The first cover depicts Asha Catari against the backdrop of a Death Rift, surrounded by a bunch of nasties. Really gorgeous image!

Telara Chronicles #1

Up next is the cover for Telara Chronicles #2. Also by Drew Johnson. This time, Asha Catari is in a limbo-like area known as the Shadowlands. I think Drew made a really compelling cover with this one!

Telara Chronicles #2

Issue 0, being given away at the DC booth at Comic-Con San Diego, has a cover by one of my long time favorite artists, Cully Hamner, and interior pages by one of my favorite new artists, Yvel Guichet.

If you’re not familiar with Yvel’s work, he does this really stunning gray scale art. The gray scale itself is so good I barely want to see it colored, but in the hands of my new favorite colorist, Carrie Strachan over at Wildstorm, the pages are just STUNNING. She managed to create a really evocative look for Yvel’s pages.

Below is the first page of End of Nations Issue #0. It is a summary page that recaps what led to the end of government and the rise of the Order of Nations, the evil empire of the game and comic. Even without copy, I think the page tells a great story.

End of Nations #0 Page 1

H.E.R.O. Poster

Overlooked in the release yesterday about Telara Chronicles is the fact that my good friend and super great artist Joel Gomez is going to be penciling the back up stories in Telara Chronicles.

Joel previously did some poster art for me when I worked at GameTap, and worked on the Wildstorm animated episode of Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider “A Complicated Woman.”

The thumbnail to the left is the poster image for our episode of Re\Visioned: Activision 2600 based on the game H.E.R.O. I think Joel captured the 80′s qualities of the game really well.

His style is very different from Pop’s, so it will be interesting to see how his take on the characters and unique environmental elements from the games compares.

One of my favorite pieces of Joel's work, from Gears of War.

Trion and Wildstorm officially announced the Telara Chronicles and End of Nations comics today and Newsarama put up the interview as part of the launch coverage. There are some shots of interior pages from the books and some cover shots too.

Worth a read if you like video games and comics!

Telara Chronicles

Hasn’t picked up much press yet, but my new comic series, Telara Chronicles from Trion Worlds and Wildstorm Productions is going to be hitting shelves this September. The game is based on the fantasy MMO game Rift: Planes of Telara.

The summary, from the solicit:

Telara Chronicles is the story of a world being devastated by magical tears in the veil keeping it safe from the outer planes. These rifts come without warning, unleashing fantastic and terrifying invasions on a people already engaged in civil war. Telara’s champions have been forced to choose: join the Guardians and fight to restore the faith of a world that once was – or become a Defiant and embrace long-dead technologies to usher in a new age. From one of these competing factions comes Asha Catari, a plane-touched warrior with magical abilities. Follow Asha’s story and discover the war-ravaged world of Telara in this 4-issue miniseries prequel to the game.

Pop Mhan, who worked on one of the Nier comic segments with me, is the artist. So far the book is looking really amazing.

A new title in the App Store, Xenome, caught my eye. It promised an open world environment akin to Borderlands and Fallout 3, two games I love. There was no free version to try, and no reviews yet, but “what the hell” I thought, and downloaded.

Poor controls mar what might otherwise be a great game.

First let me say that the developers have done a lot of great stuff in this game. Good design. Good story. And it is evocative of both Fallout 3 and Borderlands. But after about an hour and a half of struggling with the controls, I just gave up. The game utilizes a dual joystick set up, but the responsiveness just isn’t all that great. I had a very hard time getting where I wanted to go and getting the camera to swing where I wanted it to so I could see who or what was attacking me. The hud is also painfully cramped. So much so that it is a real pain to access all the additional screens to manage inventory, quests, etc.

I didn’t dislike the game, but I didn’t really enjoy playing it either. I’m hopeful that a later update will make the controls more responsive and the camera more fluid.

Can’t wait until 6 comes out.

You can view the comics either on the site, or download all three for free.

Pop Mhan, who I’m currently working with on an as yet undisclosed game comic, is one of the artists and did a great job with Kaine and Nier. I love his stuff. He has a great sense of perspective and comes up with some pretty impressive page layouts.