get to do compression and third person narrative captions (!), the latter of which...man. I wanna tell you, those things solve so many problems I can't understand at all how they ever went out of fashion....

And it's also definitely influenced by Hellboy, which is not a surprise, considering Hellboy is a major favorite of both mine and Tom's. I love monster heroes in general, a category into which Gorgo kinda falls, though he's more of a big teddy bear than anything else.

The ISB is a destination, for sure. There are a few other places I want to send links as well, though I'm not sure whether we should wait until the PDF's up (which should make the book a little more of an easy read, but will also...sadly...diminish the grandeur that comes part and parcel with its current monitor-dwarfing size). If anyone else wants to send links around, though, that would be pretty awesome indeed.

Tom has a hell of a range, but it all still looks like Tom to me -- which is, I think, a big part of why the art just doesn't come across as a straight up Kirby homage. This is why I can claim the book is honest without the slightest trace of humility...it ain't awesome because of me!

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[info]lowland_rider
2008-06-30 11:18 pm UTC (link)
That should read something like, "Honestly claim the book is awesome." Though it's also honest! It is, in fact, based on real events.

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[info]lowland_rider
2008-06-30 10:11 pm UTC (link)
Aw, man...well, if anybody's gonna be somebody, it's Tom, because that art...I knew it was great, but I actually had no idea it was as great as it really is until I saw it as big as it is on the website. I mean, it shrinks down well and all (I've been looking at images about half that size for the last while that he's been drawing it and sending the pages over), but goddamn. I seriously did not know.



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[info]rednever
2008-06-30 11:09 pm UTC (link)
Dude! Don't sell yourself short like that!

The scripts keep getting bigger. And crazier. And more AWESOME! The script for the nearly-completed issue #3 is crazy epic and METAL! I hear Manowar in my head when I read the parts about...

Seriously, I grin from ear-to-ear every time I get a new chunk of script. If the comic looks awesome it's because I get awesome stuff to draw.

And thanks to everyone for the kind words. We're definitely trying to rock a Jack Kirby vibe, but more attitude than straight homage. I think Mike and I both realized during the fateful phone conversation when we created El Gorgo! waaaaay back in March of 2007 that we had a concept that would let us do anything and everything we wanted to do in comics.

Which basically means big crazy epic cosmic stories with far-out concepts and gorillas punching dinosaurs.

Also, I promise issue #2 won't take over a year to do. Really.

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[info]lowland_rider
2008-06-30 11:24 pm UTC (link)
METALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!

...That's, um. Really all I have to say. If you dipped the Motorhead catalog into a vat of molten titanium, that is how metal it will be. But it will play better. Because that's really kind of an abuse of some good albums. You...won't be able to listen to them anymore, you guys. I know it sounds cool, but really. Just don't do it. Okay. I'm sorry I put that idea in your head. Moving on!

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[info]russanderson
2008-06-30 11:18 am UTC (link)
At last!

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[info]lowland_rider
2008-06-30 10:46 pm UTC (link)
Awwwww yeah!

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Seriously.
[info]anezkahandmade
2008-07-01 02:53 am UTC (link)
I couldn't be prouder. And ditto what Tamas said about the scripts -- what I've read keeps getting more and more hilarious (I say this having laughed myself silly at script #1 last year). You are both awesome.

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[info]rednever
2008-07-02 05:16 am UTC (link)
elgorgo.com now (99%) works with IE6 & 7.

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