Everyone
knows that Detroit has fallen on hard times. This is nothing new. It is and has
been suffering from financial crisis, joblessness, urban dilapidation and
political scandal. It has become something of a warning sign for a nation
feeling the pangs of unemployment and political stalemate. Detroit has also
become something else in the meantime: a symbol of pride for the entire state. There’s
something about its working-class, damaged goods persona that appeals to a
certain crowd. People in this country can’t help but root for the underdog. Young,
college-educated people are actually moving into
Detroit, and the city is experiencing something of a mini-Renaissance, even
amidst some of its darkest hours. A product of this professional influx is an
export that will be very important if Detroit is to come back: The Arts.
Detroit has some very real and ongoing problems, just as it is experiencing a
resurgence in cultural pride and artistic output.
Somewhere
out of this imperfect love comes Imaginos Workshop, but one of many
professional and artistic endeavors owing to the history and people of Michigan
and the Detroit area. There’s nothing special about us except that we love
comics and movies and just about anything that tells a story. Imaginos Workshop
is just the name we decided to give ourselves when we decided we wanted to
write movie scripts and produce comic books. We recently became a Limited
Liability Company, and our first stab at a self-produced comic book, Imaginos Plus, is in the works (as you’ve
probably read on here by now). It is three storylines in one – kind of
ambitious for a first project, but we just really like these properties.
The
first is called Requiem, and I can
use the word “epic” here without feeling too hyperbolic. Joe and Mark have been
crafting this storyline for a long time, and it has evolved accordingly. What
we’ve written for Imaginos Plus is
just the tip of a very big iceberg: they’ve written millions of years of bloody
history for the multiverse that holds the story. Despite all this grandiosity,
the story lives and dies by its character development, as a group of “black-bag”
agents provide our key-hole into a mysterious and dangerous world. There’s almost
too much to summarize here, but let’s just say it involves brutal action,
multiple dimensions, the occult and corporate corruption.
The
second property is the ridiculously-titled Candy
Coated, a unique and truly spontaneous action adventure that employs an
interesting writing style. The basis of the comic comes from Palladium Books’ Heroes Unlimited pen-and-paper RPG franchise.
In case you haven’t reached the level of monumental geek that we have, RPG
stands for role-playing-game, and it involves a group of people sitting around
together using characters they created to explore a world that exists as
dictated by their GM, or game-master. They use their imaginations to move
through the world, and usually a set of books or rules to give shape and stats
to the world and what they can do in it. Dungeons
& Dragons is the most famous example of this, and only partly deserves
the stigma it has gathered over the years. Candy
Coated is written as it happened during these gaming sessions: it is truly
spontaneous and organic. We “wrote” the story insofar that we experienced it
in-game and responded to the events in Mark’s story with a disturbing lack of forward
thinking. The story itself is about a group of damaged superheroes who mostly
attempt to do good but almost always end up damaging things in the process.
They are dysfunctional, confused and selfish, and their powers mostly the
result of dangerously irresponsible experimentation that they don’t understand.
This was a fun comic to play through, and we hope it’s just as fun to read.
The
third and final property is called Juda
Fist: 7 Deaths of the Yobi, and it is a story truly many years in the
making. It is the brainchild of Mark Dudley, and it is a truly cool mix of genres.
It is a sci-fi dystopian action-epic, with heavy doses of hip hop culture and
blaxploitation, influenced by Hong Kong cinema and inspired by the books of
Octavia Butler. It is stylish, dark and violent, and always gets a great
reaction from people checking out Mark’s artwork. The story centers on a group
of antihero mercenaries living one day at a time in futuristic Detroit. Their
journey intertwines with an ancient conflict that threatens not just their
lives but the fate of the solar system.
So
there’s Imaginos Plus – and here
comes the pitch. We have recently put the project up on the crowd-sourcing site
Kickstarter in an attempt to get the thing funded. We are going to get the book
done at some point either way, but if we could get some funds from Kickstarter
it would happen a whole lot sooner and we could afford to pay the awesome
inkers, artists and colorists that would help us finish the project. So if you
feel so inclined, we would absolutely appreciate any contribution you could
make to our book. We also really appreciate you telling others about the
project: friends, family and fans sharing the project are the only way we’ll
reach our goal. Thanks to all of you that have supported us and worked with us.
Hopefully we can reward you with some cool stories and art in the future. We’re
enjoying the process.
Author's Note: As of October 2012 we were unable to reach our monetary goal for our Kickstarter project. While this is disappointing, it does not mean that we've stopped working on our projects. Work on the comic book and scripts continues just as before, and we look forward to showing you more and more and trying again with crowd-sourcing in the future. A sincere and heart-felt thank you to everyone who donated to our project - your encouragement and donations help keep us creating.
Jon
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