Playing bass, singing contralto....
I believe that I have just rounded the mid-May twentieth anniversary of
InterStellar OverDrive, my comic book and the most favorite of my pet projects, being cancelled before it went to the presses because of the Heroes World distribution crash. I didn’t keep diaries in those days and I didn’t necessarily feel like marking down on the calendar the dubious achievement of having the first ever Rip Off Press comic that got cancelled due to lack of orders.
InterStellar OverDrive was a sort of like a straight Johnny Bravo meets Futurama meets Atompunk thing, if in a really quirky universe. I did this was before any of those things existed. Plus I did it down to the blonde pompadour jock, the Cyclops babes, and the tail-fins and trefoils and nixie tubes. A breakout character was Flexia Bast, a leonine warrior woman.
Sight gag....
Of stylistic note, not only did
ISOD have that early mutation of Atompunk, but three flavors of Dieselpunk. Like a flavor that is the usual Art Deco and another flavor that is riffing off an outsiders’ view of the old Eastern Block. I like to call it “Flatheadpunk”.
Do I lose originality points if some of these are expies?
And a flavor influenced by Bauhaus. Also notice the native Steampunkish culture with Art Nouveau influenced flavoring instead of the usual Victorian.
From Bauhaus to our house....
This was the third incarnation of
InterStellar OverDrive. There were two previous go-arounds, one lost and one self-published that died like a dog in the Direct Market.
InterStellar OverDrive was a
Cerebus Retcon-style reboot of
Captain Saucer, a Small Press Comic, which had two incarnations.
Captain Saucer had its roots going back to my juvenilia plus influences from discovering New Wave on the college radio to
Heavy Metal the Movie.
Rip Off Press optioned InterStellar OverDrive and was going to publish it under Magnecom. This was the Main Stream imprint of the company that gave us the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. ISOD was optioned for three issues. Rip Off had enough faith in it to put it under their three copy sell through guarantee. They sent out flyers and ashcans to prime up interest.
I'm flying on the flyer!
The timing and luck turned out to be really wrong. The Image boom of the early ‘90s was over and comic sales in the Direct Market were really starting to soften. Marvel responded by buying a middle-tier distributor named Heroes World and going exclusive with them. This sent a psychological panic through the market causing many sales and orders to sink.
InterStellar OverDrive was one of the collateral fatalities.
It’s a shame because I had the second and third issue in the works.
Party out of bounds!
Interestingly enough, my late Dad appeared in a dream a day or two after the cancellation. I was exiting the apartment building where I was living in at the time. He was standing just outside, smiling and dressed in his Sunday’s finest. He was telling me that even death isn’t necessarily the end of things.
As an added curiosity, a year and a half later, InterStellar OverDrive suffered another early cancellation. In early ’97, Shon Howell was going to run an InterStellar OverDrive variation, as sort of the Comic Book back door pilot in A-Bomb, a book that he edited for Antarctic Press. This would be even more Bad-Girl art fixated than usual. Flexia’s black sheep cousin, Pex, shoe-horned in the Dragonman slot so that the two could have a big cat-fight. This was also the first extended, if belated look at Flexia’s home world, with ‘10s style Steampunk, down to the brass curlicue laptop back in the ‘90s when the whole thing was a borderline non-seguitor. While I was drawing away in late ‘96, A-Bomb was cancelled. The story was slated to be in issue #18, the book was cancelled at #16.
Brass is a gas!
This was followed by the nearly two decades to other misadventures. Like chasing a model rocket company to the cheesy foam end. Shuffling in and out of a few other careers that didn’t go anywhere, before finding a long running place as an Electronic Technician Level #11 in the United States Post Office.
Whoosh! Pop!
Of course, there were a few other overhauls and toyed-with revivals of
InterStellar OverDrive. The latest and greatest recon has a slightly older Flexia as the head of security aboard the L4 Space Station and a mother of three in tow. The main character has shifted to Revellia, her busker daughter who just wants to be an All American Rock ‘n’ Roll teenager despite being a transplant from out Tau Ceti way.
She's a handful! Even by polydactyl standards!
Then there are other follow on projects in various forms of limbo. The
Captain Saucer reboot that’s been sitting in a can for a few years. It’s now optimized for broad humor.
Tube Punk, which would reprint my old material with new pin-ups.
Sci Fi Guy! which of course takes place in the suburbs of Iowa during the Disco era. Quarkstomper
reviewed it a while back.
The Inventer & Igor, a bit of revived and fleshed out juvenilia that are now going through my customary elephantine gestation period. I’m doing a sketchbook on whim called
Studebaker Carburetor.
There are more things in the Loess Hills of Iowa than you got in your... um... uh... er.... algebra?
And for omake: if you’re wondering what other Skiffypunk that I’m now doing before its time, I present “Panapetpunk!”
In the future, computers will be all over the place. With blinking lights and reels and everything!
Note: This is an alternative to a much longer diary that’s taking way too much time to write. It’s called “InterStellar Afterthoughts”. It’s a rambling shaggy dog tale in real life “with a ‘tude” that’s now weighing in at five pages in MS Word. And it’s not even half done! So obviously, expect it to get posted later to never.
Sketched 20 years to the day after.