Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: aliens, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10, Comics, Criminal Macabre: The Third Child, dark horse, dave stewart, David Mack, Denis Kitchen, Dream Logic, entertainment, eric powell, Fight Club 2, harvey kurtzman, Jim Gibbons, Nicholas Brendan, Patric Reynolds, rebekah isaacs, scott allie, The Goon: Occasion of Revenge, The Jungle Book

Discussions With Scott Allie – Dark Horse's Comedic Triumph In Buffy Season 10, Axes Out In The Goon, Facing Time In Captain Midnight, Staying Scary In Aliens, Monster-Heroes In Criminal Macabre And More

Following on from a massive state-of-the-industry interview with Scott Allie, Editor-in-Chief at Dark Horse recently here at Bleeding Cool in which we talked about SDCC strategies, defining creator-owned as a term, and many upcoming books, Allie joins us again to talk about a whole new slate of upcoming titles, from Buffy Season 10 #7 where Zander and Spike engage in plenty of witty reparte, to Eric Powell's gravitas in The Goon: Occasion of Revenge, the impending arrival of Aliens: Fire and Stone #1, turning points for our hero in Captain Midnight #15, Criminal Macabre: The Third Child exploring monsterdom, and lastly, the much anticipated collections of Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book and David Mack's Dream Logic. Oh, and also the wide-ranging and highly celebratory presence Dark Horse are going to have at Rose City Comic Con and why Scott Allie is prepared to "sit" NYCC out this year (Spoilers!)

It's interesting that looking over so many upcoming books comparatively, it was easy to see some similar resonances occurring in complementary style this autumn: conflicted relationships and revenge loom large, re-examining the past to define the future, and also testing the mettle of our central heroes at a core-level. It's going to be an explosive autumn for Dark Horse books. Let's hear what Scott Allie has to say about them:

On Buffy Season 10 #7: Xander and Spike as Roomies

Hannah Means-Shannon: My writers recently did an interview with the writers on Buffy Season 10, and they told me those guys were hilarious together…

Scott Allie: Christos [Gage] and Nicky [Nicholas Brendon]…

HMS: Yes. And then seeing the actual comic this time, #7, I just can't believe how much humor is packed in there, every panel. That is some great writing on this one.

SA: When we did the writers summit back a year and a half ago, Nicky was there, and Joss Whedon was there, and they both talked about how much they loved the time in the show when Xander and Spike were together a lot. They thought that those guys together were just hilarious. When we talked about how the living arrangements were going to change in the comic, and that those two were going to be roommates again, we thought, "We really have to do something with that." We knew from the get go this season that we were going to have an issue that was going to focus on the two of them, and we knew that would be one of the comics that Nicky would come in to write with Chris.

Nick and Chris get together face to face to work on scripts, and a lot of that is Nicky throwing funny stuff at Chris and the two of them amping it up. But not all of it makes it in because some of the humor is more lewd than a Buffy book would usually be. But they're always testing where that barrier is.

I love this issue, and I think Rebekah Isaacs did a great job with it. She does such a beautiful job with the characters. It's a funny one.

HMS: Well, the artwork really goes well with the humor, because it's got a slightly lighter color palette in this issue and it's got movement. Every panel seems to be moving quickly, cutting between different characters. So the pace fits the dialogue being very snappy.

SA: Yeah. Before we hired Chris to work on Buffy Season 9, he had never really been a Joss Whedon fan in particular. He knew Joss more from Astonishing X-Men than he did from his own creations. Sierra Hahn and I were talking recently about how we hired Chris, not really knowing him well at all, and he's really become an expert on the voice and the feel of it all in such a great way. It just gets better with Nicky the way they are working together.

HMS: Would you consider this issue a good jumping on place for readers?

SA: We try to make each issue of Buffy as accessible as we can because we know that a reader who is familiar with the show, but hasn't been familiar with the comics, might look at a huge stack of books and not feel like there's a way in, an entry point. But it's actually Issue #8 that's going to be a particular jumping on point, and we're promoting it as such. For this one, hopefully someone who's not up to date on the comics, but just knows the relationship between Spike and Xander, could pick it up and still get a lot out of it, while being brought up to speed on the changes in the world that they are dealing with.

HMS: The only thing that new readers might be surprised by is Xander's relationship with Dawn, but there's nothing that puzzling about that. Her distance from Xander in this issue is explained and he's dealing with that.

SA: Yes, that's been the big struggle for them for a little while. The relationship between Dawn and Xander started in Season 8 at a time when Buffy was kind of alone in the world and starting to think maybe she and Xander could get together. But then Xander and Dawn got together. And some of the fans reacted, saying "But Xander has known her since she was a little girl." A lot of people had problems with that choice. If, when she first appeared at age 14, and she'd gotten together with 18 year old or 19 year old Xander, that would have been creepy. But now these characters are both into their 20's and I think a lot of us have had partners who were 4 or 5 years younger. The fact that they've know each other their whole lives—does that make it skeevy? That's up to the reader, I guess.

HMS: Well, it does allow you to think of Dawn as a grown up at least, which is helpful to the plot.

SA: She's been through a lot. One difference between her and other characters is that she doesn't have any kind of super powers, but she's been through a lot and she can stand on her own.

There's a bit in #7, the bit where women lead Spike and Xander back to their lair, and regarding what happens to them there—when Chris turned in the script for this, it blew my mind because I had a dream very much like this when I was young, about 9 years old, complete with strange sea life. I asked Chris, "Oh my God, did you have the same dream?" We grew up somewhere near each other in Massachusetts, and I wondered if it was something in the water.

HMS: I'm sure if you were talking to Mike Mignola, he'd probably tell you all kinds of folklore stuff that's probably very psychological.

SA: Mike's got the folklore background, but he never really talks about the psychological or even cultural implications of the stuff. He just likes his monsters, but yeah, he'd probably be able to relate it to some story somewhere.

On The Goon: "Occasion of Revenge" And Going Dark Places With Axes

HMS: Let's talk about The Goon a little bit, which I'm familiar with through seeing Eric Powell at conventions and hearing it talked about, but otherwise it's new to me, until I read these issues, #1 and #2 of "Occasion of Revenge". Like Buffy, actually, the real focus in these issues is relationships and here, the dark side of that. They seem to indicate that all the curses gravitate around revenge regarding relationships.

SA: Eric's tone on The Goon varies a lot. The Goon can be the funniest book on the shelves some months, but more than once it's been the darkest thing out there. When Eric did the graphic novel Chinatown, the only Goon story he did as an original graphic novel, that book was dark. Eric really doesn't hesitate to dig in to that. For a book that's often poop jokes and sex jokes, often presented in a child-like way, Eric is always willing to go down some dark alleyways. "Occasion of Revenge" is a really grim arc for the character and for everybody in the town. I think one of the cool things Eric is doing with the series is digging into the concept of revenge and grudges from a lot of different points of view.

He did a little Instagram/Twitter/Facebook campaign as Issue #1 was launching where he would take shots of each character and say, "Willie Nagel is out for Revenge. The Goon is out for Revenge." Every character in the book, for one reason or another, has something they want to make right and they are going about it in different ways. But the art is beautiful and Eric is doing the whole thing himself. At times, he's had different colorists like Dave Stewart. Here he did the colors himself and the lettering. Some of the drawing in the most recent issues is just spectacular.

If you look through Issue #2, there's this one full-figure shot of the Goon where he's standing on these stairs holding an axe. And the rendering on the clothes and that big right arm is so beautiful.

HMS: Yes, it says something like, basically, he wants to go after the Coven with an axe, and you just see him standing there. It's a still moment, and actually there are a lot of movement scenes and combat scenes in those two issues, knock down, drag out stuff going on. He's almost super-heroic in that scene. You see him from slightly below.

SA: Eric gets a lot from Frazetta, from Mignola, from Kirby, and all that power is really there in this story. Because emotionally, it's a really powerful story, but just in terms of the fun, genre, kick in the head of it, Eric's really letting it all loose. And in terms of coloring technique, he really varies it. There are some pages that are mostly gray, and then he'll drop in some shocking, flat color. The whole thing creates this incredible mood. And it's funny—Willie Nagel, the zombie with the banjo, finally gives his backstory here. He's always been a comic relief character. And his backstory is just bleak as hell. I don't think it's without humor, since Eric manages to get some comedy in there, but the dark stuff is dark.

HMS: There's such a contrast between when he describes himself as a kid in this arc as a free spirit, with a lighthearted nature, and then a scene where he's standing with a razor. I won't give away too much about what happens in his backstory, but that's just incredible—the contrast. It almost reminds me of The Killing Joke, anyone on a bad day, right?

SA: It's beautifully written, and the art makes you believe in it so much.

HMS: It makes you believe it's possible for people to go through those rapid transitions.

SA: In these issues, there's this big sense of foreboding, like when the Goon's girlfriend is worried about him. There's a sense that with characters who have histories as bleak as this, anything could happen to the Goon. Anything could happen in this town, and anything could happen to him at this point, as he prepares to take on the Coven of witches.

HMS: Actually, yes. I don't know what his mortality status is, actually, but you definitely feel this could be life-threatening to him.

SA: Well, the Goon doesn't have superpowers. He's just a really strong thug, who's smarter than people give him credit for. And he's been playing a game with this town for a long time, but he's facing an adversary stronger than anything he's had to deal with before.

HMS: Is it unusual that he has a love interest in this arc? Isn't he usually by himself?

SA: He's usually by himself. The main person who he plays off is Frankie. There have been a couple of girlfriends in the past. It never ends particularly well. So we'll see how it goes with this. He did meet and fall for this woman rather quickly over the opening of "Occasion of Revenge" and she'll play a big part as it continues.

HMS: Yes, because we know nothing about her, literally. And that creates tension as well. Do we trust her? We really don't know anything. She hasn't gotten the backstory like some of the other characters in this arc.

SA: There a lot of side-stories told within stories here to make the stakes clear for these characters. But we'll learn more about her in this four-issue arc.

HMS: Will it be collected in a trade edition?

SA: Yes, Goon stories are usually 4 issues and collected, and we're looking to do bigger, deluxe editions later on.

On Captain Midnight #15, Catching up with Time, And Black Sky Impending

HMS: Let's talk about Captain Midnight.

SA: You've been someone who's been interested in these books from the beginning, right?

HMS: Yes. I'm into Captain Midnight. I was really personally excited by Victor Ibanez' return here for the covers in #15.

SA: Yes, he drew those first few chapters. He did a really great job of establishing the world and characters, so Jim Gibbons, the editor on Captain Midnight, was really psyched to bring Victor back for these covers. The interior artists have been really solid too. Manuel Garcia is doing the interiors on #15. This one has brought back a special character. In the "Two Past Midnight" graphic novel that Duane Swierczyski wrote and Jim edited, a team-up book that brought Ghost, X, and Captain Midnight together, a villain named Tempus turned up. He's been brought back in this issue.

HMS: Yes. And he's kind of a reasonable foil for Captain Midnight, who could potentially win in this situation. They have this big war of words against each other in this issue, where they are talking about intellect and action, and having strange arguments about what beats what in a fight.

SA: And they're both inventors, so they're well paired against each other, and both rely on technology somewhat. But Cap is definitely the smarter of the two and possessed of more foresight.

HMS: Which he points out, as he's doing things, which is fun. It reminds me of how Sherlock Holmes occasionally does that.

SA: So you caught the issue where Rick Marshall died?

HMS: Yes.

SA: Rick was a fan of Cap's in the past, and he believed in Cap when everybody else was uncertain about this guy. Rick believed in him the most, and was willing to follow him through anything, but paid the ultimate price.

HMS: Which creates perhaps a kind of mental transformation that we'll see in this issue where he starts talking about the past versus the future.

SA: Yes. Cap's relationship to the past and the future is unusual because he jumped 70 years through time, and hardly anyone he knows from back them remains alive, and the world's completely changed. But he was a Futurist, a real idealist, who believes that mankind could achieve anything. So when he showed up in 2013, he was mostly just disappointed that we hadn't made more advances. That our squabbling and our pettiness had held us back from what he thought we would have been able to achieve by now.

This issue, #15 also starts to hint at the return of a big villain from old Dark Horse superhero books who has been slowly popping his head up in X and other places. The Captain Midnight, Ghost, and X books were all really done to stand on their own, but we've been showing ways in which they're all connected. And the introduction of this villain in Cap #15 is the first indication of how they are going to come together in a much bigger event and crossover.

HMS: Is this a separate event and crossover, thematically, than Project Black Sky?

SA: Oh, no, this is the whole point of Black Sky.

HMS: I was wondering if that was what you were getting at.

SA: When we did the crossover that Swierczyski wrote, with Tempus, the villain who returns in this issue of Cap, that was the minor crossover. But now we're starting to get deeper into what the crossover is about. There are some big changes and shake-ups in the Captain Midnight title coming soon.

HMS: Yes, this definitely feels like a transition issue because of his mental state and what he says near the end. It's like he's reached a conclusion point, and a resolve, to no longer obsess over, as you mentioned, the failure of mankind, and his disappointment. Like he's accepting that to become more empowered.

SA: Yes, and to participate in the modern world. There's this funny interaction between Cap and a waitress in #15, in a small town diner. It's the first time he's tried to function like a normal guy living in the modern world, and he's a little rusty, but it's his first step towards living a life again. Because he hasn't been focused on that. He's been focused on a quest that he had to abandon for 70 years and now he's trying to pick it up where he left off. And it's a mess for him.

HMS: Something I've always thought about Dark Horse's revival of Captain Midnight, and then looking at the original Captain Midnight character from the 30's, is that to make the story modern and make it new, you have to turn that absolutist mindset of his and examine it to make him three dimensional enough.

There are a couple of lines of dialogue in this issue, I think when he's talking to Tempus, where he articulates that there is more to him than that. That he's having to face that truth. Because it's more difficult to think in gray than think in black and white, but it goes along with his decision to be part of the modern world. He has to change if he's going to be.

SA: Yes, and the people he's been around, the people he's been with over the past year or so of the book, have all been trying to get him to see that in their own way. But he's been resisting because he comes from the World War II generation and he really believes that the enemy is wrong, and his country is right. But it's just a much more complicated scene than that. Especially if he's going to ally himself with people like X.

On Aliens, Avoiding 'Red-Shirt' Syndrome, and Tying It All Together

HMS: I finally got to read Aliens #1! With art by Patric Reynolds. What's his history with Dark Horse?

SA: Patric sent me samples at one point, and I get a lot of samples so they didn't jump out at me. Then Duncan Fegredo saw his stuff online and sent me a link to it. He said, "You've got to check out this guy. This is the kind of guy you need for your books." He was thinking of the Mignola books. Patric did an Abe Sapien one-shot, and a short story related to Witchfinder that I wrote, but that was it in the Mignolaverse. The minute I saw Patric's work I loved it. It had a real painterly approach to drawing and a grip on storytelling that I thought was much better than a lot of what painterly guys achieve. I kept hunting up stand-alone jobs and he did a series of short stories. He did a Professor Broom story for B.P.R.D, and then I got him on a Serenity story that Patton Oswalt wrote, his first full issue. Then when we were working with the Let Me In crew, he seemed like the perfect choice for that.

I've managed to keep him pretty much busy full time, and right now he's doing Aliens with editor Philip Simon. He moved to Portland from Salt Lake City and he's in a studio here. I've wanted and managed to keep him busy, but getting him on Aliens was a long-term goal. I felt like he'd be perfect to deliver the atmosphere for an Aliens story. That really dark and mysterious feeling of the first movie, and Patric's done a really great job with that here.

HMS: For me, when I see it, it's a combination of the detail that makes you experience realism, and that's matched and thrown together with a wood-block or engraved feeling when it comes to the shadows used. The two are fused together as somewhat opposite things so you get these two experience. For me, that creates a real "horror" feeling. It's really scary.

SA: He's great for that. I wanted Aliens to have that feeling, not to just feel like a sci-fi book, but one with a real dark mood. Dave Stewart loves Patric's stuff, so whenever possible I try to put them together. On this one, Dave's techniques really complement the brushiness and the painterly approach that Patric has. Dave can make the whole thing look like an oil painting at the end of the day.

HMS: I noticed what Dave was doing with the color orange. It isn't an extreme pop, but it comes up gradually, like a sunrise through a dust storm or something, but it suddenly moves into a full, intense orange in some of these heightened moments.  And it's the only warm color, but it's a dangerous color.

SA: Dave makes good use of the color orange across different books. He uses it for contrast and accent here. Patric also was involved when we got all the writers together to work on the Aliens/Prometheus books. He was the only artist there for all of the writers meetings. So, Patric had a big hand in designing the characters through sitting with us the entire time and hearing all the discussions about the characters. He even named most of the characters. We'd talk about the characters in the meetings in terms of their jobs, their archetypes. And the next meeting, Patric would come back with drawings, and just as a way of talking about them, he'd write a name on the drawing. With a couple of exceptions, we liked his names and those wound up being the names of the characters.

HMS: It's interesting, because in this issue, we're getting people picked off. We're getting a whittling down to the reveal of who the "main cast" is since this is the introduction. Until we know who the people are who are going to be important in the book.

SA: One of the things about these Aliens books is that you need a certain amount of fodder. You need a lot of bodies there who are going to be picked off. So Patric and Chris Roberson, the writer on the Aliens book, did a great job of establishing a lot of people, but focusing on three main characters in this book. They did a nice job of distinguishing those three, but not treating the other characters like they were merely cannon fodder.

HMS: There's enough mystery to it. They cloak it very well so that you're not sure yet who the main characters are going to be.

SA: That was something we focused on in meetings, making sure we didn't treat the other characters as if they were just "red shirts," although we did sometimes refer to them as that. If you treat them too much like "red shirts," it becomes too clear to the reader who is going to live and who is going to die, and we wanted the readers to have more investment in who was going to stick around.

HMS: It adds to the horror. It affects you more.

SA: One of the tricks of the story is that Aliens #1 comes out two weeks after Prometheus #1 but it actually takes place earlier. And there are things that happen at the tail end of Prometheus #1 that tie into Aliens. There's a nice big reveal at the end of Prometheus #1 and you start to find out what it's all about when you pick up Aliens #1. The stories are written to be independent, but there are a lot of intricate ways in which the stories build into each other. We wanted to walk the line where you could pick up one story if you're only interested in that title, but you get a lot out of it if you put them all together. And there will come a day down the line when we do put them all together in one big, fat book. And that's the book I'm excited to have in my hand.

At one point we were thinking about releasing the four #1s across the span of four months but we thought that would take too long and people would get more out of being able to soak the whole thing up over the course of 6 months, with Kelly Sue DeConnick's one shot that ties it all up.

On Criminal Macabre: "The Third Child" #1, Cal's Childhood, Becoming a Monster, and Demon Babies

HMS: Regarding Criminal Macabre, I know Steve Niles' work more generally, though I'm new to this series, however, this is a #1 of "The Third Child" arc and I could pick up what was going on. It really seems to be about Cal descending into this monster role, that we see in this issue is something that he's been fighting since childhood.

He's been fighting the monsters of the world. It becomes kind of emotional on one level if you think about the character too much, because on one level he's been fighting them, then we're told that he needs an intervention, basically, because he's turning into a monster.

SA: Cal actually died not too long ago in one of the stories, and he came back almost immediately as a monster. Which is ironic and tragic for him since his whole life has been spent fighting monsters. Steve really went to a new place with this book with that opening scene in issue #1. We see Cal as a young guy, and we see this older man, who's a predator, coming after him. It makes Cal so much more real, in a way, giving him a scene like this. And over the course of these four issues, Cal is going to have to examine what he's made of. In doing so, he's going to confront the death of his family and questions of his origins. Even his very birth is a scene that we'll relive later on in the series.

In this four-issue arc, Cal is torn between embracing the monster inside him so he can fight what looks like the fight of his life, or rejecting the monster in himself, because he's been fighting monsters his whole life. After having done a lot of comics with Cal, Steve has been taking him through some pretty massive changes. Killing him, and making him come back as a monster was one of the things that really set him apart from other characters of his kind. Hard-boiled detectives who fight monsters is a little bit of a familiar trope in comics otherwise. Christopher Mitten has been the regular artist on Criminal Macabre for some time, and the teamwork that he and Steve have developed, along with Michelle Madsen, the colorist, has created a great collaboration. Steve really knows where he's going with Chris and knows what he's going to get from him. There's a lot of brutality in the book that Chris does a great job with.

HMS: [Laughs] Yeah. It's the contrast between the cuteness and the brutality that kind of smacks you in the face. There are these little, cute creatures in this issue who are just horrible, loathsome things.

SA: Steve realized a while ago that he'd done a couple of stories with demon babies or monster babies, and when he was doing the second one, he decided there really needed to be a connection. And that started leading up to this book, "The Third Child" where the two babies are waiting for the third demonic child to present himself so that they can take control of their power and make mankind miserable. More miserable … This is the monster war that the book has been building toward for a long time, but it's not the monster war that anyone expected. So this book pays off something we've had building for quite a while.

HMS: I was very impressed by the artwork on this book. Between that opening segment with Cal as a child where everything looks kind of "normal" in a way, and then the flip to the noir, nightworld settings, it really shows Chris's versatility.

SA: And I love how Michelle Madsen colors this. She's worked with artists who tend to use a lot of black on the page, and she uses bright colors with them, which creates a lot of contrast. There's so much black on the page already that her bright colors don't give it a My Little Pony feel. The contrast with Chris's big chunks of black keep the mood oppressive, but there's almost a kind of warmth to the horror of it all.

HMS: That's a great way of summing it up.

On Kurtzman's The Jungle Book, Mack's Dream Logic, and How Fight Club 2 Came About

Well, regarding upcoming collections, I knew about The Jungle Book by Harvey Kurtzman. Is Denis Kitchen the editor on that?

SA: Dark Horse works with Kitchen Sink Press in a kind of packaging capacity, but Mike Richardson and Denis Kitchen go way back, and that's kind of the beginning of the partnership. And there's an editor here, Philip Simon, who also works on it.

HMS: Anything about the choice to do this particular one now?

SA: Well, we've been working on it a while and it's taken some time to get it just right. But Denis has a really close relationship with the Kurtzman estate. In fact, a long time ago, when I did the Little Annie Fannie reprints, Denis was our point person on that because of his close relationship to Kurtzman and access to the original material. Denis has some crucial relationships with the Eisner family and the Kurtzman family. He was instrumental in getting this book out. I can't wait because the copy of The Jungle Book that I have at home is this beaten up Kitchen Sink paperback. We're really going to pull out the stops to make this a beautiful edition of the book.

You hear a lot about people claiming who the first person was to have created a graphic novel, but Jungle Book is, to me, the first graphic novel. It's a collection of about four stories the length of a comic each, and they are drawn together in a beautiful way with some of the best writing and drawing that Kurtzman ever did. Incredibly funny stuff, and really poignant. He's one of my biggest influences. He's one of my favorite guys in the history of comics.

HMS: What's the status on David Mack's Dream Logic?

SA: David is someone I met a Dragon Con some years ago, and I actually helped get him a job doing these motion comics for Showtime's Dexter TV show. They were looking for someone with a particular style. When I was on the phone in my hotel room, and they described what they needed, I thought, "That's a tall order to fill." But then I went downstairs and bumped into David and thought, "No. Oh my God. David Mack is exactly what they are looking for." So he ended up doing a number of webcomics for them. He did Willow covers for a mini-series for me and it was a lot of fun working with him on that. We just kept talking about doing more things together, and obviously the big prize is always Kabuki, so with the 20th anniversary of Kabuki coming up, I asked him to do a story for Dark Horse Presents. And Richardson ended up slotting that into the new DHP #1, so the 20th anniversary of Kabuki is the first new story in a little while. It's gorgeous, runs 9 pages, and follows the new Geoff Darrow story in DHP #1.

HMS: That's out this week, right?

SA: Yep. David and I kept talking about other things to do, and he hasn't been doing anything with Icon lately over at Marvel. The Dream Logic series he did there never got collected, soI said, "Let's bring out a beautiful hardcover of that." And he's added some new material for that to flesh it out a little bit more. It's going to include some of the artwork he's done more recently for Neil Gaiman and the promo piece he did for us for Fight Club. David really does it all himself. He's doing all the design work for the Dream Logic collection, he's very hands-on in the layout of the book. So with us, it's just a matter of getting all the files in and talking things through with him. He's a joy to work with.

He's also part of why Fight Club 2 wound up at Dark Horse. He and I were laying the groundwork to do Dream Logic and other things, and he's good friends with Chuck Palahniuk. Once I told David I was meeting with Chuck, he put in a good word and it helped the whole Fight Club 2 thing come together.

HMS: We've actually had David Mack on Bleeding Cool a lot recently, which I'm very happy about, first in an interview about the Temple of Art Kickstarter with Bill Sienkiewicz, and then in a San Diego interview about Kickstarters and the 20th anniversary of Kabuki.

On the Dark Horse Encampment At Rose City Comic Con And Scott Allie's Happy Reason To Avoid NYCC

HMS: Ok, so lastly—what's your game plan for upcoming comic cons? Rose City's coming up? New York?

SA: The Rose City Comic Con is a smaller show than New York, but it's growing really fast. It takes place here in Portland, and Ron Brister, the guy who runs it, is in a great position because this town has so much comics talent. We really want to participate in the show in a big way. TFAW, our sister company, is throwing a party on the opening night of the show, on Friday, and then Dark Horse has a party on Saturday. And we have a lot of programming. We're going to be doing some Predator, Aliens, and Prometheus stuff at the show because all the writers live in town and are going to be there. Ron does a great job. Even though so many artists and writers are here, he's bringing in a lot of great creators from around the country. Alex Maleev, who is drawing Hellboy and the B.P.R.D., is coming. He used to live in Portland a long time ago, but he's coming from the East Coast. There's going to be a spotlight panel on him where we talk about Hellboy. And I believe he's doing a t-shirt for the show.

HMS: Oh, boy. Now I'm jealous since I won't be there.

SA: Well, you'll be at the New York show, and of course we'll be there too. We're laying out all our programming for that now. But I won't be able to be there, since I have a baby coming, who's due right before the show.

HMS: Ok! Well, congratulations. Well, that's the best reason possible to miss it.

SA: I can live with sitting a year out.

Buffy Season 10 #7 is currently listed in Previews with item code: JUL140119

The Goon: Occasion of Revenge #3 is currently listed in Previews with item code: JUL140128

Captain Midnight #15 is currently listed in Previews with item code: JUL140084

Aliens: Fire and Stone #1 is currently listed in Previews with item code: JUL140054

Criminal Macabre: The Third Child #1 is currently listed in Previews with item code: JUL140126

Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book is currently listed in Previews with item code: AUG140114

David Mack's Dream Logic is currently listed in Previews with item code: AUG140029

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