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The release date is in for Comixology. The Nobodies #1 will be available on the platform - February 12th.
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Issues for The Nobodies are now available for purchase. The price includes shipping and handling.
Thanks to everyone for the support!
http://www.ascendantcomics.com/store...ilable%29.htmlComment
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The Nobodies is now available for purchase on Comixology for $1.99 - http://www.comixology.com/The-Nobodi...al-comic/73859Comment
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The first review for The Nobodies is in...
"John and his team have an interesting gem on their hands. Page by page John displays a solid grasp of comic book story telling that made it a joy to read. The choice of revealing Iggy’s identity late was smart and John’s display of suspense building and establishing mystery along with using clues given to strengthen his story were phenomenal. John has much potential in the world of comics. Ger’s artwork has a bit of grime that resembles what I would expect of The Walking Dead which adds a flair of filth needed to truly get our cast.
Easily this comic is a must read for comic fans and while it won’t change the medium it is exactly the kind of story that is missing; an honest, throat grabbing draw into an unknown world."
4.5/5 stars
http://www.impulsegamer.com/nobodies-1-review/Comment
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You named a character after Iggy?!!?!?
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Pick up the issue and find out, the PDF is on sale for $1!Originally posted by Booster Beetle View Post
http://www.ascendantcomics.com/store..._%231_Pdf.htmlComment
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Originally posted by Booster Beetle View Post
That is literally the first topic of conversation at the top of the first page.Comment
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Well I didnt see that obviously
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Another positive review for The Nobodies...
http://comicspectrumdigital.wordpres...endant-comics/Rating: 3.5/5 – A different twist on surviving after the Rapture.
by ComicSpectrum EiC Bob Bretall.
There have been a number of comic stories told about life after the Rapture occurs (a concept in Christian mythology where good people are taken by the Lord into Heaven and those who don’t quite make the cut are left behind on Earth). The Nobodies puts a different twist on this concept. No ‘Hell on Earth’ (which was best done in Rick Remender’s Strange Girl), no overtly religious overtones. The story is set 20 years after the Rapture and while the souls of the righteous theoretically ascended to Heaven, their physical bodies were left on Earth devoid of all higher cognition, emotion, etc. There is no ‘spark’ that makes them human any more, they are the nobodies of the title. You can download a PDF for a cool $1 from the Ascendant Comics web-site:
http://www.ascendantcomics.com/store..._%231_Pdf.html
Writer John Vinson starts us off with a decent grounding in the mythology of his world with a full page letter from the current President of the United States (or POTUS). This explains the Rapture and in a twist on POT-US explains how marijuana (which he oversees cultivation of) has become a decent force for bringing the world together in this post-apocalyptic world as a commonly accepted form of barter currency. We move from this directly into our introduction to Iggy, our main protagonist. He wakes up in a warehouse with no memory of the past 20 years and needs to make his way in the world. As he is introduced to other characters and the status quo of the world over the course of the issue we’re brought up to speed right along with him. Ger Curti’s black & white art is stylized and less grim than we’ve seen in many other post-apocalyptic series. It reminds me a bit of Joe Staton, or in a more current example, the art of Robert Love & Dana Shukartski on Image’s Alpha Girl. Curti is a bit heavy on the blacks in quite a few places and his figures seem a stiff in places, but the art does it’s job overall.
There are shadowy factions with interests all over the place, maybe a few too many concepts thrown at the reader over the course of this issue, but generally preferable to them being slowly dribbled out over 6 to 12 issues. I think Vinson made a good choice in getting all the ideas out there and hoping he can intrigue readers with some of the notions he’s come up with. It’s got me interested in seeing more. Now it will be a matter of seeing how the creative team can develop and explore these ideas as they build the story and further flesh out the world they’ve introduced.Comment
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The positive vibes keep rolling...
Vinson and the other creators have put together something truly intriguing here, and a title I’m looking forward to reading more of as soon as it becomes available.
http://bigcomicpage.com/2014/02/26/c...dies-1-review/The opening to The Nobodies takes the form of a handwritten note from 96th President, a drug dealer by the name Marshall Howard. The note is written in calligraphy, learned by Howard specifically to make it “old-time and legit”, and succinctly lays out the state of the world this story inhabits. While the font itself is highly stylised and perhaps a little tricky to read in places, the story has a fairly simple hook. The Rapture – the Christian ideology where ‘the just and the pure’ will be called up to Heaven – has taken place, leaving the remaining inhabitants of the world in chaos and disarray. Which would explain, presumably, why a lowly pot-dealer has managed to ascend to the rank of President of the United States (or POTus, to use a smirk-raising acronym).
We are introduced to this strange, post-rapture world through the eyes of Iggy, our main protagonist and a man who is as unfamiliar with his surroundings as we are. Waking up with no memories of the last twenty years, Iggy stumbles his way through the world, clearly shell-shocked by his disturbing surroundings. The whole “waking up to the apocalypse” trope has been used a lot in the past (The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, etc.), but writer Vinson handles it skilfully here, managing to differentiate this story from its predecessors by ramping up the mystery and adding a few interesting wrinkles to the tale.
The artwork, provided here by Ger Curti, has a distinctive grayscale look, and on occasion has more than a hint of Charlie Adlard to it (a definitely compliment, in my book). While the level of detail suffers somewhat in the smaller panels, the larger spreads and close-ups show Cuti’s gift for emotion and dynamic facial expression. He also does a great job with the action sequence later in the book, keeping the panels flowing beautifully once the bullets start flying.Comment
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Nobody? Johnny, you ARE somebody!Comment
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Here's a Q&A I did, provides more insight into the comic. Along with some of the inspirations behind it.
You can read the entire post, here - http://filmbuffopinionatednerd.blogs...hn-vinson.html
Steve Hash: You look at the cover here and right off the bat, amongst the great artwork is a giant marijuana leaf...
John Vinson: (Laughs) Yeah, There it is. It's pretty apparent.
SH: One question that comes to mind is the comic being used in anyway, even in small ways, to comment on politics of marijuana?
JV: Um, not the politics really. It's basically... the marijuana aspect, it's a part of this world now in a different way than we know of. Because in this world, there is no law. There is nothing to say that marijuana is wrong. There is nothing to say that this is wrong or that is wrong. Which, you know, is pretty standard with any post apocalyptic tale. I guess the marijuana for me was the way to say, without the law to say that this is wrong, it could just as easily become a staple of society as it could be seen as detrimental. You know like alcohol! Alcohol is a part of our society. It's legal. There are bars. There are places you can go to drink this alcohol.
SH: Well even alcohol was illegal at one point....
JV: Even that was illegal! Right? They turned that around... it is so arbitrary in a lot of ways. But in this world, marijuana is actually a currency. I don't really dive into a lot of that in the first issue. I think the only marijuana use in issue one is Tom and Dr. Edeman smoke a joint and pass it back and forth with each other. But you'll see more of it as the book goes on. That is just kinda the details of the world I wanted to establish. Marijuana is very prevalent. Everyone smokes it. Everyone is fine with it. It has become a part of society.
SH: Do politics in general even enter into the the theme of the comic?
JV: Politics some. It's not the main drive of the book. There are going to be a couple of storylines later on in the book... it is a seven issue miniseries. So I think around issue three or four, there is going to be a little more politics involved. I don't want to dive into that too much, but it does get somewhat involved but nothing heavy handed really.
SH: So how did this idea come to you? Where did the story come from?
JV: Actually, it was started by two things. First would be a book called The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I highly recommend it. To me it is the greatest piece of fiction ever and there is a chapter in the book where they talk about humanity and the loss of it. One of the chapters in that book is called "The Devil. Ivan's Nightmare.' One of the characters, whose name is Ivan, has a hallucination of Satan. It talks about how Satan uses out aspects of humanity against us. That was kind of what drove me to write this book because the essence is about humanity. What makes us human. What are the negative things that makes us human? What are the positive things? If you take that all away, what are you left with?
SH: That is fascinating. Was this always going to be a comic book? Or did you have something else in mind?
JV: Yeah it was always going to be a comic book. It's funny another inspiration was Led Zeppelin's "Dancing Days." That is where I got the idea that I didn't want to do zombies because to me... I didn't want the threat to be the undead. I didn't want it to be something supernatural.
SH: That actually was going to be a question I had. Where did the idea for the Nobodies themselves come from?
JV: It came from when I was actually listening to "Dancing Days." It's weird, it actually came when I was listening to music. It didn't come to me when I was reading a story, or watching a movie, or watching a television show. It happened while I was listening to this song. It made me think, the Dancing Days: You are having fun and it's free spirited, all these positive emotions. What would happen if all these emotions got taken away? All the emotions gone from a person. Like what if I am sitting across from a person. You know, I am not sad or happy or angry. I am just sitting here. Nothing is looking back at you.
SH: It almost would be traumatizing.
JV: Exactly! It is! Funny you say that because part of that comes into play too about how people react to the Nobodies when the Rapture happens which is the event that they call it in the book.
SH: You said that there are seven issues, are we ever going to see the actual "rapture" happen? It's mentioned obviously.
JV: No. This takes place 20 years after the event.
SH: So might we see flashbacks or anything like that?
JV: There might be flashback maybe. I think most of the flashbacks if they happen are going to be mentioned in the POTUS letter. Whoever has read the comic and seen the POTUS letter at the beginning, he actually is a character in the comic and he will talk about it and flesh out the world a little more. I have a couple of ideas for flashback stories later on. For the most part, I am not going to dive too much into the details. I am going to focus more on the world as it is now.
SH: So you come up with the idea of the comic, how did you go about funding it? Because self starting your own comic book has become a thing here lately. How did the process go?
JV: A lot of savings. A lot of... praying. (Laughs). Let me tell you one thing about comic making is that it is very expensive.
SH: Really? What's the ballpark figure on making one?
JV: Well if you don't do the art yourself, and you find a competent artist and a competent inker. Without coloring, $1,500 to $2,000. And that is if you are doing a single issue, which is usually 20-22 pages. For me it was pencils, inks, and grayscale.
SH: You planned for the no color then?
JV: Yeah. That decision wasn't made from the funding. It was made because I didn't think the story required color. I didn't think color would help it. It is not a very vibrant world. Like when you are reading Superman. You wouldn't want to read a black and white Superman book. To me, a lot of stories don't require color. I did grayscaling because I wanted to give it more depth. I looked at the inks and there just wasn't a depth on the pages. I gave it a little bit of gray scale just to kind of give the world a bit more layer to it.
SH: So who is the artist? How did you hire them?
JV: I put out a advertisement for this website called Digital Webbing (www.digitalwebbing.com). I highly recommend it if you are ever looking for artists. If you ever post there, you'll receive hundreds of postings there and they all want to work for you of course. So I posted it there, and I was going through the submissions and right off the bat you can just see... you know (shakes his head no)... and some people are good but they just don't fit your style. But with Ger (Curti, the artist for the Nobodies), it's funny in that you don't think with an artist that there is going to be so much back and forth, but you really want someone to get the gist of your book. So it was down between him and a couple of other artists and so I talked to each of them and kinda got their take on the book and if they were into it or not. But Ger and I clicked together right off the bat.
SH: Was it his art that just popped right out at you?
JV: Oh yeah! When you send out advertisements for these artists on the website, they'll send you something right back that they have worked on. Most of it is stuff that you know won't work at all but with Ger's stuff, I couldn't get it out of my head. You know, it is like with anything artistic that you like, it clicks. You don't think about it too much. It just works.
SH: So where is the story going to go? Is it going to go worldwide? Because in the first issue here, it pretty much stays in Buffalo, NY for the most part. Do you see it go to somewhere like London? Could we see this from a worldwide perspective?
JV: This actually is a tough question to answer. I can't give specifics because a lot of the places that Iggy and the other characters travel to are actually part of the story. So I don't wanna give away any of the story but I can tell you it definitely expands beyond Buffalo. I can give you a little more insight into the next issue. What's going to happen is that there is going to be a lot of violence in the next issue. A lot of movement in terms of things that are going to happen to the characters. So it is going to be... the second issue is going to be much more action packed. It definitely gets bigger that is for sure.
SH: So what is next? You said that there is seven issues but what is next after you finish this run? You got any other comics planned out ot any other ideas?
JV: I do have a couple of ideas for sure...
SH: What kind of genre you thinking about doing?
JV: Superheroes. I can say that. It's funny though. As hard as it is just to get one issue done, I can't even fathom.... unless this takes off where I can do it full time... fathom what the next series is going to be. But I do have some ideas to keep things going beyond The Nobodies that is for sure.
SH: Cool thanks very much.
JV: Thank you!Comment
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The Indiegogo campaign for The Nobodies is a go! Feel free to share it or contribute. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.
http://igg.me/at/thenobodies1/x/6975413Last edited by JohnnyV; 04-18-2014, 08:46 PM.Comment
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Would anyone be interested in editing for The Nobodies? It would be for the second issue. Being an editor would get you a credit in the comic, and you'd be able to say you were an editor on a comic! If you're wanting to break into the industry, any and all experience is a help.
I know a lot of you are connoisseurs of comics and know how to point out continuity errors and other things important to script creation.
If you're seriously interested, leave a post here or shoot me a message.Comment
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