New Millennium History

One of the best things that I did with Wild Stars Volume 3 was to hire Frank Brunner to do the covers I've got to tell you, he pours his heart into his work. For issue #2, Frank spent an entire day inking just the detail on the tree!

Frank Brunner can turn a 15 minute concept sketch into a comics art masterpiece!

I'd done a lengthy search for an interior artist, including talking with local university art professors about their graduate students. But when these artists got a blank look on their faces whenever I'd talk about things like two-point and three-point perspective, I started looking at artists with actual professional comic experience.

David Brewer did the first two issues of Volume 3, until scheduling conflicts with the skateboard company for which he was also producing artwork forced him to drop off the project.

That's when I hired an even more experienced veteran of the comics industry: Dave Simons. Below is my sketch for his first page of artwork, and the final page as published, without type.

Since I'd always planned to draw the art myself, I probably gave both Frank and Dave way more information than they really needed, with scripts that made Alan Moore look lazy, plus page sketches and lots of photo reference.

One day Frank called and asked if I gave Dave as much information as I gave him. I replied that Dave had just asked me the same question about Frank. They each took that overload of information and did a magnificent job of getting it right. As artists, they understood how I had a vision for the final product, and gave me exactly what I wanted to see. They were the definition of what it means to be a professional!

With Wild Stars Volume 3, I did a lot of different things to make these books unique. Each issue was done as a stand alone story, telling the tale of a different group of characters, with a beginning, middle and end. When the series is put together, you get an even bigger story.

Another trick was making the covers interactive with the stories. With the scuba diver cover on #3, because of the impending shark attack, most people don't notice the diver is digging Spanish treasure out of the coral. In the story, this wasn't revealed until the last panel.

Issues #4, #5 and #6, the covers all featured scenes not seen in the interiors, or scenes presented from a different angle. In #6, a bad guy who's been chasing the Spanish treasure gives a young lady a lighter that secretly contains a bomb detonator.

As you've probably already guessed by now, I was pleased with Dave Simons' work, which accounts for 3/5ths of the Wild Stars: The Book of Circles graphic novel.

Frank introduced me not only to Dave Simons, but also to colorist Tom Smith, whose work embellished Frank's covers. Tom's work was so impressive, that it justified printing all the covers of Wild Stars Volume Three on what was at the time the biggest, and arguably the most modern printing press in the state; a Heidelberg Press at Peerless Engravers of Little Rock.

Another technique that I used to print the covers was what's termed a 'work and turn,' where the front an interior covers are printed side by side on a 36" x 48" sheet of paper. After one pass through the press, you simple flip the paper and run it through again. In this way I was able to also print color on the inside covers, without the costs of another plate change and press setup. This enabled me to run the colorful landscapes of Mary Tierney as an extra bonus throughout the run. And her paintings weren't just colorful decorations. Some related directly to the story. But that, as they say, is another story. Right now..

In 2004, I collected all of the Wild Stars comics into one graphic novel: The Book of Circles. I titled it that way, because this series was meant to be read more than once. With all the multi-layering done to the story over the long years that it took to tell it, once you know what's really going on, you can read it again and see all the stuff in the background and details you never noticed the first time through. No matter how many times you read it, I can still point out little details that you missed... it's that packed.
For the novel, the comics were presented for the first time in the proper order to be read. The Portfolio opens the story, followed by Volume 3 #1, Volume 1 #1, Volume 2 #1, and then Volume 3 #2 through #7. Additonal pages were added, and refinements done to hopefully smooth some of the transition of having three different interior artists interpreting the different characters.

As one reviewer commented;
"It's the equivalent of a long line of dominoes being set to fall -- events happen one after another in such rapid succession..."
Which is why I've always joked that if you wear a hat when reading this, then you'd better fasten your chin strap!

But wait!
That's not all of the new Wild Stars stories so far in the New Millennium!
Force Majeure: Prairie Bay is a tale of the Wild Stars in the near future, set in a dead sea bottom named Prairie Bay, during the early years of Martian colonization.
Force Majeure is a void clause written into contracts to protect against unforseeable and castastrophic events. When such an event occurs -- start running!
The art is by Armando Gil, who is one of the finest artists I've ever seen when it comes to employing three-point perspective.
Tom Smith once again produced the spectacular colors for the cover.
Prairie Bay was originally intended as a trilogy, but issue two remains unfinished to this day, and, not wanting to again switch artists in the middle of the story, I'm now considering other avenues to finish this tale that is so important to the future history of the Wild Stars mythos.

Available now is the 25th Anniversary Hardcover edition of Wild Stars: The Book of Circles -- Recalibrated....! Presented below is a sneak peak at some of Dave Simons new work for this book, both before and after rendering, but without type. And, yes. For those who've already read the graphic novel once, that is indeed the tribe of Tall Trees and Morning Mist on the boat, witnessing mankind's first great migration into the stars. If you haven't read the book yet, when you do, this is only another example of why the Graphic Novel is sub-titled The Book of Circles.

Below is the dust wrapper for Wild Stars: The Book of Circles -- Recalibrated!
In addition to new work by artist Dave Simons, this 25th Anniversary edition includes previously unpublished Wild Stars comic pages, plus a new introduction by John Jackson Miller, writer of Iron Man and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic comics, and several other features new to this edition! This is the definitive Wild Stars!

Ask your favorite book or comics dealer to order it:

ISBN #978-0-9748403-1-4

Or follow this link to purchase the Wild Stars on Amazon.com!

If you want to be reading the story in the next five minutes, all of my comics and the 25th Anniversary collection are also available in Digital Format. Simply follow this link to the Amazon Kindle edition

To read more about the special features of the expanded digital version of Wild Stars: The Book of Circles graphic novel, check out the new Hidden Wild Stars page!

(2023 update: The Amazon Kindle edition replaces previous digital versions with the latest Cirsova edition.
Immediately after this version's release, The Book of Circles spent a week being ranked #1 on Amazon
in multiple categories--sometimes at the same time.)

I was flattered when the statewide newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, recently featured me on the front page of their High Profile section.

Reporter Ron Wolfe and photographer Stephen Thornton each did an excellent job.
Stephen made me look good, and Ron made me sound even better.

Hearing accolades about both stores, and reading how my Wild Stars comics were "superior to many of the comics offered by the Big Three publishers,"
was far more flattering than anything I might ever have expected.

Thanks to all for the compliments.