Posted in: Comics | Tagged: breathtaker, Comics, dc, light brigade, marc hempel, mark wheatley, peter snejberg, peter tomasi, vertigo

Two DC Comics Find New Homes

The Light Brigade by Peter Tomasi and Peter Snejberg was published by DC Comics in 2004, collected and then republished in 2009. Reprinting a book allows DC to keep ownership of the comic for a longer period, but now it seems DC have published enough of it, Tomasi and Snejberg have the rights back and is now being republished again from Dark Horse. Snejberg has has a reputation for action horror but at the time Peter Tomasi was rather underrated, before gaining critical acclaim on the New 52, for rather poignant writing on Batman And Robin, and raw varied emotion on Green Lantern Corps. This edition may give his new fans a chance to discover his previous work.

There's a war in heaven and Earth is the battleground in this original supernatural action adventure/horror story set during World War II.  This epic tale revolves around a ragtag squad of U.S. soldiers that must recover the mysterious Sword of God, a heavenly artifact coveted by angels and demons, before the descendants of fallen angels disguised as Nazis. If they aren't successful, the world will be destroyed. It's a good thing they've got a mysterious, immortal Roman Centurion fighting on their side to even the odds.

It's not the only book to make the jump. Breathtaker, by Marc Hempel and Mark Wheatley, was also published by DC Comics, but a decade earlier in 1994.

Due to government experiments, the beautiful girl Chase Darrow is addicted to finding true love. She is incredibly dynamic, with all sorts of men falling for her. The problem is, loving her means death. Her lovers literally age and die, though happy and blissful. Chase is traumatized by this but it is hard to fight her addiction.

Chase comes to the attention of the world's first actual super-human, called The Man. He is crass and self-absorbed, a polar opposite of Chase's core personality.

And although it now has a new unnamed publisher, they are using Indiegogo to fund restoration work. They explain;

Negotiations have just completed for one of the largest publishers in the world to print and distribute the finished, remastered book.  Once the remastered book is delivered to the publisher, they will get it into as many sales outlets as possible around the world. But a tremendous amount of work must be done before that can happen.

The real work is only just beginning … and this is where your help will be so necessary. At the time Breathtaker was originally published, graphics computers were the size of a car and very expensive – way beyond the budget for this graphic novel. So Mark painted the pages in watercolor and gouache on ⅛-inch thick board. The line art was transferred to giant film positives and an unholy art sandwich was sent to the color separator for printing.

The next step was absolutely horrific for any artist! When the separator got the color art boards, they had to strip the surface layer of paper from the board so that they could wrap it around a spinning drum scanner. That's right – they were ripping the art boards, and stretching the paper in the process! The results were okay to good, but never perfect. And in the years since, the paper and the film have changed sizes so that they do not match today. The pages are being carefully re-scanned and will be digitally manipulated to finally get a perfect marriage of the line art and painted color. In a number of cases the art is being retouched by Mark Wheatley, to remove damage and dirt, and even – in a few frightening instances – repair pages that were torn in half when the original color separator wrapped it around that scanning drum! The remastered Breathtaker will finally present the art as it was always intended. Nearly as much time is being invested in this process as it took to create the work in the first place! But it is worth the effort to finally get it right.

They only reasons these books have found new homes is that DC Comics don't think enough people want to read them any more. Why not prove them wrong?

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