AWA / UPSHOT Newsletter, Links

ISSUE #17 Thanks for checking back in with us here at AWA Studios. We've been continuing to roll out brand new series and never-before-seen stories over the last couple of weeks on WEBTOON and Tapas, including the extraterrestrial hospital anthology, ET-ER!. Make sure to check out all our latest comics below in this week's Upshot Sneak Peek. We're also excited to announce that we're hiring for some fun new projects. If you're a writer or artist, make sure to take a look at our listing below. We hope to hear from you! And make sure to check out the latest Creator Corner featuring Year Zero writer Benjamin Percy. If you're new to our newsletter, take a look at our recent Creator Corner videos with writers Michael Moreci and Jason Starr, artists Mike Deodato Jr., Dalibor Talajic, Will Conrad and C.P. Smith, colorists Sabine Rich and Snakebite Cortez, and letterer Sal Cipriano! Sneak peek of the week We're continuing to launch brand new series, for free, on WEBTOON. And for those of you who want a quick comic fix sent straight to your phone every day, subscribe to the @AWASTUDIOSOFFICIAL Instagram account, where we're sending out brand new comics everyday in our stories. Check our all of our current releases:                                             Follow Upshot on Social Media: Monster Makers Wanted! Click link for more info: https://awastudios.net/monster-makers-wanted/ NEWSSTAND AWA Comics in the News! Will Comic Books Survive Coronavirus? The Guardian Read More The Comics Industry Is in Danger. What Can Save It? A.V. Club Read More No, Coronavirus Isn't Going to Kill Comic Book Superheroes ScreenRant Read More CREATOR CORNER Ben Percy Writer, Year Zero Tell me about Year Zero. What was your inspiration for the project? What artists or writers did you draw inspiration from? What themes do you explore in the comic? Like every other horror fiend, I salute the gore-splattered flags of Romero and Kirkman. They’ve carved out their own mythologies and changed the landscape of horror. But their stories take a microscope to the zombie apocalypse—focusing on small bands of survivors in, for instance, a farmhouse, a mall, a prison—and I wanted to take in the satellite view instead [for Year Zero]. The appraisal of a fallen world. I didn’t want one group of survivors. I wanted many. A wheeling, global perspective. So I have a Yakuza hitman in Tokyo. A street kid in Mexico City. A military translator in Kabul. An environmental scientist at a polar research station. And a prepper in the suburban Midwest. They each have a unique skillset that favors their survival—and a unique perspective on and response to what’s happening. If that doesn’t sound ambitious enough, we’re also incorporating an “artifact” into every issue that makes you rethink the contagion and its possible role in human history. These range from pages torn from one of DaVinci’s notebooks to a Chinese scroll to a medieval text. The standard storytelling format for comics seems to replicate cinematic experience—a story unspooling more or less chronologically—and I wanted to shake things up and really take advantage of the medium and push boundaries and tell a story that felt unique to comics and also reinvented what we might expect from a zombie story. What is your artistic process? I spend a long time thinking about a story and planning it out before I begin to write. So I’ll scratch down ideas in a notebook. I’ll talk on the phone with my editor, the artist, pals I trust. I’ll build a blueprint, a map for where the story might go, and hang it from my office wall to study and change every day. As I grow and adjust this map, I’m thinking about balancing out tension with emotional repose, choreographing action sequences, including reversals, giving each character a different transformative arc. Then, at last, I start to hammer the keyboard. What do you do when you aren’t working on comics? I’m also the author of five novels (The Ninth Metal releases in 2021 with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), three story collections, and a book of essays. I occasionally write articles for magazines like GQ, Esquire, Time, and Men’s Journal. I’ve written two seasons of the audio drama/podcast Wolverine (“The Long Night” and “The Lost Trail”). I’ve co-authored several feature screenplays with my buddy James Ponsoldt (who is the director of The End of the Tour and The Spectacular Now). So I keep busy at the keyboard, and I love working across many mediums, because the work always feels fresh and I’m always learning new techniques. I’m also a dad and a husband, so when I’m not at the desk, I’m hanging out with my family (cooking, skiing, hiking, reading books, watching movies, cheering from the sidelines of their soccer games, etc.).