About Me
- Terry Hooper-Scharf
- THE UKs LARGEST INDEPENDENT COMICS PUBLISHER Between 1984-1994 I worked freelance as a writer/artist/editor/agent in comics as well as comics journalism for MU Press,Blue Comet Press,Fantagraphic Books,Eros Comics,Dorne,Fleetway,IPC and others in the United States,UK and Europe. During this period I also produced large numbers of single panel gag cartoons for agencies in Germany such as Boiselle-Lohmann and Baaske Agency –these going to magazines and publications around Europe. I also worked as a freelance editor in comics and publications ranging from wildlife,astronomy and science fiction magazines. From 1984 to present I've been self publishing comics as well as publications on a wide variety of subjects under the Black Tower banner. I have also produced packages of work for companies in India,Hong Kong and China. I have also been working as an industry advisor for smaller companies in countries such as India,Canada,Singapore,China,Europe and the US.
Friday, 26 April 2013
Terry Hooper-Scharf: The Ultimate Game and The Return Of The Gods
There is a third edition of the book now with new art and text feature totalling 331 pages!
******************************************************************************
Frank Barrell talks to Terry Hooper-Scharf about The Ultimate Game, The Cosmic Fulcrum and The Return Of The Gods!
I’ve interviewed Terry a couple times before –the last time about his resurrection of an old UK Golden Age character in The Bat Triumphant. Not easy to interview someone who doesn’t like interviews and has rarely taken part in one in 30 years but here goes nothing!
Frank: Now I know you are a major fan of the obscure UK Golden Age heroes and you’ve incorporated many into your “Black Tower Universe” since 1984 and you have also published a book -400 plus pages?- of many of these old obscure strips, both humour and action. So, Return, is the biggest all original work book you’ve published to date?
Terry: Yes, biggest comic book or “graphic novel” if you prefer. I’ve published about five (?) bulky prose books –Some Things Strange & Sinister, Some More Things Strange & Sinister, Pursuing The Strange & Weird, The Red Paper and, of course, the best of 25 plus years of interviews in…The Hooper Interviews.
Normally, I’ve published A4 comic albums of between 15-120 pages. Return, however, is the first graphic novel.
Frank: How many pages?
Terry: It’s 318 pages.
Frank: I may have gotten ahead of myself a bit here –I was reading Paul H. Birch’s Q&A with you on SpeechBalloon and got diverted –
http://blogs.birminghammail.co.uk/speechballoon/2013/02/return-of-the-gods-and-a-chat.html
Now, I know you’ve read comics since you were about six or seven years old and your influences were outlined in a full interview by Phil Latter (yeah, give a Canadian the opportunity to interview you but not your mates!)
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/27/the-terry-hooper-interview-by-phil-latter/
and you’ve expanded on this background with postings on Manhwa, Manhua and Manga as well as European (particularly German) comics on CBO….
Terry: This is going to be a very long interview, isn’t it?
Frank: I’ll get there in a minute just hang about.
Terry: Then hurry up!!!!
below:art from the original The Ultimate Game. Pencils T. Hooper/Inks B. R. Dilworth.
Frank: Okay, we’ll get back to Golden Age stuff in a while. As you are so impatient maybe you can tell us just how Return started?
Terry: In a way I think it goes back to when I was a nipper, drawing comic strips in old receipt books my gran, Rose, used to get me from work (she worked at Pople’s Popular Pies in Mina Road, St. Werburgh’s, and old blank receipt books were thrown away but she found it a very “economic” way to stem my need for paper to draw on)—
Frank: And you don’t have any of those books any more, do you?
Terry: Sadly, no. My parents kept moving about and I lost so much stuff but only managed to keep the odd cherished comic.
Any old way, I used to draw UK characters such as Billy The Cat, Billy The Whizz and The Spider –even The Phantom Viking—alongside US comic characters like Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Batman and so on. Actually, as I’m saying this I suddenly realise that Return is a sort of expansion of those old books. That is weird. I never really thought about it until now.
below: More of the original UG -credits as before!
Frank: To save any legal threats we need to make sure that its clear you have not used any of those characters in Return!
Terry: Absolutely not. I’m not insane!
Frank: So you started drawing these strips in old receipt books and so on and you never lost interest in comics as you grew up?
Below: a colour “swatch” page for the colourist.
Terry: No. Not at all. I never had a terrible childhood –my grandparents, Rose and Bill, mainly raised me and though we were poor Bill did try to keep me supplied with a weekly comic or a shilling (5p today!) pocket money so comics and plasticine were always with me. And when I eventually went to Greenway Secondary Modern Boys School in Southmead, Bristol, I found a few people interested in comics and later on taught a few younger lads to draw comics. School was not a good time for me so drawing and comics were a distraction.
Frank: Your original plan was to get into publishing and publish comics as a business or work as a comic editor, right?
Terry: Yes. All my contact was mainly with editors or publishers and I soon learned that it was a real closed shop. But that’s a very, very long story!!
Frank: Alright, zooming ahead. You were going to various comic companies in the mid 1980s and trying to sell comic title or strip series ideas. It was at this point that the germ of what was going to become Return started: can you tell us about that?
Terry: Well, in a way it began (excluding those old receipt book cross-overs) with Fleetway in the 1980s. I had met Steve McManus and Dave Hunt and others at the editorial level but my real insight into things came through Managing Editor Gil Page –when he later retired (around 2000) he had been with the company since 1957 and had been there from Amalgamated Press, IPC, Fleetway, Maxwell PP and then Egmont.
I learnt things such as the fact that, as Gil put it in a letter: “everyone was excited about this big American comic writer who had created the Spider for us” –yes, Jerry Siegel created The Spider. And talk of the old characters they still had and never used led to me “kinda” talking Gil into letting me put together a 10 page preview titled “The Ultimate Game”. I say “kinda” because no one could persuade him to do what he did not want to –he was affectionately known as “the UK Stan Lee” and I still hold him in great respect.
However, though the end result –The Ultimate Game– was liked and copies made and passed around all over Fleetway –I went to see Steve McManus about a 2000 AD related idea and he took the pages out of a drawer and said “You’re the guy behind this, aren’t you?” Ah, the recognition at last! Anyway, “someone” put a spoke in the works. Sheer malice but they bi-passed the editors and contacted upper management. From then on the old characters were really “a thing of the past” and later incarnations never treated them properly –though I love Shane Oakley and George Freeman’s work on Albion.
By total accident, I met a fella who was in management at Maxwell Pergamon Publishing and he blurted out -by accident?- that Robert Maxwell was buying out Fleetway and that Maxwell really wanted to publish successful comics in the UK. I have no idea what was going on behind the scenes but apparently Rupert Murdoch had a newspaper empire and had said at some point his company was going to publish comics -red flag to Maxwell! I met the man once, very enthusiastic. I counted my fingers afterwards.
It took a while but then his people decided The Ultimate Game was going to be a full colour, 32 pager, old style weekly –a bit like Battleor the new Eagle but full colour. At this point I was very excited but a warning voice always tells me to not get carried away. Everything was ready…then Maxwell died and I have no idea what was going on.
Eventually, I was writing for Egmont, mainly on Revolver and then someone found the old Ultimate Game project. I think they were trying to impress their bosses with ideas which should have warned me! I spent a lot of time up-dating it. Then the editor involved left, apparently on not very good terms with Egmont, and the project died again.
Marvel UK had shown an interest but wanted all rights so I said no. It would have been nice money but giving up rights to all the characters? No.
I ought to point out that after Fleetway and Egmont and Maxwell I had incorporated my own characters, some that I had created in the 1970s, into the story as I could not use the old Fleetway characters.
When I re-launched Black Tower Adventure in…2009 I needed a meaty main feature. The Ultimate Game had been adapted and the title changed to The Cosmic Fulcrum for Marvel UK and that title was used when it finally appeared in a Small Press version. So, what I had in 2009 was a strip that had been reworked and re-titled as The Return Of The Gods: Twilight Of The Super Heroes. I had thought Adventure would only go for six issues so the strip was perfect and I would finally see it in print in some form!
Frank: And Adventure is at issue 10 now! But you combined the strip into Black Tower’s first graphic novel in 2012 and it did quite well –glowing reviews— so why a new version and how is it different (I know I’ve read my copy and its brilliant but for the readers)?
Terry: Well, the original book was a trade version of the six part series from Black Tower Adventure and came to a total of 196 pages. I talked to reviewers who are also comic artists/writers and we had a round robin discussion of the book. Most said that it was far better and certainly more enjoyable than DC Comics “52″ series and…fun!
But as we talked I realised that I had missed an opportunity because, since 1984, Black Tower has incorporated a lot of very obscure old UK Golden Age characters and some of these just appeared in a strip -no origin or anything.
Frank: But not included in the original six part story?
Terry: No, and as far as I was then concerned, it was too late to sort that out and include some of them –though the Golden Agers are represented. However, I had to re-think seriously re-think this later on.
Frank: You notoriously do not use scripts for your own work so how did you go about this series?
Terry: As you say, I never ever work with a script on things I am working on myself. I always start with a blank sheet of paper, pencil, pens and then see what develops. It gives a lot of spontaneity -I really have no idea what is going to happen on a page or even the next panel!
As far as the story is concerned I found that I was incorporating bits of The Ultimate Game and The Cosmic Fulcrum –another multi-character series.
After Return was published I was rummaging through an old box looking for an old reference image and found a thick wad of A3 pages –about 45 pages in total that were the build-up to the original strip -I thought those pages had been lost years ago. I read through it and realised the pages actually explained a few things and was paced for the big event. That put me in a rather odd position.
I had a week or so to decide whether or not I wanted to leave Return as it was or to tidy up the old pages and make it more complete. I also realised that there would have to be new pages drawn to bridge the various story links. Then I thought that this was a chance to once and for all explain everything that had been going on in Black Tower strips since 1984 and explain the incorporation of the old Golden Age characters and their origins. It also helps to set up The Green Skies book in late 2013.
I figured the final book would total 250-260 pages so when I finished it and found over 300 I was a little taken aback.
A few people who got the advanced rough book just started raving about it so I thought “Okay. Job done. Move on!”
Frank: And it is a real cracker. But for those who know nothing about the book could you summarise it?
Terry: AGH! Well, it begins slowly enough with Earth’s heroes going about their daily tasks –such as fighting a giant robot controlled by a mad scientist’s brain, some villains, both “regular” and mystical not to mention even vampire alien high priests of some mysterious cult and their zombie followers attacking various heroes to put them temporarily out of the way. Oh, of course there is a ghost and a young genius lost in time.
Pretty mundane super hero stuff really. “Just another day”.
But there is a huge alien Mother-ship near the Moon and psychics around the world have been getting vivid images of this for months –even non-precogs. Earth’s mystical heroes are stumped.
Then strange orange spheres chase some of Earth’s heroes in the UK, France, Czech Republic, Mexico, Russia and other parts of the world. Once touched by the globes that deliberately seek them out the heroes vanish into thin air –are they dead? Is some super villain exacting revenge?
Black, impenetrable domes suddenly appear and cover cities world-wide. Those outside are puzzled while those within face a terrifying reality…
…Alien invasion of Earth!
And then there is a war brewing between the Dark Old (Lovecraftian type) Gods and the pantheons that followed –Greek, Babylonian, etc.. After millennia of waiting the new gods will either triumph and return to Earth or be defeated…and whichever side wins it won’t be good for humanity.
There are warriors from various conflicts in the Earth’s past that are having to battle each day on some mysterious endless plain and whether they die in battle or not they are back the next day!
No one suspects the driving force, the evil twisted schemer, behind the events that could cause destruction and chaos throughout the multi-verse. Assaulted on all fronts can Earth’s defenders succeed or will they fail…is this truly the end?
The final words of the character Jack Flash on the last page apparently gave readers goose-bumps!
Frank: Those are chilling final words!! But, as no shops or distributors wanted to touch what I, in my honest opinion, consider the really be one of the greatest British super hero sagas I’ve ever read –better than my old favourite Zenith- how can people buy a copy?
Terry: I thought you would never ask! It’s only available online at the moment so people will need to check out:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/the-return-of-the-godstwilight-of-the-super-heroes/paperback/product-20659931.html
Frank: Terry, good luck with the book and I cannot wait for Green Skies!!
Maybe a low res glimpse will pull you all in?
ALL artwork and characters are (c)2013 T. Hooper-Scharf and BTCG
******************************************************************************
Frank Barrell talks to Terry Hooper-Scharf about The Ultimate Game, The Cosmic Fulcrum and The Return Of The Gods!
I’ve interviewed Terry a couple times before –the last time about his resurrection of an old UK Golden Age character in The Bat Triumphant. Not easy to interview someone who doesn’t like interviews and has rarely taken part in one in 30 years but here goes nothing!
Frank: Now I know you are a major fan of the obscure UK Golden Age heroes and you’ve incorporated many into your “Black Tower Universe” since 1984 and you have also published a book -400 plus pages?- of many of these old obscure strips, both humour and action. So, Return, is the biggest all original work book you’ve published to date?
Terry: Yes, biggest comic book or “graphic novel” if you prefer. I’ve published about five (?) bulky prose books –Some Things Strange & Sinister, Some More Things Strange & Sinister, Pursuing The Strange & Weird, The Red Paper and, of course, the best of 25 plus years of interviews in…The Hooper Interviews.
Normally, I’ve published A4 comic albums of between 15-120 pages. Return, however, is the first graphic novel.
Frank: How many pages?
Terry: It’s 318 pages.
Frank: I may have gotten ahead of myself a bit here –I was reading Paul H. Birch’s Q&A with you on SpeechBalloon and got diverted –
http://blogs.birminghammail.co.uk/speechballoon/2013/02/return-of-the-gods-and-a-chat.html
Now, I know you’ve read comics since you were about six or seven years old and your influences were outlined in a full interview by Phil Latter (yeah, give a Canadian the opportunity to interview you but not your mates!)
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/27/the-terry-hooper-interview-by-phil-latter/
and you’ve expanded on this background with postings on Manhwa, Manhua and Manga as well as European (particularly German) comics on CBO….
Terry: This is going to be a very long interview, isn’t it?
Frank: I’ll get there in a minute just hang about.
Terry: Then hurry up!!!!
below:art from the original The Ultimate Game. Pencils T. Hooper/Inks B. R. Dilworth.
Frank: Okay, we’ll get back to Golden Age stuff in a while. As you are so impatient maybe you can tell us just how Return started?
Terry: In a way I think it goes back to when I was a nipper, drawing comic strips in old receipt books my gran, Rose, used to get me from work (she worked at Pople’s Popular Pies in Mina Road, St. Werburgh’s, and old blank receipt books were thrown away but she found it a very “economic” way to stem my need for paper to draw on)—
Frank: And you don’t have any of those books any more, do you?
Terry: Sadly, no. My parents kept moving about and I lost so much stuff but only managed to keep the odd cherished comic.
Any old way, I used to draw UK characters such as Billy The Cat, Billy The Whizz and The Spider –even The Phantom Viking—alongside US comic characters like Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Batman and so on. Actually, as I’m saying this I suddenly realise that Return is a sort of expansion of those old books. That is weird. I never really thought about it until now.
below: More of the original UG -credits as before!
Frank: To save any legal threats we need to make sure that its clear you have not used any of those characters in Return!
Terry: Absolutely not. I’m not insane!
Frank: So you started drawing these strips in old receipt books and so on and you never lost interest in comics as you grew up?
Below: a colour “swatch” page for the colourist.
Terry: No. Not at all. I never had a terrible childhood –my grandparents, Rose and Bill, mainly raised me and though we were poor Bill did try to keep me supplied with a weekly comic or a shilling (5p today!) pocket money so comics and plasticine were always with me. And when I eventually went to Greenway Secondary Modern Boys School in Southmead, Bristol, I found a few people interested in comics and later on taught a few younger lads to draw comics. School was not a good time for me so drawing and comics were a distraction.
Frank: Your original plan was to get into publishing and publish comics as a business or work as a comic editor, right?
Terry: Yes. All my contact was mainly with editors or publishers and I soon learned that it was a real closed shop. But that’s a very, very long story!!
Frank: Alright, zooming ahead. You were going to various comic companies in the mid 1980s and trying to sell comic title or strip series ideas. It was at this point that the germ of what was going to become Return started: can you tell us about that?
Terry: Well, in a way it began (excluding those old receipt book cross-overs) with Fleetway in the 1980s. I had met Steve McManus and Dave Hunt and others at the editorial level but my real insight into things came through Managing Editor Gil Page –when he later retired (around 2000) he had been with the company since 1957 and had been there from Amalgamated Press, IPC, Fleetway, Maxwell PP and then Egmont.
I learnt things such as the fact that, as Gil put it in a letter: “everyone was excited about this big American comic writer who had created the Spider for us” –yes, Jerry Siegel created The Spider. And talk of the old characters they still had and never used led to me “kinda” talking Gil into letting me put together a 10 page preview titled “The Ultimate Game”. I say “kinda” because no one could persuade him to do what he did not want to –he was affectionately known as “the UK Stan Lee” and I still hold him in great respect.
However, though the end result –The Ultimate Game– was liked and copies made and passed around all over Fleetway –I went to see Steve McManus about a 2000 AD related idea and he took the pages out of a drawer and said “You’re the guy behind this, aren’t you?” Ah, the recognition at last! Anyway, “someone” put a spoke in the works. Sheer malice but they bi-passed the editors and contacted upper management. From then on the old characters were really “a thing of the past” and later incarnations never treated them properly –though I love Shane Oakley and George Freeman’s work on Albion.
By total accident, I met a fella who was in management at Maxwell Pergamon Publishing and he blurted out -by accident?- that Robert Maxwell was buying out Fleetway and that Maxwell really wanted to publish successful comics in the UK. I have no idea what was going on behind the scenes but apparently Rupert Murdoch had a newspaper empire and had said at some point his company was going to publish comics -red flag to Maxwell! I met the man once, very enthusiastic. I counted my fingers afterwards.
It took a while but then his people decided The Ultimate Game was going to be a full colour, 32 pager, old style weekly –a bit like Battleor the new Eagle but full colour. At this point I was very excited but a warning voice always tells me to not get carried away. Everything was ready…then Maxwell died and I have no idea what was going on.
Eventually, I was writing for Egmont, mainly on Revolver and then someone found the old Ultimate Game project. I think they were trying to impress their bosses with ideas which should have warned me! I spent a lot of time up-dating it. Then the editor involved left, apparently on not very good terms with Egmont, and the project died again.
Marvel UK had shown an interest but wanted all rights so I said no. It would have been nice money but giving up rights to all the characters? No.
I ought to point out that after Fleetway and Egmont and Maxwell I had incorporated my own characters, some that I had created in the 1970s, into the story as I could not use the old Fleetway characters.
When I re-launched Black Tower Adventure in…2009 I needed a meaty main feature. The Ultimate Game had been adapted and the title changed to The Cosmic Fulcrum for Marvel UK and that title was used when it finally appeared in a Small Press version. So, what I had in 2009 was a strip that had been reworked and re-titled as The Return Of The Gods: Twilight Of The Super Heroes. I had thought Adventure would only go for six issues so the strip was perfect and I would finally see it in print in some form!
Frank: And Adventure is at issue 10 now! But you combined the strip into Black Tower’s first graphic novel in 2012 and it did quite well –glowing reviews— so why a new version and how is it different (I know I’ve read my copy and its brilliant but for the readers)?
Terry: Well, the original book was a trade version of the six part series from Black Tower Adventure and came to a total of 196 pages. I talked to reviewers who are also comic artists/writers and we had a round robin discussion of the book. Most said that it was far better and certainly more enjoyable than DC Comics “52″ series and…fun!
But as we talked I realised that I had missed an opportunity because, since 1984, Black Tower has incorporated a lot of very obscure old UK Golden Age characters and some of these just appeared in a strip -no origin or anything.
Frank: But not included in the original six part story?
Terry: No, and as far as I was then concerned, it was too late to sort that out and include some of them –though the Golden Agers are represented. However, I had to re-think seriously re-think this later on.
Frank: You notoriously do not use scripts for your own work so how did you go about this series?
Terry: As you say, I never ever work with a script on things I am working on myself. I always start with a blank sheet of paper, pencil, pens and then see what develops. It gives a lot of spontaneity -I really have no idea what is going to happen on a page or even the next panel!
As far as the story is concerned I found that I was incorporating bits of The Ultimate Game and The Cosmic Fulcrum –another multi-character series.
After Return was published I was rummaging through an old box looking for an old reference image and found a thick wad of A3 pages –about 45 pages in total that were the build-up to the original strip -I thought those pages had been lost years ago. I read through it and realised the pages actually explained a few things and was paced for the big event. That put me in a rather odd position.
I had a week or so to decide whether or not I wanted to leave Return as it was or to tidy up the old pages and make it more complete. I also realised that there would have to be new pages drawn to bridge the various story links. Then I thought that this was a chance to once and for all explain everything that had been going on in Black Tower strips since 1984 and explain the incorporation of the old Golden Age characters and their origins. It also helps to set up The Green Skies book in late 2013.
I figured the final book would total 250-260 pages so when I finished it and found over 300 I was a little taken aback.
A few people who got the advanced rough book just started raving about it so I thought “Okay. Job done. Move on!”
Frank: And it is a real cracker. But for those who know nothing about the book could you summarise it?
Terry: AGH! Well, it begins slowly enough with Earth’s heroes going about their daily tasks –such as fighting a giant robot controlled by a mad scientist’s brain, some villains, both “regular” and mystical not to mention even vampire alien high priests of some mysterious cult and their zombie followers attacking various heroes to put them temporarily out of the way. Oh, of course there is a ghost and a young genius lost in time.
Pretty mundane super hero stuff really. “Just another day”.
But there is a huge alien Mother-ship near the Moon and psychics around the world have been getting vivid images of this for months –even non-precogs. Earth’s mystical heroes are stumped.
Then strange orange spheres chase some of Earth’s heroes in the UK, France, Czech Republic, Mexico, Russia and other parts of the world. Once touched by the globes that deliberately seek them out the heroes vanish into thin air –are they dead? Is some super villain exacting revenge?
Black, impenetrable domes suddenly appear and cover cities world-wide. Those outside are puzzled while those within face a terrifying reality…
…Alien invasion of Earth!
And then there is a war brewing between the Dark Old (Lovecraftian type) Gods and the pantheons that followed –Greek, Babylonian, etc.. After millennia of waiting the new gods will either triumph and return to Earth or be defeated…and whichever side wins it won’t be good for humanity.
There are warriors from various conflicts in the Earth’s past that are having to battle each day on some mysterious endless plain and whether they die in battle or not they are back the next day!
No one suspects the driving force, the evil twisted schemer, behind the events that could cause destruction and chaos throughout the multi-verse. Assaulted on all fronts can Earth’s defenders succeed or will they fail…is this truly the end?
The final words of the character Jack Flash on the last page apparently gave readers goose-bumps!
Frank: Those are chilling final words!! But, as no shops or distributors wanted to touch what I, in my honest opinion, consider the really be one of the greatest British super hero sagas I’ve ever read –better than my old favourite Zenith- how can people buy a copy?
Terry: I thought you would never ask! It’s only available online at the moment so people will need to check out:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/the-return-of-the-godstwilight-of-the-super-heroes/paperback/product-20659931.html
Frank: Terry, good luck with the book and I cannot wait for Green Skies!!
Maybe a low res glimpse will pull you all in?
ALL artwork and characters are (c)2013 T. Hooper-Scharf and BTCG
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
A Timely Repost: Jean Marc Lofficier -The Man Who Created A Universe!
It was over a year ago I up-dated this and so far the Hexagon and
Wanga comics have not failed to make me a happy bunny (even if they cost
more to buy from Europe!).
So, here. Read. Enjoy and check out their site!!
************************************************************************************
Now, I think that everyone who is a regular CBO visitor knows that I love European comics (you missed that?!) but in the last couple years one company has pressed my “Like Button” so many times that I’m quite dizzy! That company is Hexagon Comics.
As I discovered, all these cool French characters from the 1960s and 1970s have been combined into one consistent universe -you have probably even read comics from the United States with them in and not realised it. But who could possibly be the mega brain behind such a venture?
Jean Marc Lofficier, that’s who. And I am very pleased and, I’ll admit to being excited at the prospect of this creator of a French comics universe answering some of my questions and revealing the story behind all of this!
****************************************
Terry: Now, I’ve obviously seen the incredible Cool French Comics site set up by yourself and wife Randy -
http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/
which covers characters from A-Z from Adele Blanc-Sec to Zembla but also includes a timeline of French comic book/strip characters.
Is it fair to say, in the nicest possible way, that you and Randy are French comic geeks?
Jean Marc: I definitely am the geek of the family! Randy used to read METAL MEN and some of the cool DC comics as a teenager, but obviously she wasn’t aware of the rich tradition of French comics; I’m the one who introduced her to it – as well as the films, TV series, etc. derived from those characters. It is of course much easier to find even the rarest of books or TV series today. We truly live in a Golden Age of Geekdom!
Jean Marc and Randy Lofficier
Terry: I don’t think comic readers in the UK, and definitely in the United States, have no idea how rich and extensive French comic characters and comics have been. After all –“It’s not in English”!
So, how old were you when you “discovered” comics -what are your first memories of French language comics: did you have favourite characters or a title you’d go out of your way to get a hold of?
Jean Marc: The first comics I read as a very young child was Le Journal de Mickey, which published Disney stories. Then, later, I switched to Spirou, Tintin and Pilote, but parallel to that, I also discovered French translations of DC’s Mystery in Space in the early 60s (the big name superheroes such as Superman or Batman weren’t imported until 1968, but I knew Adam Strange and Martian Manhunter!). I also read a lot of French digest-sized magazines which contained translations of British, Italian and American comics (again, DC), plus a number of original series created at the behest of the French publisher but often drawn by Italian artists. This was particularly true at Editions Lug, which created a large number of characters, which became the “Hexagon Universe” under my guidance.
When I was a kid, I was particularly fond of Lucky Luke and The Smurfs, and Spirou too (which I preferred to Tintin). As far as more realistic stories are concerned, I was always drawn towards the more fantastic type of heroes. Because these were not well represented in the “mainstream” mags like Spirou or Tintin, I read in the digest magazines: there were jungle lords like Zembla, Akim and Tanka, but also weird monsters like Wampus (which, even then, was supposed to be “mature readers”), super-agents like Mister Song of CLASH, and characters like Jaleb the telepath, Homicron and the Time Brigade which shared the spotlight in a mag called “Futura”, about the only comics mag fully devoted to home-grown sci-fi/superhero comics.
Terry: Now, Cool French Comics is a very, uh, cool site. Lots of history and, of course, colour illustrations. But I was impressed by SHADOWMEN 2:Heroes & Villains Of French Comics. There is a great cover and the book is almost encyclopaedic in its scope. In fact, you detail the creators, the story behind the character, publishing history and a huge bibliography for some characters so the reader knows the chronology of the stories and their titles. This IS encyclopaedic. But it needs a larger format! It’s 319 pages, indexed (!) and, I forgot to mention, full of black and white art.
How long did it take you and Randy to put the book together –I’m guessing the Cool French Comics (CFC) helped to a degree; the entry on Super Boy on CFCs is a simple page but in the book the character takes up (with illoes) 13 pages. So was it a case of saying “We’ve got the basics now let’s fill in with more detail”?
cover by Andrew Paquette
Jean Marc: The source of all this is an 800-page book I did in the mid-90s for an American publisher of scholarly/academic tomes called MacFarland. The book was called FRENCH SCIENCE-FICTION and included an extensive section on comics. I’m not 1200% sure but I think I created the CFC website at about the same time, primarily to feature more art, in color, which I couldn’t do in the MacFarland book. Then when we started Black Coat Press in mid-2003, it was easy to spin off the materials regarding the LITERARY heroes into SHADOWMEN and the COMICS heroes into SHADOWMEN II. I already had all the information; it was mostly a matter of reformatting, and providing some historical context.
Behind all this, of course, was the same desire to share my knowledge of French popular fiction with US/UK readers. When I grew up, as I mentioned, the French, Italian, USA, UK stories were all published equally by the same publishers. I mean, bookwise you could find Sherlock Holmes and Arsene Lupin at Livre de poche, or The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Black Coats at Marabout, and comicswise Martian Manhunter and Fulguros at Artima, or Zembla and Spider-Man at Lug. So to me, you (the US and UK readers) are the ones being deprived, because you grew up with only half of the stuff I grew up with!
another excellent cover by Paquette
Terry: I forgot to mention that, naturally, there was a first volume, again co-written by yourself and Randy: Shadowmen:Heroes & Villains Of French Pulp Fiction. I’m going to have to track that down one day!
But I ought to mention that both you and Randy have quite distinguished careers. I’ll quote here:
“Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier are writers, editors and translators of screenplays, teleplays, books and comic books, mostly in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, animation and popular literature.
They have co-authored a dozen books about movies and television, several novels, as well as numerous comics and translations, including the Moebius graphic novels. They have also contributed scripts to animated series such as The Real Ghostbusters and Duck Tales, among others. In 1990, in recognition of their distinguished career as comic book writers, translators and editors, Randy and Jean-Marc were presented with the Inkpot Award for Outstanding Achievement in Comic Arts.”
Did this help when it came to getting hold of old French comic characters to reprint in collections under your Hexagon Comics imprint?
In case newer readers have missed the reviews:
STARLOCK
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/13/hexagon-comics-starlock/
JAYDEE, STARKNIGHT and DICK SPADE
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/05/jaydee-starknight-and-dick-spade/
HOMICRON
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/05/homicron/
ZEMBLA
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/04/zembla/
KABUR
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/04/enter-kabur/
PHENIX
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/02/phenix/
C.L.A.S.H.
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/05/30/c-l-a-s-h/
And then the legend that is WAMPUS!
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/05/25/hexagon-comicsthe-legendary-wampus/
Jean Marc: First, when you decide to be a professional, you write whatever you’re being paid to write, so being in Hollywood, we were lucky to be able to write film articles, non-fiction books, short stories, comics, cartoons, film scripts, etc. I’m not saying we’re equally proud of everything we did – there are a couple of cartoons I’ve virtually never watched again since we wrote them – but overall, I think we’ve done OK, and I’m really happy with a comic series like TONGUE*LASH which is really unique, or the DC Elseworld “German Cinena” trilogy.
In the case of what became Hexagon Comics, the story is simple. In 2000, Thierry Mornet who was then editor-in-chief at SEMIC S.A. which had taken over the old Editions Lug, asked me to resurrect the old characters I used to read as a kid. You bet I was thrilled! So from 2000-2003 I was like the head writer & managing editor (under Thierry) of line of new stories featuring Phenix, Kabur, Dick Demon, Wampus, etc. and I created some new groups like Strangers and Hexagon.
Semic went out of business at the end of 2003 and the original creators of the characters and I and several authors got together and started a syndicate or an association to exploit our properties. Under French Law there is no such thing as work for hire (yay!) so reclaiming the rights was perfectly legal. So I started with the idea of reprinting the classic stories (which Semic had not done) as well as some of the new stories we’d created. I did eight reprint books in English in a smaller paperback format, but I stopped because, a) it took too much time to translate & re-letter the strips, and b) a few years ago Diamond decided to no longer carry our books.
However the French reprint series, which is done in a Marvel Essential-like format is quite successful and that one, I intend to continue for the foreseeable future.
Terry: Now, you’ve not been content to just leave it at reprints. I was surprised to walk into a comic shop in 2003 and see the first issue of the full colour Strangers comic published by Image Comics. I’d heard of C.L.A.S.H. and vaguely recognised some of the other characters. I looked at the assistant, I think it was Chris Rice and said: “These are French characters!” So I got my standing order set up as I didn’t want to miss an issue!
(Image Comics, 2003)
You and Randy had taken the characters to the next level in
establishing them in a, shall we call it an “Hexagon Comics Universe”?
And then –BOOM!- “Nexus versus Wampus”—Wampus I’d seen the odd page of and loved the look of the character. Now I could see him go up against Nexus.
My first question is –I’m guessing that you both approached Image Comics with the project: did they take much convincing?
Jean Marc: That was entirely Thierry Mornet’s doing. Semic was publishing several Image books in France and it was structured as an exchange. We gave Image all the films lettered in English, and the only thing they had to do was print & distribute. They did rather well, starting at 8000 copies and finishing at 6000 which wasn’t bad for characters no one had ever heard of on that side of the pond.
Terry: Now, we’ve mentioned that you got hold of these old characters and I’m guessing you and Randy thought uniting them in one consistent comic universe would be cool. Creators can be a bit “odd” when it comes to others using and developing their characters did you get any problems?
Jean Marc: To give some historical perspective, the “Stan Lee” of Editions Lug, if you will, was its co-founder, co-owner, head writer & editor Marcel Navarro. His “Roy Thomas”, if you will, was Claude Legrand who came in the late 60s, started FUTURA, and created quite a few of the characters. Later, Claude went on to write several novels and was also the translator of all the CONAN comics in France. Claude is the one who first crossed over Jaleb and Time Brigade in one story. So when I came in in 2000, the idea of a shared universe was totally undeveloped, but not inexistent. Claude passed away a few years ago but I had a chance to talk to him and correspond with him, and he and the other original artists such as Luciano Bernasconi (who was the “Jack Kirby” of Lug to carry on with the analogy) have all been thrilled with what I’ve been doing. In fact, even today, Luciano keeps drawing stories for us in the “classic” style. He did an origin of Futura a year ago and is now doing an episode about young Kit Kappa. We’ve had a terrific relationship with all the “old” artists.
Marcel Navarro. Below -sent to me years ago so I don’t know who to credit, but its a rare photo of Navarro at the LUG offices.
Below: Thanks to Jean Marc -a photograph of Claude Legrand!
Terry: Mike Baron and Steve Rude created Nexus –they had no problems with your using him?
And a final question here: why did it end with issue 6 in the English version?!
Jean Marc: Of course we received the permission of Mike and Steve to use Nexus! I don’t think they minded at all. Steve told me he liked Jay Stephens’ version of the character.
Initially, SEMIC only did 6 issues in color, hence that’s what we gave Image. I had done one more issue in B&W, plus the origins of Starlock also in B&W, but we didn’t feel like going to the expense of coloring them just for Image.
Recently for the French TPB, we colored #7 and created an all-new issue #8. The Starlock Origins, I had reprinted in B&W in the tpb reprint of Starlock, but we’re having it colored now and we’ll reprint it again in a one-shot Starlock issue of HEXAGON UNIVERSE next year.
Terry: I did get a shock when I found that some of the characters published in Hexagon’s collections have several volumes in French. But this was nothing compared to my shock on finding, accidentally, Wanga Comics: http://www.wangacomics.com/
The number of comic titles and characters was a little mind-blowing. Can you tell me about Wanga Comics –what is it’s connection with Hexagon Comics?
Jean Marc: Wanga Comics is a small French publisher which was doing its own creator-owned comics, such as LE PATROUILLEUR and NOUVEAUX GARDIENS and wanted to expand its line, but didn’t have materials or resources, so we teamed up 50-50 so to speak, sort of like with Image: I provide the books; they print & distribute them. I continue the reprint line of TPBs in black & white, they’ll do all the new stories in color. It’s a good arrangement.
We have two bimonthly mags planned: one HEXAGON UNIVERSE is a 64-page rotating character mag like the old Marvel Super-Heroes, featuring different characters every issue; the other is a classic 32-page comic featuring the STRANGERS. #1 will be released at the Angouleme Comics Fest in January 2012.
above -a teaser courtesy of Jean-Marc
Terry: I think it’s a pity comic fans will not try comics because they are not in English. I’ve got Chinese, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Polish –lots of foreign language comics but not understanding the languages never ruined by enjoyment!
So what titles are you currently working on that you’d recommend and can you reveal anything about future plans –Cinebook The 9th Art, under Olivier Cadic have proven that not only can English translations of French language comics prove interesting but they also sell! Maybe a route for Hexagon to take in the future?
Jean Marc: My friend Steve Bissette has been discussing incorporating some of our “classic” stories in his TALES OF THE UNCANNY “1963” spin off project because they are after all authentic, genuine old comics from the 60s. Otherwise, I’m afraid that with all the French projects in the pipeline, I haven’t had the time to pursue the American market lately.
below:cover by J-M. Ponzio
Terry: Anything we’ve not touched on you’d like to mention?
Jean Marc: Leaving comics aside, I’d like to plug some of the books (I mean, prose novels) published by Black Coat Press which should appeal to folks who like Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, etc.
Every year we put out an anthology of literary pastiches in which pulp heroes and villains meet. It’s called TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN. There are 7 volumes to date with #8 coming up in December. Look it up:
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/talesshadowmen01.htm
It’s really exciting! We also have collections of stories with such great pulp heroes as The Nyctalope, Doctor Omega, Sar Dubnotal… Again, the perfect complement to comic book heroes.
Terry: Jean Marc –many, many thanks for taking the time to answer some dumb questions and hope to see yourself and Randy, or Hexagon, at a British convention some time!
Jean Marc: I’d love to be invited! Ryan Air has cheap fares from Carcassonne (near where I live) to London Stansted. If someone wants me to come over, I’d be happy to do it.
Terry:There you have it -if the organisers of the International Comic Expo want to have a really good international feel invite Hexagon Comics and Jean Marc Lofficier!
photo of Jean Marc Lofficier from “Le bleu du ciel en hiver” which can be found here with links to other pages (all in French):
http://castelneau.canalblog.com/archives/2009/04/19/13434774.html
photo of J. M. & Randy Lofficier from the Black Coat Press site (in English):
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/lofficier.htm
Hexagon Comics:
http://www.hexagoncomics.com/books.htm
So, here. Read. Enjoy and check out their site!!
************************************************************************************
Now, I think that everyone who is a regular CBO visitor knows that I love European comics (you missed that?!) but in the last couple years one company has pressed my “Like Button” so many times that I’m quite dizzy! That company is Hexagon Comics.
As I discovered, all these cool French characters from the 1960s and 1970s have been combined into one consistent universe -you have probably even read comics from the United States with them in and not realised it. But who could possibly be the mega brain behind such a venture?
Jean Marc Lofficier, that’s who. And I am very pleased and, I’ll admit to being excited at the prospect of this creator of a French comics universe answering some of my questions and revealing the story behind all of this!
****************************************
Terry: Now, I’ve obviously seen the incredible Cool French Comics site set up by yourself and wife Randy -
http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/
which covers characters from A-Z from Adele Blanc-Sec to Zembla but also includes a timeline of French comic book/strip characters.
Is it fair to say, in the nicest possible way, that you and Randy are French comic geeks?
Jean Marc: I definitely am the geek of the family! Randy used to read METAL MEN and some of the cool DC comics as a teenager, but obviously she wasn’t aware of the rich tradition of French comics; I’m the one who introduced her to it – as well as the films, TV series, etc. derived from those characters. It is of course much easier to find even the rarest of books or TV series today. We truly live in a Golden Age of Geekdom!
Jean Marc and Randy Lofficier
Terry: I don’t think comic readers in the UK, and definitely in the United States, have no idea how rich and extensive French comic characters and comics have been. After all –“It’s not in English”!
So, how old were you when you “discovered” comics -what are your first memories of French language comics: did you have favourite characters or a title you’d go out of your way to get a hold of?
Jean Marc: The first comics I read as a very young child was Le Journal de Mickey, which published Disney stories. Then, later, I switched to Spirou, Tintin and Pilote, but parallel to that, I also discovered French translations of DC’s Mystery in Space in the early 60s (the big name superheroes such as Superman or Batman weren’t imported until 1968, but I knew Adam Strange and Martian Manhunter!). I also read a lot of French digest-sized magazines which contained translations of British, Italian and American comics (again, DC), plus a number of original series created at the behest of the French publisher but often drawn by Italian artists. This was particularly true at Editions Lug, which created a large number of characters, which became the “Hexagon Universe” under my guidance.
When I was a kid, I was particularly fond of Lucky Luke and The Smurfs, and Spirou too (which I preferred to Tintin). As far as more realistic stories are concerned, I was always drawn towards the more fantastic type of heroes. Because these were not well represented in the “mainstream” mags like Spirou or Tintin, I read in the digest magazines: there were jungle lords like Zembla, Akim and Tanka, but also weird monsters like Wampus (which, even then, was supposed to be “mature readers”), super-agents like Mister Song of CLASH, and characters like Jaleb the telepath, Homicron and the Time Brigade which shared the spotlight in a mag called “Futura”, about the only comics mag fully devoted to home-grown sci-fi/superhero comics.
Terry: Now, Cool French Comics is a very, uh, cool site. Lots of history and, of course, colour illustrations. But I was impressed by SHADOWMEN 2:Heroes & Villains Of French Comics. There is a great cover and the book is almost encyclopaedic in its scope. In fact, you detail the creators, the story behind the character, publishing history and a huge bibliography for some characters so the reader knows the chronology of the stories and their titles. This IS encyclopaedic. But it needs a larger format! It’s 319 pages, indexed (!) and, I forgot to mention, full of black and white art.
How long did it take you and Randy to put the book together –I’m guessing the Cool French Comics (CFC) helped to a degree; the entry on Super Boy on CFCs is a simple page but in the book the character takes up (with illoes) 13 pages. So was it a case of saying “We’ve got the basics now let’s fill in with more detail”?
cover by Andrew Paquette
Jean Marc: The source of all this is an 800-page book I did in the mid-90s for an American publisher of scholarly/academic tomes called MacFarland. The book was called FRENCH SCIENCE-FICTION and included an extensive section on comics. I’m not 1200% sure but I think I created the CFC website at about the same time, primarily to feature more art, in color, which I couldn’t do in the MacFarland book. Then when we started Black Coat Press in mid-2003, it was easy to spin off the materials regarding the LITERARY heroes into SHADOWMEN and the COMICS heroes into SHADOWMEN II. I already had all the information; it was mostly a matter of reformatting, and providing some historical context.
Behind all this, of course, was the same desire to share my knowledge of French popular fiction with US/UK readers. When I grew up, as I mentioned, the French, Italian, USA, UK stories were all published equally by the same publishers. I mean, bookwise you could find Sherlock Holmes and Arsene Lupin at Livre de poche, or The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Black Coats at Marabout, and comicswise Martian Manhunter and Fulguros at Artima, or Zembla and Spider-Man at Lug. So to me, you (the US and UK readers) are the ones being deprived, because you grew up with only half of the stuff I grew up with!
another excellent cover by Paquette
Terry: I forgot to mention that, naturally, there was a first volume, again co-written by yourself and Randy: Shadowmen:Heroes & Villains Of French Pulp Fiction. I’m going to have to track that down one day!
But I ought to mention that both you and Randy have quite distinguished careers. I’ll quote here:
“Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier are writers, editors and translators of screenplays, teleplays, books and comic books, mostly in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, animation and popular literature.
They have co-authored a dozen books about movies and television, several novels, as well as numerous comics and translations, including the Moebius graphic novels. They have also contributed scripts to animated series such as The Real Ghostbusters and Duck Tales, among others. In 1990, in recognition of their distinguished career as comic book writers, translators and editors, Randy and Jean-Marc were presented with the Inkpot Award for Outstanding Achievement in Comic Arts.”
Did this help when it came to getting hold of old French comic characters to reprint in collections under your Hexagon Comics imprint?
In case newer readers have missed the reviews:
STARLOCK
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/13/hexagon-comics-starlock/
JAYDEE, STARKNIGHT and DICK SPADE
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/05/jaydee-starknight-and-dick-spade/
HOMICRON
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/05/homicron/
ZEMBLA
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/04/zembla/
KABUR
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/04/enter-kabur/
PHENIX
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/02/phenix/
C.L.A.S.H.
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/05/30/c-l-a-s-h/
And then the legend that is WAMPUS!
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/05/25/hexagon-comicsthe-legendary-wampus/
Jean Marc: First, when you decide to be a professional, you write whatever you’re being paid to write, so being in Hollywood, we were lucky to be able to write film articles, non-fiction books, short stories, comics, cartoons, film scripts, etc. I’m not saying we’re equally proud of everything we did – there are a couple of cartoons I’ve virtually never watched again since we wrote them – but overall, I think we’ve done OK, and I’m really happy with a comic series like TONGUE*LASH which is really unique, or the DC Elseworld “German Cinena” trilogy.
In the case of what became Hexagon Comics, the story is simple. In 2000, Thierry Mornet who was then editor-in-chief at SEMIC S.A. which had taken over the old Editions Lug, asked me to resurrect the old characters I used to read as a kid. You bet I was thrilled! So from 2000-2003 I was like the head writer & managing editor (under Thierry) of line of new stories featuring Phenix, Kabur, Dick Demon, Wampus, etc. and I created some new groups like Strangers and Hexagon.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Semic went out of business at the end of 2003 and the original creators of the characters and I and several authors got together and started a syndicate or an association to exploit our properties. Under French Law there is no such thing as work for hire (yay!) so reclaiming the rights was perfectly legal. So I started with the idea of reprinting the classic stories (which Semic had not done) as well as some of the new stories we’d created. I did eight reprint books in English in a smaller paperback format, but I stopped because, a) it took too much time to translate & re-letter the strips, and b) a few years ago Diamond decided to no longer carry our books.
However the French reprint series, which is done in a Marvel Essential-like format is quite successful and that one, I intend to continue for the foreseeable future.
Terry: Now, you’ve not been content to just leave it at reprints. I was surprised to walk into a comic shop in 2003 and see the first issue of the full colour Strangers comic published by Image Comics. I’d heard of C.L.A.S.H. and vaguely recognised some of the other characters. I looked at the assistant, I think it was Chris Rice and said: “These are French characters!” So I got my standing order set up as I didn’t want to miss an issue!
(Image Comics, 2003)
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 |
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 |
 |
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My first question is –I’m guessing that you both approached Image Comics with the project: did they take much convincing?
Jean Marc: That was entirely Thierry Mornet’s doing. Semic was publishing several Image books in France and it was structured as an exchange. We gave Image all the films lettered in English, and the only thing they had to do was print & distribute. They did rather well, starting at 8000 copies and finishing at 6000 which wasn’t bad for characters no one had ever heard of on that side of the pond.
Terry: Now, we’ve mentioned that you got hold of these old characters and I’m guessing you and Randy thought uniting them in one consistent comic universe would be cool. Creators can be a bit “odd” when it comes to others using and developing their characters did you get any problems?
Jean Marc: To give some historical perspective, the “Stan Lee” of Editions Lug, if you will, was its co-founder, co-owner, head writer & editor Marcel Navarro. His “Roy Thomas”, if you will, was Claude Legrand who came in the late 60s, started FUTURA, and created quite a few of the characters. Later, Claude went on to write several novels and was also the translator of all the CONAN comics in France. Claude is the one who first crossed over Jaleb and Time Brigade in one story. So when I came in in 2000, the idea of a shared universe was totally undeveloped, but not inexistent. Claude passed away a few years ago but I had a chance to talk to him and correspond with him, and he and the other original artists such as Luciano Bernasconi (who was the “Jack Kirby” of Lug to carry on with the analogy) have all been thrilled with what I’ve been doing. In fact, even today, Luciano keeps drawing stories for us in the “classic” style. He did an origin of Futura a year ago and is now doing an episode about young Kit Kappa. We’ve had a terrific relationship with all the “old” artists.
Marcel Navarro. Below -sent to me years ago so I don’t know who to credit, but its a rare photo of Navarro at the LUG offices.
Below: Thanks to Jean Marc -a photograph of Claude Legrand!
Terry: Mike Baron and Steve Rude created Nexus –they had no problems with your using him?
And a final question here: why did it end with issue 6 in the English version?!
Jean Marc: Of course we received the permission of Mike and Steve to use Nexus! I don’t think they minded at all. Steve told me he liked Jay Stephens’ version of the character.
Initially, SEMIC only did 6 issues in color, hence that’s what we gave Image. I had done one more issue in B&W, plus the origins of Starlock also in B&W, but we didn’t feel like going to the expense of coloring them just for Image.
Recently for the French TPB, we colored #7 and created an all-new issue #8. The Starlock Origins, I had reprinted in B&W in the tpb reprint of Starlock, but we’re having it colored now and we’ll reprint it again in a one-shot Starlock issue of HEXAGON UNIVERSE next year.
Terry: I did get a shock when I found that some of the characters published in Hexagon’s collections have several volumes in French. But this was nothing compared to my shock on finding, accidentally, Wanga Comics: http://www.wangacomics.com/
The number of comic titles and characters was a little mind-blowing. Can you tell me about Wanga Comics –what is it’s connection with Hexagon Comics?
Jean Marc: Wanga Comics is a small French publisher which was doing its own creator-owned comics, such as LE PATROUILLEUR and NOUVEAUX GARDIENS and wanted to expand its line, but didn’t have materials or resources, so we teamed up 50-50 so to speak, sort of like with Image: I provide the books; they print & distribute them. I continue the reprint line of TPBs in black & white, they’ll do all the new stories in color. It’s a good arrangement.
We have two bimonthly mags planned: one HEXAGON UNIVERSE is a 64-page rotating character mag like the old Marvel Super-Heroes, featuring different characters every issue; the other is a classic 32-page comic featuring the STRANGERS. #1 will be released at the Angouleme Comics Fest in January 2012.
above -a teaser courtesy of Jean-Marc
Terry: I think it’s a pity comic fans will not try comics because they are not in English. I’ve got Chinese, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Polish –lots of foreign language comics but not understanding the languages never ruined by enjoyment!
So what titles are you currently working on that you’d recommend and can you reveal anything about future plans –Cinebook The 9th Art, under Olivier Cadic have proven that not only can English translations of French language comics prove interesting but they also sell! Maybe a route for Hexagon to take in the future?
Jean Marc: My friend Steve Bissette has been discussing incorporating some of our “classic” stories in his TALES OF THE UNCANNY “1963” spin off project because they are after all authentic, genuine old comics from the 60s. Otherwise, I’m afraid that with all the French projects in the pipeline, I haven’t had the time to pursue the American market lately.
below:cover by J-M. Ponzio
Terry: Anything we’ve not touched on you’d like to mention?
Jean Marc: Leaving comics aside, I’d like to plug some of the books (I mean, prose novels) published by Black Coat Press which should appeal to folks who like Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, etc.
Every year we put out an anthology of literary pastiches in which pulp heroes and villains meet. It’s called TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN. There are 7 volumes to date with #8 coming up in December. Look it up:
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/talesshadowmen01.htm
It’s really exciting! We also have collections of stories with such great pulp heroes as The Nyctalope, Doctor Omega, Sar Dubnotal… Again, the perfect complement to comic book heroes.
Terry: Jean Marc –many, many thanks for taking the time to answer some dumb questions and hope to see yourself and Randy, or Hexagon, at a British convention some time!
Jean Marc: I’d love to be invited! Ryan Air has cheap fares from Carcassonne (near where I live) to London Stansted. If someone wants me to come over, I’d be happy to do it.
Terry:There you have it -if the organisers of the International Comic Expo want to have a really good international feel invite Hexagon Comics and Jean Marc Lofficier!
photo of Jean Marc Lofficier from “Le bleu du ciel en hiver” which can be found here with links to other pages (all in French):
http://castelneau.canalblog.com/archives/2009/04/19/13434774.html
photo of J. M. & Randy Lofficier from the Black Coat Press site (in English):
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/lofficier.htm
Hexagon Comics:
http://www.hexagoncomics.com/books.htm
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