INTERVIEW: Agent Unknown writer Bob Sodaro
When he's not asking, "Is Nothing Sacred?", Connecticut's Bob Sodaro ventures into the Unknown and into a War.
The veteran comic book writer, and author of the blog "Is Nothing Sacred?", is best known for his work with independent publishers.
He's writing AGENT UNKNOWN again after a 20-year hiatus. He's also writing WULF GURLZ, and is involved in the War of the Independents.
Mike:You’ve been writing for 20 years. How did you get started? How has the profession changed over your career?
Bob:Actually Mike, my professional writing career began almost 30 years ago when I became a copywriter for a CT radio station. However, I really count my “pro” status as a writer with an article that was published in Amazing Heroes #5 (1980 — which currently resides on-line in Blake Bell’s Steve Ditko tribute website. At the time I was working as the copywriter at a radio station in CT where I met a DJ named Mike Raub, who was also a comicbook fan. Raub introduced me to Mike Catron (yes, all the guys I know are named Mike). Catron was then working for The Comics Journal, which had just launched Amazing Heroes. I got Catron on the phone, and pitched him the Ditko story, and he bought it. This led me to submit articles to a couple of other fan mags, including The FantiCo Chronicles: Spider-Man, Videogaming Illustrated, Ahoy! (a Commodore 64 magazine) and eventually, Marvel Age. Over the years I worked for nearly every print comic-based mag produced in the ‘80s & ‘90s, as well as for several other collectibles publications.
As to how the industry has changed in the past 40 years it can be summed up in two words: the Internet. On the simplest level, when I started out, I would have to factor into my deadlines that I was mailing my article, sometimes across the country, via the postal service, and I would have to add how much time it would take to get them to my deadline. As time went on I began to use FedEx and Priority Mail to shave time off the delivery. These days with email, I can get my articles to my editors instantaneously. A freelancers dream! Also when I started out there were a dozen comic mags, now there are only a couple, and most of the news, information and press revolves around websites dedicated to comics and pop culture.
Mike:How has your style evolved?
Bob:I’d like to think that I’ve gotten better, more polished in my style. I believe that I have a better understanding of how to turn a phrase, and that I work a little bit harder to make my writing as smooth for the reader as I possibly can. Plus, I can now use the Internet to help me in not only contacting sources and conducting interviews (as we are doing with this interview), but as a research tool as well. These days while I still write magazine articles, I’m spending more of my time developing fiction stories, for comics, prose, and other media.
Mike:For those fans who are unfamiliar with Agent Unknown, what’s the character about?
Bob:First of all, Agent Unknown isn’t so much one character, as it is a series about a number of divergent characters who all work for a top-secret, international espionage group.
Personally, I’ve always been a big fan of high-concept spy stuff (James Bond, I Spy, SHIELD, etc.), but the concept of Agent Unknown really sprung out of a Ka-Zar (Marvel) comic that I read back in the early ‘80s. In that story, some nameless SHIELD agent doing his job died in the line of duty, and the thought struck me that we always read these stories about the super spy, but never of the regular Joe who is doing his job. So I started to craft a series of stories about this SHIELD-like intelligence organization where there are a bunch of different agents taking on various types of missions. In this concept, it is really the Agency that is the star, as the various agents’ adventures took place over the course of 30 years, and I would have different teams operating in different decades with decidedly different types of cases.
In the ’60s (towards the start of the organization) there was a pair of brothers named Jefferson Davis Seven and Andrew Jackson Seven (code-named Deuces & Jacks), in the ‘70s there was a female agent named Stacey Anne Duncan, and in the ‘80s there was an ex-Mossad Israeli named Yoseph Ben-David (who was never introduced in the original (Renegade Press) run of the series). My thought was to show how the organization itself (The International Law Enforcement Division, or ILED) evolved over the years. Unfortunately, the book got caught up in the mid-‘80s B&W glut, and it was suspended after only three issues.
Mike:What inspired you to bring it back after such a long hiatus?
Bob:I like to think that even with the title gone, the various characters who make up the Agent Unknown universe have never really been far from my thought process, and I’ve always toyed with the idea of somehow bringing them back. The ability to do just that was accorded to me by my long-time good friend, and business associate, Mark Mazz. I met Mark some 15 or so years ago when we were both working at Marvel (he was on staff and I was a freelancer doing a short-term gig in the office). We had kept in touch over the years and in 2006 Mark called me up saying that he had hooked up with a group called The Comicbook Artists Guild, and that he was going to be calling me to help him out as things moved forward. I said sure, and didn’t think much of it.
Then a couple of months later he contacted me again saying that he needed me to contribute an eight-page horror story to Psychosis! an illustrated horror anthology that he was publishing under the banner of Guild Works Productions. At first I begged off stating that I had really left the field of comics. I hadn’t written anything in almost a year, and I certainly hadn’t written any fiction in nearly 15 years. Mark wouldn’t take no for an answer, and insisted that I could do it. Well turns out he was right and I penned Never Judge a book… which turned out to be the first Wülf Girlz story. Well, I wrote a couple of more stories for Mark, and he kept hinting around that he really loved my Agent Unknown stories, and that he’d be interested in continuing the adventures.
Well eventually I got the hint and pulled out an old story I had written about 15 years earlier, staring two new characters named Springload (a very straight-laced, by-the-book Midwesterner) and Renegade (a Lakota Indian who was the direct descendent of a 1900s medicine man), and offered it to a fellow CAG member, Chris Torres, who told me that it was a great story, but the pacing was all wrong.
I told Chris to tear it up, and show me what he could do, and he did exactly that. He painted a beautiful eight-page story that appeared in CAG #7. He really did a beautiful job on both the story and the cover for that issue. Needless to say, I got so reved up by the initial sketches he showed me that before he was even finished I scripted a second story with these two characters. Then I went on to develop half a dozen new characters and have gone on to pen three or four more Agent Unknown-related scripts. The premise here is to generate enough new material to combine with the already published stuff, then package it all together and publish it as a graphic album which we can get onto Amazon or in bookstores and comic shops. I even have Dell Barris, the original artist on board to help revive the series.
Mike:What’s it been like writing the characters again – new ideas, new perspective? When is the next issue coming out?
Bob:Well, that’s actually the funny part; I’m really not so much writing the characters again, I’ve created a whole slew of new characters. Thus far I’ve really only resurrected one of the original characters, Stacey Anne Duncan, who is now much older than when I originally envisioned her. Then she was a brash young agent, newly with the Division, and now she is a Special Director, shepherding a new breed of maverick agents through the world of shadows and light. This is an entirely different world. The Division has aged, the world has changed, and there is a whole new paradigm as to how to deal with foreign threats and terrorists. This is the new world of Agent Unknown. As for the next issue, right now I have two or three scripts out with some artists who are considering the scripts, so some of that is up in the air as of this moment, but I hope to get another story or two out this year.
Mark has asked that I continue writing the two storylines that I was originally working on, and I’ve been trying, but I’m really having a very difficult time getting back into those characters’ heads. It was 20 years ago and the time was more innocent — I was more innocent, less jaded, if you will. The Agent Unknown stories I’m writing now are darker, grimmer, so it is taking me a bit of work to get back to where I was in 1987. Still, I’m looking at it as a writing exercise, and I’m really getting excited about working with them again, so we’ll see where it leads.
Mike:What is Wülf Girlz about?
Bob:Well, it is a classically-themed horror story brought forward to the modern era. As stated, it appeared in the premiere issue of Psychosis! a book where the primary intent is to deliver a relevant look at the fears that affect men and women in the 21st Century. The story itself deals with predators, prey, and a reversal of fortune. It is a morality play involving personal empowerment and, as it states in the title, not making snap judgments as to who, and what people are all about simply by how they appear. To tell more would be to give away the story itself. It was originally intended as a one-off story, but Mark, and Melvin Ylagan (another CAGer, and a spectacular cover artist), convinced me that there was more to these girls than I had at first envisioned, and now I have a second story in print, and probably 20 or more stories plotted out.
Mike:How did you get involved in The War of the Independents?
Bob:Through my involvement with CAG (and Mark Mazz), I met fellow CAG member Dave Ryan, who, inspired by Marvel Comics’ Civil War Event from last year, determined to launch a “Civil War” of his own. By gathering together various independent characters into one plotline and having them thrash it out in one epic story, Dave has crafted a six-issue limited series involving dozens of Indie characters. When I met him, Dave was just starting the war, and looking for creators who were interested in allowing him to “borrow” their characters for the story, so I lent Dave my characters Hope and Grace (the Wülf Girlz) for the purpose of the story. I’ve seen some of the art, and I’m really looking forward to reading the story when it comes out, later this year.
Mike:What’s been the reaction to your blog? And, why the name “Is Nothing Sacred?”
Bob:Well, funny thing about that, a couple of years ago I was contributing to a group blog, which wound up shutting down, but we were all forewarned that it was going to stop publishing, and it allowed everyone to archive off our own contributions, something I had actually been doing all along. I only had a handful of posts at the time (which I’m sure that no one was reading on my own space), but I really enjoyed posting, so I continued to post on a sporadic basis. I notified some on-line friends about my blog, and became surprised when I became aware that they were actually reading it and posting responses.
Naturally enough, as I became aware that people were really were reading it (and apparently enjoying it) I began to post more often. These days I post several times a week, and have a number of regular and unique viewers. The blog itself is mostly about Spider-Man as well as other comics and comic-related news and information. I’ve been reading Spider-Man since he first appeared back in 1962, and I have a nearly complete collection that stretches back to his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15. (I also have a film review column on PopThought.com). I have to say that I’m always surprised that folks are reading my blog and that it keeps attracting new readers. Given that I have as many readers as I do have, I try to change the look of it every few months to keep it looking fresh.
In fact, a few months ago, when Marvel decided to reboot and retcon Spider-Man (in the Brand New Day storyline) by having Peter Parker cut a deal with the Devil to end his marriage to Mary Jane (after 20 years of real-time) to save the life of his Aunt May it threw the Spider-Man community (including myself — I contribute reviews to SpiderFan.org) into a frenzy. Well, I was so upset about this that I made a number of posts about how angry I was. My point then (and now) was that while I didn’t so much mind that they were ending Peter’s marriage, I was upset at the way they were doing it, as it seemed to violate the basic tenants of the character itself. Well, I was contacted by a reporter for Newsweek.com, who then interviewed me for a story that she was writing on the subject. Not only did she quote me extensively, but she even posted a link to my blog in the story. Needless to say, I was pretty knocked out by the attention.
As to the name of the blog itself, well, it is actually the punch line to a cartoon that I saw in Playboy, years ago. In the cartoon, a number of people were kneeling down and praying in front of an altar. On top of the altar was an enormous zero. In the front of the altar, one character turned to another character and said, “Is nothing sacred?” I just always thought that this was hilarious, and when it came time to pick a name for my blog, I decided to use that.
Mike:What’s the comic book scene like in Connecticut?
Bob:I’d like to say that it is pretty exciting, but truthfully, it really isn’t. I’m in lower Fairfield County, about an hour outside of NYC but most of the funnybook folks I associate with are either in the city or an hour further into the State. It used to be that there were a number of comicbook shops in my area where fans could go and hang out every Wednesday to talk comics for an hour or so; now, not so much. Many of the comic shops of the ‘80s & ‘90s are gone, and these days most of the fellowship happens at conventions or online. Right now I’m chatting with guys all over the US, in Europe, and in New Zealand. For better or worse, Comicbook Nation has become a digital global village. The flip side of that, however, is that I’m now meeting all sorts of interesting folks, and getting more of my short stories published. Right now I’ve got three or four stories out that are being prepared for publication by publishers that I never would have met if not for the Internet community.
Mike:What are you reading these days, comics and otherwise?
Bob:Well, on the comicbook front, as I said, I’m still really big into Spider-Man (after 45 years of following his adventures, I simply can’t help myself). I do, however, read quite a bit of small press and Indie comics. Quite a bit of which are generated by fellow CAGers. I’m going to apologize in advance, because I know that I’m going to forget someone, but from my fellow CAGers I’m reading Andrea Grant’s Minx, Rachel Kadushin’s Heroes in Birmingham, 5 Shots by Jemir Johnson, plus anything published by Matt Ryan’s FreeLunch Comics (Bigger, Only in Whispers, Sky Pirates — Matt is a brilliant cartoonist who is also my artist of choice on Wülf Girlz). As a fan of the Highlander films and TV show, I’ve been following Dynamite Entertainment’s Highlander comicbook series, as well as their revival of the Painkiller Jane series. I’m a huge fan of Thom Zahler's Love and Capes (a romance/relationship story disguised as a superhero comic). The 99 from Teshkeel Comics, is a very well done series about a group of teens that is based on Islamic culture and society. Of course, Nexus and The Badger are back, and they are always fun.
My most recent non-comics reading material includes Steve Saffel’s beautiful coffee table book Spider-Man Icon, which is a compendium of everything Spider-Man. Steve is a former editor of mine (on Marvel Age and Marvel Vision), and he has written probably the best book on Spidey that I’ve ever read. I’m also currently enjoying a book called Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad —which I’m calling background reading for my own Agent Unknown series.
The veteran comic book writer, and author of the blog "Is Nothing Sacred?", is best known for his work with independent publishers.
He's writing AGENT UNKNOWN again after a 20-year hiatus. He's also writing WULF GURLZ, and is involved in the War of the Independents.
Mike:You’ve been writing for 20 years. How did you get started? How has the profession changed over your career?
Bob:Actually Mike, my professional writing career began almost 30 years ago when I became a copywriter for a CT radio station. However, I really count my “pro” status as a writer with an article that was published in Amazing Heroes #5 (1980 — which currently resides on-line in Blake Bell’s Steve Ditko tribute website. At the time I was working as the copywriter at a radio station in CT where I met a DJ named Mike Raub, who was also a comicbook fan. Raub introduced me to Mike Catron (yes, all the guys I know are named Mike). Catron was then working for The Comics Journal, which had just launched Amazing Heroes. I got Catron on the phone, and pitched him the Ditko story, and he bought it. This led me to submit articles to a couple of other fan mags, including The FantiCo Chronicles: Spider-Man, Videogaming Illustrated, Ahoy! (a Commodore 64 magazine) and eventually, Marvel Age. Over the years I worked for nearly every print comic-based mag produced in the ‘80s & ‘90s, as well as for several other collectibles publications.
As to how the industry has changed in the past 40 years it can be summed up in two words: the Internet. On the simplest level, when I started out, I would have to factor into my deadlines that I was mailing my article, sometimes across the country, via the postal service, and I would have to add how much time it would take to get them to my deadline. As time went on I began to use FedEx and Priority Mail to shave time off the delivery. These days with email, I can get my articles to my editors instantaneously. A freelancers dream! Also when I started out there were a dozen comic mags, now there are only a couple, and most of the news, information and press revolves around websites dedicated to comics and pop culture.
Mike:How has your style evolved?
Bob:I’d like to think that I’ve gotten better, more polished in my style. I believe that I have a better understanding of how to turn a phrase, and that I work a little bit harder to make my writing as smooth for the reader as I possibly can. Plus, I can now use the Internet to help me in not only contacting sources and conducting interviews (as we are doing with this interview), but as a research tool as well. These days while I still write magazine articles, I’m spending more of my time developing fiction stories, for comics, prose, and other media.
Mike:For those fans who are unfamiliar with Agent Unknown, what’s the character about?
Bob:First of all, Agent Unknown isn’t so much one character, as it is a series about a number of divergent characters who all work for a top-secret, international espionage group.
Personally, I’ve always been a big fan of high-concept spy stuff (James Bond, I Spy, SHIELD, etc.), but the concept of Agent Unknown really sprung out of a Ka-Zar (Marvel) comic that I read back in the early ‘80s. In that story, some nameless SHIELD agent doing his job died in the line of duty, and the thought struck me that we always read these stories about the super spy, but never of the regular Joe who is doing his job. So I started to craft a series of stories about this SHIELD-like intelligence organization where there are a bunch of different agents taking on various types of missions. In this concept, it is really the Agency that is the star, as the various agents’ adventures took place over the course of 30 years, and I would have different teams operating in different decades with decidedly different types of cases.
In the ’60s (towards the start of the organization) there was a pair of brothers named Jefferson Davis Seven and Andrew Jackson Seven (code-named Deuces & Jacks), in the ‘70s there was a female agent named Stacey Anne Duncan, and in the ‘80s there was an ex-Mossad Israeli named Yoseph Ben-David (who was never introduced in the original (Renegade Press) run of the series). My thought was to show how the organization itself (The International Law Enforcement Division, or ILED) evolved over the years. Unfortunately, the book got caught up in the mid-‘80s B&W glut, and it was suspended after only three issues.
Mike:What inspired you to bring it back after such a long hiatus?
Bob:I like to think that even with the title gone, the various characters who make up the Agent Unknown universe have never really been far from my thought process, and I’ve always toyed with the idea of somehow bringing them back. The ability to do just that was accorded to me by my long-time good friend, and business associate, Mark Mazz. I met Mark some 15 or so years ago when we were both working at Marvel (he was on staff and I was a freelancer doing a short-term gig in the office). We had kept in touch over the years and in 2006 Mark called me up saying that he had hooked up with a group called The Comicbook Artists Guild, and that he was going to be calling me to help him out as things moved forward. I said sure, and didn’t think much of it.
Then a couple of months later he contacted me again saying that he needed me to contribute an eight-page horror story to Psychosis! an illustrated horror anthology that he was publishing under the banner of Guild Works Productions. At first I begged off stating that I had really left the field of comics. I hadn’t written anything in almost a year, and I certainly hadn’t written any fiction in nearly 15 years. Mark wouldn’t take no for an answer, and insisted that I could do it. Well turns out he was right and I penned Never Judge a book… which turned out to be the first Wülf Girlz story. Well, I wrote a couple of more stories for Mark, and he kept hinting around that he really loved my Agent Unknown stories, and that he’d be interested in continuing the adventures.
Well eventually I got the hint and pulled out an old story I had written about 15 years earlier, staring two new characters named Springload (a very straight-laced, by-the-book Midwesterner) and Renegade (a Lakota Indian who was the direct descendent of a 1900s medicine man), and offered it to a fellow CAG member, Chris Torres, who told me that it was a great story, but the pacing was all wrong.
I told Chris to tear it up, and show me what he could do, and he did exactly that. He painted a beautiful eight-page story that appeared in CAG #7. He really did a beautiful job on both the story and the cover for that issue. Needless to say, I got so reved up by the initial sketches he showed me that before he was even finished I scripted a second story with these two characters. Then I went on to develop half a dozen new characters and have gone on to pen three or four more Agent Unknown-related scripts. The premise here is to generate enough new material to combine with the already published stuff, then package it all together and publish it as a graphic album which we can get onto Amazon or in bookstores and comic shops. I even have Dell Barris, the original artist on board to help revive the series.
Mike:What’s it been like writing the characters again – new ideas, new perspective? When is the next issue coming out?
Bob:Well, that’s actually the funny part; I’m really not so much writing the characters again, I’ve created a whole slew of new characters. Thus far I’ve really only resurrected one of the original characters, Stacey Anne Duncan, who is now much older than when I originally envisioned her. Then she was a brash young agent, newly with the Division, and now she is a Special Director, shepherding a new breed of maverick agents through the world of shadows and light. This is an entirely different world. The Division has aged, the world has changed, and there is a whole new paradigm as to how to deal with foreign threats and terrorists. This is the new world of Agent Unknown. As for the next issue, right now I have two or three scripts out with some artists who are considering the scripts, so some of that is up in the air as of this moment, but I hope to get another story or two out this year.
Mark has asked that I continue writing the two storylines that I was originally working on, and I’ve been trying, but I’m really having a very difficult time getting back into those characters’ heads. It was 20 years ago and the time was more innocent — I was more innocent, less jaded, if you will. The Agent Unknown stories I’m writing now are darker, grimmer, so it is taking me a bit of work to get back to where I was in 1987. Still, I’m looking at it as a writing exercise, and I’m really getting excited about working with them again, so we’ll see where it leads.
Mike:What is Wülf Girlz about?
Bob:Well, it is a classically-themed horror story brought forward to the modern era. As stated, it appeared in the premiere issue of Psychosis! a book where the primary intent is to deliver a relevant look at the fears that affect men and women in the 21st Century. The story itself deals with predators, prey, and a reversal of fortune. It is a morality play involving personal empowerment and, as it states in the title, not making snap judgments as to who, and what people are all about simply by how they appear. To tell more would be to give away the story itself. It was originally intended as a one-off story, but Mark, and Melvin Ylagan (another CAGer, and a spectacular cover artist), convinced me that there was more to these girls than I had at first envisioned, and now I have a second story in print, and probably 20 or more stories plotted out.
Mike:How did you get involved in The War of the Independents?
Bob:Through my involvement with CAG (and Mark Mazz), I met fellow CAG member Dave Ryan, who, inspired by Marvel Comics’ Civil War Event from last year, determined to launch a “Civil War” of his own. By gathering together various independent characters into one plotline and having them thrash it out in one epic story, Dave has crafted a six-issue limited series involving dozens of Indie characters. When I met him, Dave was just starting the war, and looking for creators who were interested in allowing him to “borrow” their characters for the story, so I lent Dave my characters Hope and Grace (the Wülf Girlz) for the purpose of the story. I’ve seen some of the art, and I’m really looking forward to reading the story when it comes out, later this year.
Mike:What’s been the reaction to your blog? And, why the name “Is Nothing Sacred?”
Bob:Well, funny thing about that, a couple of years ago I was contributing to a group blog, which wound up shutting down, but we were all forewarned that it was going to stop publishing, and it allowed everyone to archive off our own contributions, something I had actually been doing all along. I only had a handful of posts at the time (which I’m sure that no one was reading on my own space), but I really enjoyed posting, so I continued to post on a sporadic basis. I notified some on-line friends about my blog, and became surprised when I became aware that they were actually reading it and posting responses.
Naturally enough, as I became aware that people were really were reading it (and apparently enjoying it) I began to post more often. These days I post several times a week, and have a number of regular and unique viewers. The blog itself is mostly about Spider-Man as well as other comics and comic-related news and information. I’ve been reading Spider-Man since he first appeared back in 1962, and I have a nearly complete collection that stretches back to his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15. (I also have a film review column on PopThought.com). I have to say that I’m always surprised that folks are reading my blog and that it keeps attracting new readers. Given that I have as many readers as I do have, I try to change the look of it every few months to keep it looking fresh.
In fact, a few months ago, when Marvel decided to reboot and retcon Spider-Man (in the Brand New Day storyline) by having Peter Parker cut a deal with the Devil to end his marriage to Mary Jane (after 20 years of real-time) to save the life of his Aunt May it threw the Spider-Man community (including myself — I contribute reviews to SpiderFan.org) into a frenzy. Well, I was so upset about this that I made a number of posts about how angry I was. My point then (and now) was that while I didn’t so much mind that they were ending Peter’s marriage, I was upset at the way they were doing it, as it seemed to violate the basic tenants of the character itself. Well, I was contacted by a reporter for Newsweek.com, who then interviewed me for a story that she was writing on the subject. Not only did she quote me extensively, but she even posted a link to my blog in the story. Needless to say, I was pretty knocked out by the attention.
As to the name of the blog itself, well, it is actually the punch line to a cartoon that I saw in Playboy, years ago. In the cartoon, a number of people were kneeling down and praying in front of an altar. On top of the altar was an enormous zero. In the front of the altar, one character turned to another character and said, “Is nothing sacred?” I just always thought that this was hilarious, and when it came time to pick a name for my blog, I decided to use that.
Mike:What’s the comic book scene like in Connecticut?
Bob:I’d like to say that it is pretty exciting, but truthfully, it really isn’t. I’m in lower Fairfield County, about an hour outside of NYC but most of the funnybook folks I associate with are either in the city or an hour further into the State. It used to be that there were a number of comicbook shops in my area where fans could go and hang out every Wednesday to talk comics for an hour or so; now, not so much. Many of the comic shops of the ‘80s & ‘90s are gone, and these days most of the fellowship happens at conventions or online. Right now I’m chatting with guys all over the US, in Europe, and in New Zealand. For better or worse, Comicbook Nation has become a digital global village. The flip side of that, however, is that I’m now meeting all sorts of interesting folks, and getting more of my short stories published. Right now I’ve got three or four stories out that are being prepared for publication by publishers that I never would have met if not for the Internet community.
Mike:What are you reading these days, comics and otherwise?
Bob:Well, on the comicbook front, as I said, I’m still really big into Spider-Man (after 45 years of following his adventures, I simply can’t help myself). I do, however, read quite a bit of small press and Indie comics. Quite a bit of which are generated by fellow CAGers. I’m going to apologize in advance, because I know that I’m going to forget someone, but from my fellow CAGers I’m reading Andrea Grant’s Minx, Rachel Kadushin’s Heroes in Birmingham, 5 Shots by Jemir Johnson, plus anything published by Matt Ryan’s FreeLunch Comics (Bigger, Only in Whispers, Sky Pirates — Matt is a brilliant cartoonist who is also my artist of choice on Wülf Girlz). As a fan of the Highlander films and TV show, I’ve been following Dynamite Entertainment’s Highlander comicbook series, as well as their revival of the Painkiller Jane series. I’m a huge fan of Thom Zahler's Love and Capes (a romance/relationship story disguised as a superhero comic). The 99 from Teshkeel Comics, is a very well done series about a group of teens that is based on Islamic culture and society. Of course, Nexus and The Badger are back, and they are always fun.
My most recent non-comics reading material includes Steve Saffel’s beautiful coffee table book Spider-Man Icon, which is a compendium of everything Spider-Man. Steve is a former editor of mine (on Marvel Age and Marvel Vision), and he has written probably the best book on Spidey that I’ve ever read. I’m also currently enjoying a book called Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad —which I’m calling background reading for my own Agent Unknown series.
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