Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, kickstarter

A Love Letter To British Tele-Fantasy Of The 1960s In Comic Book Form

Published Sun, 16 Aug 2015 12:00:50 -0500

The Imperium by Tzvi Lebetkin and Stefano Cardoselli on IndieGoGo at http://igg.me/at/Imperium. Campaign ending – September 5th 2015. Publication date – December 2015

Tzvi Lebetkin writes,

Many, many years ago, my dad innocently mentioned that a show was being rerun (or as us Brits called it, 'repeated') that I might quite like, called 'The Prisoner'.

Now, 30 or so years later I'm recreating the iconic 'Prisoner' opening sequence as part of my new comic project – The Imperium – and I found myself asking if my dad would have mentioned it at all had he known what an impact it would have on my life?

You see, much to his chagrin, (like many of you reading this), I never really liked the 'normal' things. Football just bored me to death, and try as he might to instil a love of the great game in me, by schlepping me to White Hart lane to watch Spurs play every Saturday, and spending what must have been a small fortune on season tickets for me and my sister, nothing really took. (Although I did enjoy the fry up lunches we went to before the game at a local greasy spoon cafe).

I just never got what was interesting about watching a bunch of people kick a ball around for 90 minutes.

Conversely, watching Paul Darrow valiantly and completely authentically purr his lines in Blake's Seven was, is and always will be INCREDIBLY interesting to me. It didn't matter that the production values were almost non existent, like much of the British tele-fantasy I grew up adoring.

And the truth is I really don't know why?

But that's really the central theme that I'm trying to address with The Imperium – my abiding and enduring love for British tele-fantasy of the 1960s, expressed in comic book form.

What we've done with this book is deconstructed some of my favourite iconic characters, and then rebuilt our characters from there – retaining their essence, but coming up with something new and independent of their inspirations (much in the same way Alan Moore did with Watchmen, when he couldn't use the Charlton heroes, so he invented his own that strongly echoed their influences. Blue Beetle becoming Nite Owl and so on).

And then we put them all together in one supergroup and see how they all play together – and the results are, well, surprising and interesting, and not in the least bit like watching football.

What I feel gives this project a fresh spin on something old, comfortable and familiar is my creative partner – Stefano Cardoselli. Now, Stefano is not a blubbering fanboy like myself, just a great artist that can deliver a kinetic, thrash metal thrill ride – that counter balances the very genteel sensibilities of our heroes from the sleepy British, Downton-esque, heartlands.

Stefano and I have been working together off and on for many years, most notably in Heavy Metal, and more recently in our fannish Dr Who spin off strip – The Ice Warriors (what, you haven't seen it??? Dude, it's FREE – click on over to www.theicewarriors.com to check it out now!).

Why become a backer?

Well, other than it be a stonkingly awesome and fun comic book – especially if you love the output from that period, we have a perk that we're super excited about, and don't think anyone has ever done before.

That is, as a backer you become a partner with us, and get full access to the entire creative process as we produce the pilot, and then try and get a series in production. Think of it as the ultimate comic book reality show! You get to see the scripts, the designs, the pencils, the inks – everything as it happens in real time. You get to see what changes from inception to page, and SOOOO much changes – and here's an interesting things I've picked up whilst making comics, it almost always the last minute, off the cuff, changes that make the biggest difference.

You get to come with us as we pitch it the series to publishers.

You are, in effect, our producers – and as such we have an obligation to report to you to show you what and how we're doing.

Not only that – but you get to give us your input, and if it's an idea we like – it'll be used! This actually happened the other day with one of our first backers, who had a great suggestion of something he'd like to see, and it was a great suggestion that we're now running with.

One of the wonderful thing about the age we live in, is the fans have really taken control of the object of their fandom. Gone are the days of kneeling by one's bed side and praying that a new super cool project gets green lit by Lew Grade (and you hoping they just don't screw it up). We're offering you a ticket on the insanity train that is creating comics – and just hope you'll take us up on it and come with.

It's just Bleeding Cool!

All the above is just pretty darned cool – but still not cool enough for Bleeding Cool! So we'll be offering for a limited time a special 'Bleeding Cool edition' which will come with an exclusive cover, plus several of Stefano and mine's comics strips, some of which have never been published, lovingly restored – and that's on top of the extensive making of section and our Ice Warriors strips.

But wait…There's more

If you haven't guessed, we are just SO in love with this idea, and our backers that will help make it happen – so we're throwing in one more special perk as well. We're randomly selecting a lucky few backers to receive sketches by Stefano. Here's one he did the other day, and I personally think he went way above and beyond (I said, Stef, mate – do a like a 5 minute con sketch, and this is what he came up with).

So jump on board the Millennium party bus with us and lets see where we end up!