Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: Easy Pieces, Neil Dvorak, shadowman, valiant

Did You Catch Indie Comics Divo Neil Dvorak's Feature In Valiant's Shadowman 12?

Published Sat, 16 Nov 2013 08:00:28 -0600

Last updated Sat, 16 Nov 2013 10:27:36 -0600

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's all in your head anyway if you're Neil Dvorak. The man has been producing the extremely offbeat and mentally engaging comic Easy Pieces via the webcomic platform ActivateComix (which you can read for free) and also in self-published print for the past couple of years, and you may have seen him at New York Comic Con with a full scale desk and office suite that looks like something Dashiell Hammett would have envied.

But then he went further by launching an animation Kickstarter in his same clear-line style on offwhite backgrounds that somehow suggest both distance and chlaustrophobia. His first Kickstarter failed, but he dusted himself off, launched again and immediately succeeded the second time around.

I heard a rumor that Dvorak had some doings with Valiant, but I found it so surprising that I really had to see it to believe it. He does, folks. And it's a doozey. How does a guy who's used to telling you massive truths about the universe through strangely angled lines and poetic conversations manage to craft a story for a Valiant title like Shadowman? Well, let's remember that Shadowman deals with the land of the dead, and is particularly known for its strong artwork.

But I can't help imagining what Dvorak made of this challenge. It would involve monkeys. Sinister monkeys. And a totally collage-like effect of art styles to create psychological depth and eerie mythical archetypes. Let's have a look.

Creepy down-at-the-heel street performer doing magic. Check. Group of would-be fuck-up kids/teens. Check. Three different fates. Check. Talking monkey. Check. I'm all in. Let's hope this isn't the last bomb that Dvorak drops on the mainstream because it's very very interesting indeed. Go out and get your Shadowman #12s. It may well be a collector's item before long…

And in other news, Dvorak also recently animated the intro and outro to the newest music video for The Lumineers. You can see that here:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgkusNV0GLg[/youtube]

Hannah Means-Shannon is Senior New York Correspondent at Bleeding Cool, writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org, and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress. Find her bio here.

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