a thousand questions with. . .

Van Allen Plexico

 

The author of the Sentinels series of novels, Van Allen Plexico is a longtime contributor to the superhero fiction community. Back in 1997, he founded "MV-1", one of the Internet's earliest and largest shared universe fan-fiction sites. This project got Plexico elected into the Heroes Magazine Hall of Fame, spawning dozens of imitators along the way.

From there, Plexico moved into original superhero fiction with the creation of The Sentinels. Published through White Rocket Books, the first three volumes of this series - When Strikes the Warlord, A Distant Star, and Apocalypse Rising - are available anywhere fine books are sold.

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TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT SENTINELS.

"Sentinels" is actually the code name for a US government operation to recruit paranormal agents (i.e. superheroes). Beloved American hero "Ultraa" is the team leader, and his friend Esro Brachis - a wealthy, brilliant inventor - owns the headquarters. The story begins with the introduction of two new characters - a teenaged girl and a mysterious android - who may or may not be heroes. We follow them as they meet Ultraa and Esro and get involved with the government and with the bad
guys.

Meanwhile, the Warlord - an arch-villain in the old-school, classic sense - plots to conquer the universe (or destroy it!). Inevitably the heroes clash with him and his army of enslaved thralls atop his floating city. Mayhem ensues!

There are, of course, fun complications: Ultraa has no memories of his past life or even of who he really is; Esro's weapons-testing stuntman assistant is an obnoxious glory-hound who only thinks about getting the girls and making money; the android "hero" actually may be an alien war machine; and the Pentagon official who Ultraa works for is secretly running his own shady operations and in league with alien conquerors!

And that's pretty much just the first few chapters of the first book.

THERE ARE THREE VOLUMES IN THE SENTINELS SERIES AVAILABLE - ANYTHING NEW ON THE HORIZON?

The first three volumes of the series - When Strikes the Warlord, A Distant Star, and Apocalypse Rising - are available in trade paperback format from any book outlet. They can also be ordered in hardcover or as PDF downloads direct from whiterocketbooks.com. (They also have the paperbacks.)

We just released a large-format, hardcover omnibus - the "Widescreen Special Edition"-that collects all three books. It also contains more than a half-dozen Sentinels short stories by other authors, an art gallery with illustrations by a number of noted artists, RPG character write-ups, behind-the-scenes material, and much more. We crammed in everything.

It's a gorgeous volume, the size and shape of a role-playing game book, with two stunning cover options - one by Mitch Foust (an eye-popping painting of our female lead!) and one by Jim Jiminez (of the heroes and villains clashing in battle!). And it's over 600 pages long!

It will have a limited run, with all copies signed and numbered. They're selling fast!

Everything Sentinels-related can be found at www.whiterocketbooks.com.

WHAT WRITERS DID YOU LINE UP FOR THE SHORT STORIES IN THE SPECIAL EDITION? A THOUSAND FACES READERS ARE ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT FOR NEW VOICES IN SUPERHERO FICTION.

The short stories contained in the Widescreen book were written by Ron Fortier ("Camping Trip"), Bobby Nash ("The Road to Hell"), Wayne Skiver ("Best Laid Plans"), David Wright ("The Adventures of Captain Cook"), Ian Watson ("Worst Origin Ever"), and Adrian J. Watts ("The Cavalier").

The stories range from brief, tense suspense pieces to humor stories to longer action/adventure tales, but they all share two things in common: They're set in the Sentinels universe, and they're fun!

Wayne Skiver, Ron Fortier, and Bobby Nash are all fellow members of the Pulp Factory and have written a lot of pulp and super-hero-ish stuff over the years. For example, Ron Fortier wrote Terminator: The Burning Earth, with Alex Ross on art!

You can see more of their work here: http://thepulpfactory.blogspot.com/

The other guys include an Australian and a Brit, so there's a nice range of approaches and flavors to their stories. I think there's something for everyone in this book.

FILL IN THE BLANK: READERS OF ____ WILL ENJOY SENTINELS.

AVENGERS, old and new; JUSTICE LEAGUE; JSA; THUNDERBOLTS; any of the various comics spin-off novels of recent years, be they Marvel or DC or whatever else; ASTRO CITY; old-school X-MEN; pulp action stories; fun space-opera SF novels; and also viewers of shows like HEROES (though I've yet to see any of it!) and maybe Joss Whedon stuff like FIREFLY.

A reader who enjoys an ensemble cast with humorous dialogue and fun interaction, over-the-top villains and galactic-scale threats, enigmatic android warriors and exotic locales and beautiful alien

damsels in distress - I think anyone who likes that kind of thing will find something to like in the SENTINELS books.

I've yet to read a truly negative review of any of the books. At the risk of tooting my own horn, most folks seem to be really enjoying them. I couldn't be happier about that. (Now to spread the word and get even more readers to try them. . .!)

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOUR BACKGROUD.

My professional background is in academia - I'm an Assistant Professor of Political Science and History at Southwestern Illinois College, near St. Louis. Moved here in 2006 after eleven years in Atlanta (and a couple of months in Singapore).

But I've read comics and SF and fantasy my entire life - I'm positively steeped in it all - and have written my own stuff for as long as I can remember, going back to little ashcan comics I doodled (quite seriously!) when I was a kid.

I used to write and draw these big, cosmic sagas with deep drama and vast casts of characters -because I was reading Jim Starlin and Jim Shooter and Roger Zelazny and Frank Herbert and the like all the time. And that's still what I'm writing these days! (Just with much greater ability, I hope.)

STILL HAVE ANY OF THOSE OLD CHILDHOOD COMICS LYING AROUND?

When I moved overseas a couple of years ago, I had to really whittle down my collection. I sold everything but my most essential favorites - AVENGERS (mostly from the 1970s and from the Busiek/Perez era), NEXUS, MS MARVEL and CAPTAIN MARVEL, MICRONAUTS, and IRON MAN. There are a few other odds and ends here and there, but that's mostly what I kept. Those comics are very well-traveled; they've been all the way around the globe with me!

That meant selling some really good stuff - it brings tears to my eyes to think about it! I sold complete runs of THUNDERBOLTS, BONE, STRANGERS IN PARADISE, CONAN (old and new), ASTRO CITY, and the like, plus tons of old Marvel and DC random issues, among others. It's sad to think about it now. But, hey, maybe one day I'll go on a quest to replace them all. That could be fun, hunting copies of those down again. . .

HOW COULD YOU SELL OFF ASTRO CITY?

It wasn't easy! Well, I mean, it was easy to find buyers, yeah. But it wasn't easy to part with the comics. I had the full set. Everything first-run, including some WIZARD 1/2s or zero issues or

what have you. But I could only fit a small amount of comics into my giant shipment to Asia, and I already had all of Kurt's issues of AVENGERS set aside to keep.

The other thing about ASTRO CITY was this: As much as I enjoyed the stories and as much as I respect and admire the work Kurt did on them, the characters were not my favorites and the universe was not one in which I had any degree of lifelong investment, the way I do with some Marvel books. By the same token, if someone who owned my SENTINELS books one day had to move overseas, and needed to pare things down, I would probably understand if they decided to sell the SENTINELS and keep a box of vintage AVENGERS comics! Heh.

Plus they're all readily available in trade paperback if I ever want to reread them.

WHAT WRITERS DO YOU READ NOW?

In terms of comics, it's changed a lot in recent years. I have always been a fan mostly of Jim Shooter, Jim Starlin, Doug Moench, and Mike Baron, in particular - big, cosmic stuff, but with strong characters and interplay. But those guys aren't doing a lot anymore - or at least, not much that I really like.

These days, I find I enjoy the work of Brian Reed, Geoff Johns, Mark Millar, Kurt Busiek, Dan Abnett, Charlie Huston, and Ed Brubaker, among others. I also like what John Arcudi's done with Mike Mignola's characters for Dark Horse.

I read a lot of Brian Bendis' stuff, since he's taken over my beloved Avengers, but I'm not what you'd call a big fan of his style, or of the direction he's taken the team(s). I think Bendis could write fine scripts for TV shows, but I don't much care for his comics.

Brian Reed in particular interests me, because it appears he and I loved exactly the same characters growing up. He's writing MS MARVEL and has revived CAPTAIN MARVEL and those have always been two of my three favorite Marvel characters (along with Iron Man). And I very

much like the way he's handling both. Some have called him a disciple of Bendis, but I enjoy his work much more than Bendis's.

I was a huge fan of Joe Straczynski's TV work (BABYLON 5 is my favorite story ever, in any form), but his comics work doesn't do as much for me, for the most part.

 

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF STRACZYNKSI'S RISING STARS COMIC SERIES?


I liked it. I thought it had its moments, but overall could have been better. I was sorry that it was a bit disjointed, as JMS himself has admitted, due to the various delays and problems that came along
during publication.

I think what he was going for with RISING STARS was very similar to what we're doing in SENTINELS - creating a contemporary world in which people with super abilities find themselves being used by various agencies, private and public, to further causes and agendas that are not always for the best.

The look of the characters in RISING STARS is probably closest to what I had in mind for the SENTINELS characters, too - sort of a blend between classic "comic-book" costumes and more modern semi-official "uniforms." No one in my stories wears any big letters or logos on his or her chest. But it's still clear that they're all essentially superheroes (and villains). My goal has been to have the veneer of a serious, modern action story, but the soul of a Bronze Age superhero comic underneath.

HOW ABOUT PROSE WRITERS?

As far as novelists. . . I am a lifelong devotee of the late, great Roger Zelazny (the AMBER novels; LORD OF LIGHT), and if I aspire to anything in writing, it is to approach his level of vivid, lyrical, poetic prose that still retains much informality and humor. I also draw inspiration from sources as diverse as Steven Brust, James Clavell, Patrick O'Brian, Frank Herbert, Larry Niven, John Varley, and Dan Abnett, among countless others. I've devoured novels (SF and non-SF) since before I could walk, probably!


YOU MENTIONED CHARLIE HUSTON'S COMICS; HAVE YOU READ ANY OF HIS NOVELS?

Not yet. I loved his work on MOON KNIGHT, though, and was most impressed with his intricate plotting. Each issue took me two or three read-throughs and a good deal of backwards-flipping to fully "get." But that's a good thing, in this case - it wasn't because it was confusing or bad, it was because it was so complex and carefully laid out that I wanted to appreciate all of it. If his novels are constructed anything like that, I'm sure they're great reads and I'll check 'em out soon.

WHAT DREW YOU TO SUPERHEROES IN THE FIRST PLACE?

AVENGERS #162. Someone gave me a copy when I was about nine years old, and I was hooked. I'd read stuff like RICHIE RICH and UNCA SCROOGE and even JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA before that, but it never really struck me in any great fashion. Then came "The Bride of Ultron," and I was simply blown away.

I'm not sure to this day exactly what it was that made me fall head-over-heels for the Assemblers back then. The sheer threat - the fear factor! - of this invulnerable, indestructible robot who cursed

and taunted the heroes. . . The diversity of the Avengers themselves - a thunder god, a guy in super-advanced armor, a mutant witch, an android, and so on, and all with very distinct personalities,

quarreling amongst themselves. That was a big part of it - the Avengers were like real people who happened to have super powers. They argued and squabbled and fought each other as much as they fought the villains. That rang very true, very "real" for me, inasmuch as comic-book superheroes can seem "real."

This, by the way, is very much what I am trying so hard to recapture in the SENTINELS stories - that sense the Avengers conveyed back in the 1970s and '80s, that they were a very dysfunctional family that had to pull themselves together long enough to save the world, and then go right back to squabbling with each other (and with the government). Clearly there is some degree of mutual respect and even love among them, but they also all have their own agendas and don't mind teasing or even criticizing one another. To me, that makes for great character drama.

WHY SUPERHERO FICTION? IN OTHER WORDS, WHY NOT WRITE COMICS?

Well, the main reason is because I can't draw! I've tried - oh, how I've tried. But I finally decided I just didn't have "it." ("It" being any talent at all.) So I've had to spend years and years becoming as good a writer as I can be, to compensate for my lack of artistic ability. Novels have always been my first love, though - even moreso than comics. I am fascinated by the ability of a good writer to vividly paint a picture - maybe even to bring me to tears - by doing nothing more than hitting different combinations of letters on a keyboard. That just astounds me. I aspire to such a level of
competence someday, and I keep working at getting better. I happen to think what I'm writing now is pretty good, but that's for you and the readers to judge!

Now, let me hasten to add that I would LOVE for the Sentinels to make the jump to actual, honest-to-goodness COMICS. That would be wonderful. I have a great artist (Chris Kohler) doing spot illustrations (ie four or five inked drawings per book), and he's terrific. But to have real "sequential panel art" for the Sentinels? To tell this whole big story over again - and/or new stories! - as
real, live comic books? That would be wonderful. Just one problem, though. As I said, I can't draw, and I've yet to find an artist willing to give it a shot. Not that I've looked very hard, really -
not when I was confident I could write them as novels and they'd be pretty good that way. But maybe an up-and-coming artist will read this and decide to give it a shot!

WHAT DO YOU SEE AS SOMETHING THAT SUPERHERO FICTION CAN PROVIDE THAT COMICS CANNOT? IN OTHER WORDS, WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES TO PROSE?

Story depth! Character depth! Much more story and lots more characters, crammed into a much smaller package, at a much smaller price overall.

There's so much more room in a novel. We can explore backstories and get much deeper inside characters' heads and see what makes them tick. We can toss in tons of subplots and supporting characters and weave it all together over a larger scale - all within one book. And while comics can do all of that, it takes a lot more pages (and issues) of a comics story to do so, because that kind of depth slows things down in a comic book much more than in a novel.

Comics, by necessity, have to be somewhat superficial to a large degree, because they are so much a visual medium. Plots and characters develop in comics, but it can take months or years to get from point A to point B. Things have to be upfront, in your face, moving at a rapid clip. Novels can get past a lot of that superficiality and revel in the nitty-gritty!

That being said, the SENTINELS novels are constructed with intentionally short chapters designed to mimic the structure of the scenes in a comic book. Things do move along at a good pace. But you get a whole lot of chapters in one book.

The amount of story and characterization and dialogue I can get into one 250-page novel is more than would probably fit into two dozen issues of a regular-sized comic book.

I think of each SENTINELS novel as a comics mini-series, standing alone but also part of a larger saga. So the amount of story you get in the three novels I've done so far is probably the equivalent of seventy-two comic books. You miss out on the visuals, sure, but you get a story in one $15 book that would cost you $72 as a comics miniseries!

And you can never, ever say, "I really hated the art in that story!" You prefer Adam Hughes art? George Perez art? Lenil Yu? Bryan Hitch? Just visualize it that way as you read. You are the artist of every story, and it can look in your mind exactly the way you want it to. You become the artist.