Announced recently from Dark Horse, that’s page 2 from 47 Ronin by Mike Richardson and Stan Sakai, and it looks very good indeed. We all know how great an artist Stan Sakai is from his Usagi Yojimbo series, but his art is often overlooked due to the anthropomorphic characters.

But no chance of that here, as Sakai and Richardson tackle “the tale of the 47 Ronin, about a Japanese feudal lord who was forced to commit ritual suicide, and the samurai-turned-ronin who avenged his death”.

47 Ronin is released in November 2012.

Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse

Dark Horse Comics

Last year the Dark Horse Presents anthology comic series carried a pretty interesting strip from Paul Hogan and Steve Parkhouse, Resident Alien. Harry Vanderspiegle is the titular resident alien – not one of those who sneaked over the Tex-Mex border that get right wing US politicians so excitable but an actual alien, an extra terrestrial being. He even looks a bit like the classic ‘gray’ alien, although taller. Well, to the reader, at any rate.

You see to the people of his small, isolated rural town Harry is just another person, thanks to some mental tricks he can exercise so the human population see him as one of them. And so there he is, settled down in his out of the way backwater, happily spending time on the lake fishing or in his cabin, keeping a low profile and little contact with others so as not to push his luck. Until the law comes knocking on his door.

It’s not a raid of police and federal investigators looking for ET though, it’s the local sheriff and he’s after Harry’s help. You see the mailman told him Harry is a doctor and in their normally peaceful wee township they’ve had a, for them, unusual crime – a murder. And since the town is too small for a detective force or forensics team and the state ones being loaned to them won’t arrive for some time they think to ask the old keep-to-himself doctor in the fishing cabin… Harry has deliberately stayed isolated in case he meets one of the very few humans his psychic disguise doesn’t work on, but he reckons in a small town it is unlikely he will meet such a rare person who can resist his trick,  and besides he can’t really turn down the sheriff’s request for help without looking suspicious…

So Harry goes off to inspect the body, which turns out to be that of the town’s GP. And we discover that Harry has a bit of a fascination for murder mysteries and crime stories – he has an uncanny ability to discern people’s thoughts and motivations from the tiniest movements and gestures and expressions they make and, despite his caution at becoming involved with more of the natives, he finds himself drawn into helping, his curiosity climbing. And then the mayor drops another help request on him he can’t avoid – since the town’s doctor is the murder victim can Harry take over his practise? Just for a week till the replacement arrives… Unwilling and forseeing he may well be sucked into much more involvement with the people of the town than he wants, Harry knows that again he can’t refuse…

And that’s the set-up for the start of the upcoming three-part mini-series – this zero issue collects the original strip that was serialised in DHP last year in one, so it is a perfect introduction and set up for the series (I know Peter has plans for a second series should this one prove successful with readers, and I hope it does, because I loved it). It’s a great scenario, gleefully mixing science fiction aliens-among-us with the murder-mystery genre, while the odd characters and small town setting also evoke slight echoes of Lynch’s Twin Peaks and perhaps a smidgen of Doc Hollywood with the out of towner medic stuck in small town America and coming to like it (and Harry’s old fishing hat also reminds me slightly of MASH’s Dr Henry Blake). Harry himself is extremely likeable -we don’t know why he is there yet, shipwrecked alien or deliberate visitor, or if any in authority suspect he is there yet, and that adds to it – but his self-imposed, cautious isolation has left him realising when he interacts with the townsfolk that he misses company. Maybe not his own species, but they are people, and he finds himself being drawn to them, to their lives and problems and enjoying using his accurate observational skills to discern their hidden motivations.

It’s a real pleasure to delve into and I can’t wait for the start of the mini-series proper, to see Harry become more and more involved in his small town mystery – and to see if his sudden dropping of his former caution about becoming involved with humans leads him to better things or to the problems he adopted his isolated persona to avoid in the first place. And to help get you in the mood why not check out this interview that man Pádraig Ó Méalóid had with Peter about the series late last year on the blog?

This broke a while back, but I’ve only just had time to mention it – in April 2012, we see the meeting of two of the world’s greatest barbarians… written by Mark Evanier, art by Sergio Aragones and Thomas Yeates, colored by Tom Luth, it’s Groo Vs Conan:

“It had to happen: the most heroic warrior in history meets the stupidest as Robert E. Howard’s immortal Conan the Barbarian crosses swords with Sergio Aragones’ Groo the Wanderer in Groo vs. Conan #1. This four-issue miniseries was concocted by the Eisner Award-winning team of Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones, aided by master illustrator Thomas Yeates and master colorist Tom Luth. Will Conan annihilate Groo? Will Groo turn out to be the man who can defeat Conan? We’ll see.”

Groo Vs Conan Issue #1 is released in April from Dark Horse.

And really, isn’t it time we had some sort of hardback omnibus collection of Evanier and Aragones’ Groo? I’d buy it in an instant.

So, as we’d done the big long interview the last time, I only asked him about Resident Alien (currently running in the Dark Horse Presents anthology) this time…

Pádraig Ó Méalóid: So, what’s the premise for Resident Alien?

Peter Hogan: The clue’s in the title, really: there’s an alien called Harry, and he’s been living here for a few years. He’s marooned, waiting for a rescue ship that may or may not ever come, and he’s been living like a recluse until our story kicks off, when events conspire to draw him out into the world.

But no one knows he’s an alien – we show him that way throughout, but everyone around him just treats him like a normal person, so evidently that’s the way they see him, because he’s sort of hypnotized them into doing so. Anyway, Harry ends up kind of liking his new friends and new situation – and he’s also intrigued enough by a series of murders that are taking place in the small town where he lives to start playing amateur detective. He’s very good at reading body language and micro-movements of eyes and muscles, as a result of which he’s pretty confident that he can catch the killer.

So, it’s kind of a strange blend of sci-fi and murder mystery, with a few other threads to it as well – like the fact that the government seems to know about Harry’s existence, and is actively searching for him. Anyway, we’ve discovered that you get really interesting sparks when you rub two different genres together like this, and both Steve and I think we’re doing our best ever work here.

(art from Resident Alien by and (c) Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse, in Dark Horse Presents)

PÓM: When do we get to see this in print?

PH: There are three 8-page instalments running in Dark Horse Presents (#4 – #6) at the moment. Next Spring those will be reprinted in one issue as Resident Alien #0, and that’ll be immediately followed by a three-issue miniseries.

PÓM: Is this supposed to be an ongoing story, or do you have an end in mind for it?

PH: It’s ongoing, and we’re hoping it’ll be enough of a hit with the readers for it to last for quite a while – I’m knee-deep in writing the second miniseries at the moment. In terms of Harry’s story – who he is, how he came to be here, how he’s survived, whether he’ll ever get back home again – all of that will unfold very, very slowly. But in terms of the murder mystery plot that kicks off in the Dark Horse Presents episodes, all of that will be resolved in the first miniseries.

PÓM: This isn’t the first time you’ve worked with Steve Parkhouse, is it?

PH: No. I’ve always loved Steve’s work, ever since I first saw his Bojeffries stuff, and so I signed him up to do a strip for Revolver, Happenstance and Kismet, which was written by Paul Neary. And then when I started writing for Vertigo I requested that Steve be the artist for ‘The Lost Boy’, the first story I did for The Dreaming … and we did another Dreaming story together a few years after that, the Blitz story ‘London Pride’. Steve and I stayed vaguely in touch after that, and at some point he told me that he’d always wanted to do a story about aliens … so I went away and thought about that for a very long time, and eventually I came up with this.

PÓM: I still have a soft-spot for Happenstance and Kismet, and there’s still a gap on my shelf that needs a collected volume of that to fill it.

I have to say, I really loved the colouring on Resident Alien, as well as Steve’s always gorgeous art. Is that Steve as well, or someone else?

PH: Yeah, it’s Steve. He’s doing his own lettering as well. I don’t think the man ever sleeps!

(art from Resident Alien by and (c) Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse, in Dark Horse Presents)

PÓM: Is there any news on that other Tom Strong series you were supposedto be doing for DC?

PH: Tom Strong and the Planet of Peril. Yup, still happening, next year sometime but not scheduled yet. But it’s all written, and Chris Sprouse is about two-thirds of the way through drawing it.

And I think most people probably know by now that the Planet of Peril is Terra Obscura…

Dark Horse were good enough to put up a preview page from the book, and here they are, Milk and Cheese, dairy products gone bad, in CBLDF-U:

On shelves this very day, a stonking big omnibus of Shannon Wheeler’s Too Much Coffee Man. I was a huge fan back in the day, very happy to see this huge collection finally hitting the racks this week. Pick up a copy, pour yourself a big, ‘ole cup of Java and kick back for a read!

(Too Much Coffee Man by and (c) Shanon Wheeler, published Dark Horse)

Hometown Superheroes Art Show from Christopher J Stephens on Vimeo.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qVc3huFEjM

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiClwXcfHQ

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UertwI1-As

(Drinky Crow, by and (c) the brilliant Tony Millionaire, taken from the book)