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Trekker: Thirty Years and Counting on the Trail with Mercy St. Clair

Published Sun, 25 Feb 2018 10:00:49 -0600

Ron Randall writes,

"If you come and work for us, we'll pay you your rate, and you can do whatever you want."

That was it: the Kryptonite sentence. The sentence against which I had no defense, could offer no resistance. I knew I was in trouble. Real trouble. I didn't know that, eventually, I'd need to call on Kickstarter to help me out. But that's just what's happened.

It was 1985. I'd just returned to my hometown, Portland, Oregon, tucked away in the then still-sleepy Pacific Northwest, from my years living in New Jersey. I'd gone to the darkest heart of New Jersey as a scruffy young comics wannabe to learn at the feet of the master himself: comic legend, and a personal comics hero of mine: Joe Kubert. Everything you've ever heard about Joe Kubert and the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Arts is true. Everything. I know. I was there.

I'd learned enough to have a steady gig at DC drawing the Warlord book, and felt I was riding pretty high. Then: the Kryptonite sentence happened.

It was at a local comics show that summer. Two tall guys come sauntering up to my table where I was displaying some of the work I'd been doing for DC. They were Randy Stradley and Mike Richardson, of the then brand-new Dark Horse Comics. They were looking for some established pro's to create books for them. And it was they who uttered the aforementioned Kryptonite Sentence, and set me on the path that I've dedicated the heart of my career to ever since: telling the stories of my tough, complex science fiction bounty hunter: Mercy St. Clair. That's right: I blame Mike and Randy.

When they said those words, I knew that was a sentence I'd never hear again in my professional life, and I've been right about that for over thirty years now. So, try as I might to NOT create a dream project of my own to do for a small "start-up" black and white comics company in my home town when the only sensible thing to have done would have been to stick with the steady gig I had rolling for me at DC, it turns out I was too dumb, or too smart, or too weak or too reckless not to. I couldn't shake that phrase, "anything you want to".

What would I want to? That's a pretty big question. What would you want to? Do you know?

Well, it turns out, I did.

I've always love science fiction. From my little-kid days watching Jonny Quest Space Ghost cartoons, to discovering the Flash Gordon comics by Al Williamson that looked and read like no comic books I'd ever seen before, to reading Dune and Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, to later to seeing science fiction being vividly realized on the big screen in Star Wars, Alien, and BladeRunner. It was always sci fi for me. And now, in the mid-eighties, when virtually no one was doing sci-fi comics, I could take this creative blank check and cash it. So I did.

I've always loved women. No wait. That didn't come out right. What I mean is, I've always loved the women characters I've been able to draw in comics. The problem was, they were always relegated to role of the "side kick" or love-interest, or eye-candy. I wanted to see one of them in the center of the action—to be the character that drove the narrative: To be THE STAR. Why? Well, why not? That was a juxtaposition that just seemed fresh and cool to me. I asked no further (remember, I wasn't asked to create a comic I thought would sell, just one that I'd want to do. So sue me: I'm a literalist.).

[IMAGE 05: TREKKER PITCH ART]

I designed the character: a sharp, cool customer who was stunning but dressed for her job and kept her clothes on. I came up with a series premise (ambitious in scale, but vague enough that I could easy my way into it gradually), and pitched the thing to Dark Horse: TREKKER, about Mercy St. Clair, a female 23^rd century bounty hunter with a hard past and a questionable future. She'd be based in a very nourish, BladeRunner-y city, and would tangle with everything from local crime lords, to mass murderers in the blasted wastelands, to off-world smugglers, and more. Eventually, she'd get entangled with the larger forces shaping the course of her entire civilization. And meanwhile, she'd be on a separate journey, the one we're all on: figuring out who we are, what makes us tick, and what we decide to do about it all.

Against any sound commercial instincts, Dark Horse green-lit the project. God bless them. Because despite the challenges we've always had in finding a place for this "black sheep" of a comic, it's given me the most intensely rewarding and meaningful work in a career that has also included stints on some of my favorite characters—Supergirl Wonder Woman, Justice League International, Star War, even a brief dance with Spider-man.

But that's all babysitting someone else's kids. Trekker is my own. It's personal. Which is why, after a twisting, torturously sporadic publishing history stretching over thirty years, I'm turning to Kickstarter to tell the rest of Mercy's journey.

TREKKER: CHAPELTOWN is the first of these new stories, and it works as a great jumping on point for new readers as well as a thrilling new ride for longtime fans.

CHAPELTOWN opens with Mercy as a young woman poised on the edge of revelations. Revelations she hasn't got a clue are coming. It begins with her decision to leave her gritty home city on a quest for answers into her past.

The trail takes her to a raw frontier world. There, she gets caught up in a deadly struggle between the oppressive, system-ruling Council and the local lawman, a burly, strangely charismatic Sheriff.

Mercy's always been in control. Especially within herself. But Chapeltown finds her disturbingly off-balanced. A lot of that has to do with pheromone-sparked feelings that are tied up with that sheriff. A lot more of it has to do with how little Mercy knows about what's really going on inside herself.

A desperate chase and a fatal confrontation in the desert beyond Chapeltown leave Mercy battered and forced to confront some of those inner mysteries.

In the end, Mercy makes choices that will change her life and the arc of the entire series forever. And I can't wait to get it into the hands of Mercy' readers.

Kickstarter is a miracle for a creator like me, a guy with a book and a passion that doesn't seem to fit comfortably with a big publisher's plans.

And CHAPLETOWN is DONE—except for a handful of special pages, the story and art all ready to go to the printer right now. Once the Kickstarter ends, it won't take long to tidy up the details, get the book printed, and have it knocking on the doors of Mercy's fans.

And what awesome fans they are! TrekkerKickstarter.com hit its initial funding goal in less than 36 hours. The campaign runs through March 21, and it's now it's marching toward stretch goals, which will make the book even bigger and cooler. But more importantly, the better the Kickstarter does, the better and more quickly I'll be able to tell the rest of Mercy's stories.

With the help of Kickstarter and the direct reader support that Kickstarter makes possible, Trekker has finally hit its stride, and found the home its been seeking for thirty years. It's about damn time.

You can check it all out, and join the trail to Chapeltown, at TrekkerKickstarter.com.

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