WHAT IS THIS? and
WHY HAVE I POSTED IT?
Well this was
drawn by my good friend,
Ben Bates, and it is a variant cover for the
ROCKSTEADY AND BEBOP issue of the
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles VILLAINS
Micro Series.
And I'm posting it here because... I WROTE THIS!
That's
right, I wrote the ROCKSTEADY & BEBOP comic! That's crazy right? I
mean, I really doubt you could have seen this one coming. Maybe you're
not surprised that I've ventured into the writing side of comics, but
BEBOP & ROCKSTEADY? That, you couldn't have seen coming.
I've mentioned
Ben Bates a few times before on this blog. In the last
few years Ben has been one of the best things to ever happen to the
Sonic the Hedgehog comics. He's also worked on
Megaman,
Star Wars
Adventures, New Crusaders, My little Pony, and
Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles. Though our published works are very different stylistically,
Ben and I have a lot in common regarding our thoughts on the art of
comics and the philosophy behind what drives us. Like I said, we're good
friends.
How this comic came to be was: Ben heard from the
Turtles editor at IDW that they were open to pitches for their upcoming
VILLAINS micro series. Ben went to our mutual writer friend,
Jeremy Barlow (They'll Bury You Where You Stand!) to see if he wanted to pitch something. We were all excited
about this opportunity. I was excited because being close friend with
these guys often means I can have some influence over their work and I
was looking forward to throwing around ideas for Ninja Turtle stuff. But
Jeremy had schedule conflicts and couldn't do it. That's when I said to
Ben "let's pitch something ourselves. What have we got to
loose?" Ben was thinking the same thing. Nether Ben nor I have ever
written a comic for anyone other than our selves, so we thought our
chances of pitching something and having it be picked up were slim, but
we decided to try anyway. So we started brainstorming.
We didn't pitch a Rocksteady & Bebop story right
away. We thought that maybe the B&R issue was going to be too
important and that we wouldn't be allowed to write it. So we opted to
write a pitch for the character SLASH.
Our first pitch wasn't excepted because it didn't fit
with where the series was headed. So we wrote another Slash pitch. Again
it was shot down. Bobby, the editor, told us that they were more
interested in a B&R story. So we decided to give it a try.
Ours wasn't the only B&R pitch Bobby had gotten, and
at first, it didn't look like he would be going with our story. After
the three pitches we had done, if he didn't go with our story we weren't sure we would pursue it any
further. But, he did decide to give us a chance! And just like that, we had the job and the pressure was on.
So yeah, Ben is drawing this comic, the story
has been collaborative, and I wrote the script.
I've
got a whole lot more to say about this. It's been a learning
experience, I'll put it that way. It's been positive. More about all
that later.
Anyway, this is exciting, guys! This is a big deal
for me... I hope it doesn't suck.
This issue will be out in October. Stay tuned for more
ROCKSTEADY & BEBOP news!
Oh and here's the main cover for this comic. Our cover better represents what this comic will be like, but this one has our names on it which is cool to see.
Blogged and blogged!
PS-- AMNIA CYCLE-- first installment-- tomorrow
