Hey, everyone,
Tokyo-based fellow Australian expat writer/journalist Andrez Bergen here... nice to touch base.
I'm the author of the noir/dystopic/sci-fi novel "Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat" (2011) and the more recent surreal/slipstream/noir "One Hundred Years of Vicissitude".
Thought you might be interested to know I'm also currently working on novel #3 — which is a comicbook/noir homage.
This one's called "Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?" and is a futuristic/retro superhero romp that mixes and matches 1930s Art Deco architectural lines with gung-ho Soviet formalist propaganda style, twisted into 1960s pop art sentiment and the huge influences of Jack Kirby. Think golden and silver age American comics channeled unto a dystopic future via Japanese manga, and then skewed by the '60s comicbook legacy of Kirby, along with Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Jim Steranko and their ilk.
ABOVE: SOUTHERN CROSS, by Giovanni Ballati
The novel has just been finished and is currently with the publisher.
A preliminary, pre-publication review has been run here @ The Ink Shot (obviously I'm chuffed!), and some background info is included in this article for Bleeding Cool.
The novel will be partially illustrated.
I wanted a more professional take on the visual concept and I also liked the idea of disparate visions of the same person — it's the way comicbooks, after all, work in the real world. Bryan Hitch's perception of Captain America in 2009 was far different from John Buscema's in 1969, and this is one reason I asked artists from the UK (Harvey Finch & Andrew Chiu), Italy (Giovanni Ballati), the USA (Dave Acosta), Japan (Yoko Umehara & Kohana Yamadera), Uruguay (Maan House), Russia (Saint Yak) Australia (Paul Mason), and others, to get involved.
More news soon.
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