Category Archives: Books/Comics/Graphic Novels

My latest book: Two Legends of Uzbekistan

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My newest book is out… in Uzbekistan! Two Legends of Uzbekistan is a mythology book featuring two well-known legends of the region. Special thanks to my artist collaborators, Husan Sadykov and Shavkat Muzaffar who brought the stories to life with brilliance. Chargé d’affaires Philip Kosnett presented the book during a special ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent. The Embassy will gift the book, written in English, Russian and Uzbek, to foreign dignitaries and visiting U.S. officials as a symbol of artistic creation between the people of America and Uzebekistan. For more on the story in English, click the link.

http://www.12news.uz/en/2013/08/06/the-u-s-embassy-and-uzbek-artists-present-two-legends-of-uzbekistan/

The author and artists gather around a table covered with original artwork images from “Two Legends of Uzbekistan.”

 

Why You Need Marvel Unlimited (but maybe not right now)

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The Marvel Unlimited app is one of the best things to ever happen in comics… when it works.  I’ve had a Marvel Unlimited subscription since 2008, back when it was called “Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited” and was only available for reading on an actual computer. The new app makes for a much more enjoyable reading experience. It’s still buggy, but a huge improvement and well worth the minor hassles.

For about $60 per year, you can read thousands of Marvel comics digitally. I recently read almost the entire run of Peter David’s X-Factor series. That’s nearly 100 issues. At about $12 per six-issue trade paperback, that would be around $192. In just a few weeks, I’ve already gotten more than my money’s worth. If I like a storyline enough, I can always buy a permanent copy to grace my office shelves.

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For only $60/year you can read most of the epic Civil War storyline that pitted Marvel heroes against each other for several months.

At its best, Marvel Unlimited lets me read dozens of books wherever I’m connected to the Internet. This was huge while in Uzbekistan where my nearest comics shop was two countries and an $800 flight away. It’s also fantastic for reading across storylines/crossovers. I stopped reading X-Factor around issue #26 because it was crossing over with X-Men story arcs I hadn’t read and I didn’t want to buy a bunch of extra comics just to understand one piece of the story. Now I can read a few issues or the entire crossover without spending any extra money.

On the downside, some issues haven’t been digitized. There’s a gap of at least around six months between when a new issue hits stores and when it goes up on Marvel Unlimited. That’s fine by me since there are so many other great comics to read while I wait. You may also miss out on important parts of a story arc that haven’t been added to the app. The omissions are often inexplicable, such as the failure to include the last issue in a five or six-issue story arc. However, there are so many comics available here, it just doesn’t matter that much. I can skip an issue and move onto the next, or just read other things and then come back to the series once more issues are digitized. If it’s just a single-issue gap, I can read a summary of the issue online and move to the next one. Worst-case scenario, I spend a few bucks to buy the comic on Comixology to fill in the gap.

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Select books to read offline even when not connected to the Internet. It works… mostly.

The biggest problem I’ve had is with the “Read Offline” feature. This should let me save up to six comics to read even when I don’t have an Internet connection. I frequently had an issue where it would only download a few sample pages because they app didn’t know I was signed in, despite the fact that it could see my library which only exists when I’m logged on. This may have been a function of having an extremely slow Internet connection while living overseas as I don’t think it’s happened since I returned to the U.S. I did, however, run into a problem when I tried to remove an issue from my Read Offline list while in an airport and not online. The app somehow lost all of the comics in my Read Offline queue. No more X-Factor until I logged in again!

 

There are a few occasional minor glitches, like issues seeming to load but only showing a black screen, the wrong cover thumbnail showing for an issue, or missing text in a word balloons. These problems are few and far between. I also have no idea how I’m affecting my colleagues’ (or my own) royalties. Are we getting paid when subscribers read our comics via the Marvel Unlimited app? Also, the My Library queue doesn’t display in any discernable order. One of these days I imagine Marvel will make it possible to sort My Library alphabetically.

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Your iPad is a lot lighter than those heavy hardcovers and omnibus editions.

In any case, the app is a game-changer for me. There are more Marvel comics than I can ever make the time to read, all available for the cost of around five trade paperbacks. If you’re easily annoyed by buggy apps, you may want to wait a few months, as improvements are surely coming soon. If you just want to read a ton of comics for not much money, especially back issues from times gone by, this is the app for you!

Turns Out You Can Go Home Again

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Big news! Lisa and I are about to return to the U.S. for good! After almost a year in Washington and nearly two in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, we’re heading home. Being a Foreign Service family has been an incredible experience, but we’ve decided to return to Austin and the private sector. One day I’ll do a more detailed post on our decision, but suffice it to say that it was not an easy one. We’ve made some amazing friends and it will be sad to say goodbye. On the other hand, we’re very much looking forward to seeing our families and friends soon.

Since it will take our stuff two to three months to reach Austin, we’ll be staying with family and friends in the meantime and spending some of our savings on travel so that we can visit friends around the globe. After that, it’s back to Austin where I hope to once again work with some of the talented folks in the video game industry while moving forward on some of the comic book projects I’ve been developing in Uzbekistan.

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Aisle 3: Grocery Items, Drugstore Products, and Marvel Essential Collections

The last few days have been a whirlwind of activity. I organized all of our extra food and drugstore products into a basement shop along with other odds and ends. We only have a limited amount of weight we can ship back, so it’s great to lighten our load while earning a little cash for the things we’ll need upon our return. This kind of sale is different than a garage sale in the states in that many items can sell for close to their original prices because there are a lot of things that aren’t available on the local economy. Ten bucks for a pound of coffee is a steal when you compare that to the price of U.S. coffee brands in local stores from thirty to forty dollars!

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Clothes, Bags, and Shoes, Oh My!

Of course, we’ll be donating many things as well. We have boxes of books for the Community Liaison Office in the embassy as well as for the Information Resource Center where Uzbek citizens can go to learn more about the U.S. There are clothes for local charities as well as any remaining food that will go to friends and neighbors rather than languishing for three months on the way home. Personally, I can’t wait to make a trip to Central Market once I have my own kitchen again!

The Protectors

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This illustrated anthology of prose superhero stories takes place in a shared world. My tale revolves around a heist at the Paragon: a superhero-themed casino hovering one hundred stories over Las Vegas. Though the stories and characters come from different authors, they all cross over to create a unified whole that doesn’t exist in most anthology books.

My co-creators on the book cover the gamut of storytelling. There are authors of comics like Pixar/Disney’s The World of Cars, Justice League Unlimited and Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We have novelists and short story writers whose work will be featured in the Rayguns Over Texas sci-fi anthology. We even have a real-life superhero: the Defuser from Stan Lee’s Who Wants to be a Superhero!

 

Featuring stories by: Paul Benjamin, Alan J. Porter, Bill Williams, Dave Justus, Rick Klaw, Jarrett Crippen, Marshall Ryan Maresca, Alex Gray, Beth Loubet, K.G. Jewell and I. Cummings. Illustrations by Doug Potter, Denis Loubet, Zach Spivey and Manda.

364 PGS.

Buy it here: The Protectors on Amazon.com

Kickstarter: The World-Maker

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It’s no surprise to my blog readers that I love fantasy games like D&D and video games. When those two things are combined, you can bet I’ll be glued to my monitor with controls at my fingertips. One of the greatest fantasy video games of all time was called Planescape: Torment. I just funded a Kickstarter to help some of the original creators of that game build its spiritual successor – Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Sojourner of Worlds by Chang Yuan from the Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter page

If you don’t already know about Kickstarter.com, here’s the basics: Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform that lets lots of people give a little money online to help creative people make awesome things. You just go to the website and you can see people who make things like comics, video games, movies, gadgets – just about anything, really – pitching their ideas with short videos. There are also cool rewards available depending on how much you pledge. You might pledge $2 for some cool digital art, $20 for a graphic novel or $600 for movie/TV actress Kristen Bell to record a personalized video greeting for you. That last one is from the Kickstarter to raise money for a movie based on the Veronica Mars TV series that launched Bell’s career. The biggest reward there was $10,000 for a speaking role in the film – it’s already been taken.

If the project doesn’t reach its goal, you don’t get charged. If the project reaches its goal, you pay your pledge and get updates about the state of the project while it’s in development. If the project exceeds its goal, the makers can use that extra funding to make that thing even better.

Enter Torment: Tides of Numenera. The video game is set in the world of Monte Cook’s new tabletop role playing game, Numenera. We’re already going a little meta here because that tabletop game was only made possible when Monte Cook, famous among a niche community because of his contributions to games like Dungeons & Dragons, raised over $500,000 on Kickstarter to make his own game (his original goal was $20,000).

Covers for the first two books in The Kingkiller Chronicle

I was interested in Tides of Numenera from the start because of the legacy of Planescape: Torment. I finally jumped on board when I saw that if the game reaches enough pledges, they’ll add Patrick Rothfuss to the writing team. Patrick Rothfuss is one of the best fantasy authors out there today and if you’re not reading his The Kingkiller Chronicle books you’re missing out. Mr. Rothfuss wrote a lovely piece on his blog about how he came on board the project that made it clear that in addition to being a brilliant writer, he’s a nice guy I’d enjoy hanging out with at a convention. Done.

Kickstarter is changing the landscape for creators. Indie comics creators have a whole new option for making their books possible and maybe even (gasp!) profitable. Video game developers no longer have to be enslaved to a big production company’s bottom line and can make games targeted directly at the people who want to play them. I just looked at my profile and discovered I’ve helped fund fifteen projects so far. I’m sure there will be more in the future. So what are you waiting for? Head over to http://www.kickstarter.com/ and help people start creating worlds.

Moving On From Tokyopop

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Yesterday, I read a great piece from comics/TV/book writer Chuck Austen on Comic Book Resources about how those who created books for Tokyopop need to put Tokyopop in the rear view and move on with their careers. Chuck’s a friend and though he’s faced more than his share of criticism, he’s a great writer and true professional. I’m proud of the fabulous sci-fi book Flywires he wrote for me back when I was his editor at Humanoids Publishing. After I left Humanoids to pursue my writing career, Chuck and I both ended up writing manga (Japanese style comics) series for Tokyopop. Chuck’s coming of age series Boys of Summer was pure fun. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you know my series Pantheon High about a high school for demigods in present-day Los Angeles.

The kids of Pantheon High

What you may not know is that Tokyopop stopped publishing their line a few years ago. They didn’t go out of business – they just stopped publishing. Because the company never shut down, a lot of talented creators ended up with their books in limbo. The third volume of Pantheon High was available briefly as a print-on-demand book. I’m glad I bought one for myself before it became unavailable. Despite several attempts, I’ve been unable to regain the rights to the series.

The gist of Chuck’s piece is that those of us in this situation need to move on because Stu Levy clearly has no intention of letting go. It’s up to us to put our creative energy elsewhere. It particularly struck me when he said, “They gave us an opportunity to get our work out there, to develop fans.” As much as I’d like to have the ability to do something with Pantheon High, I signed a contract that prevents me from doing so. I don’t regret making that deal because Pantheon High was my first opportunity to get paid to write a comic book. Though I’d been talking to Marvel editors for over a year, I didn’t get my first offer to write Hulk comics until after Pantheon High hit stores. Having a 160-page book on the stands helped me get other work.

I wrote 480+ pages of Pantheon High in total and like Chuck said, that’s an achievement in and of itself. But I didn’t stop there. I’ve written many, many things since then, from comics and graphic novels to video games and prose. I have several creator-owned series in the works right now and I’m planning to launch my first Kickstarter this summer. Ironically, my in-progress series The Girl With No Name was with Tokyopop but my co-creator Eden Benton and I were able to get the rights back because the first volume was never actually published.

Like Chuck says, “It is upsetting. It is heartbreaking. We have every right to be angry. We deserve to have our creation(s) back. But we never will, and none of these entirely justifiable feelings help us now.” Nobody likes getting the short end of the stick but sometimes that happens in business. The trick is to keep on doing what you love and to keep on doing it well. Learning from your past is probably a good idea as well. I’d walk away from the terms of my Pantheon High contract if those were on the table today. Back then, at the start of my career, it made sense and it was worth it, no matter how much I miss Griffin and Grace and the other kids at Pantheon High. That series got my career started. Now, it’s time to focus on the future.

PaulBenjaminWrites.com World Premiere!

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Welcome to PaulBenjaminWrites.com – the new web page of Paul Benjamin. I’ve streamlined things from my old web presence and added lots of new features. I’ll be posting regular updates both personal and professional here, right on my front page. Where else can you read about awesome new comic book projects and life as a diplomat in Uzbekistan? (Nowhere else on that one in particular, guaranteed!)

Thanks to my new web tools, I’ll be assigning categories to posts and tagging them as well. You’ll be able to target posts that are relevant to your interests. Prospective clients can see review projects I’ve worked on in the past. Travel lovers can read about visits to Thailand, Algeria, Prague, etc. Video game fans can hear about upcoming games like the Marvel Heroes MMO. Gluttons for punishment can learn what it’s like to live in Uzbekistan. Those who want to reach me now that I have a new email address can get in touch through my website’s Contact page.

Now I’ll be able to instantly send out my posts via Twitter and Facebook too. Soon I’ll be writing about my upcoming graphic novel The Girl With No Name. I’ll also finally be launching a page for the supermodel side of my career, so keep an eye out and enjoy my adventures!

My New Jobs (Not The Ones I Expected)

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Just in time for Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) and my last year in Uzbekistan, big changes are afoot!

In my last post, I mentioned that I was interviewing for a job that opened up at the embassy after the previous job owner left for her next assignment. The Public Affairs Assistant position was a perfect fit for me. I interviewed and the folks at the embassy agreed. After all, who could be more qualified to write for the embassy’s website than the resident supermodel? Unfortunately, someone in Washington who doesn’t know me or Lisa decided that it would be a violation of nepotism policy for me to work so closely with my wife. As a result, I can’t take that job and it remains unfilled.

Of course, I understand the need for nepotism policies. It wouldn’t be appropriate for my wife to be my direct supervisor. This is frustrating because I happen to know a husband and wife who had these exact same two jobs at this exact same embassy four years ago. It was okay for them to work together, but with the Foreign Service shuffling jobs every few years, whoever had to make the nepotism decision this time put the kibosh on the job for me. As a result, the embassy doesn’t simply have a less-qualified person in the PA Assistant job. It’s just empty. That means more work for everyone in the PA section.

So, what’s this about my new job? Well, the embassy hired me as a temp (in FS terms: a “When Actually Employed” position). As such, I’ll be a floater, helping out wherever I can with whatever projects I can. Guess who really needs my help right now? The Public Affairs section because they lack a PA Assistant.

I doubt I’ll be doing the exact same job. It wouldn’t be kosher to use this position as a workaround for the nepotism policy. However, I’ll definitely be doing some of the work I’d have done as the PA Assistant since there’s nobody to do it right now. Plus, I’ll be doing it for less pay and with none of the benefits or vacation/sick leave I’d have accrued as a PA Assistant. Am I annoyed? A little bit. However, I’ve never taken a job I didn’t plan to do to the best of my ability. I start Monday and I plan to jump in and do what I can to help the mission. It means money I can use to hire an artist plus it’ll help out my friends at the embassy.

Another big change for this final year in Uzbekistan is that I just got the rights back to one of my Tokyopop properties!! It’s a manga book I was doing with the stunningly talented artist Eden Benton before Tokyopop folded. She’s done a significant amount of work on the book and I’ve already scripted it, so this is a big win for us. Right now we’re exploring a Kickstarter.com campaign to raise money for producing the book. When that kicks off, I promise you’ll hear all about it as I look for your support in this new endeavor! Happy New Year!

Spider-Man: Two Great Collections

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My Spider-Man “Just Another Day” short story has been included in not one, but two Spider-Man collections.

SPIDER-MAN: THE FANTASTIC SPIDER-MAN
Available in bookstores and on Amazon.com

Stories by Dan Slott, Christos Gage, Paul Benjamin, Javier Pulido, Rob Williams, Lee Garbett, and more.

The Sinister Six vs. Spider-Man and the FF – and by FF, we mean the entire Future Foundation! Know what’s not a good place for children, even super-powered kids? A full-scale battle with the world’s deadliest super villains! It’s not “Bring Your Kids to Work” Day, it’s not a field trip, and it’s definitely not a game! This is a high-stakes battle, and there’s no way it will end well.
COLLECTING: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #658-662.

Click this link to buy the Fantastic Spider-Man from Amazon.com

And if you want all of the above issues plus even more Amazing Spider-Man action, get the expanded collection:

SPIDER-MAN: BIG TIME ULTIMATE COLLECTION
Available in bookstores and on Amazon.com

Stories by Dan Slott, Christos Gage, Paul Benjamin, Humberto Ramos, Javier Pulido, Rob Williams, Lee Garbett, and more.

Peter Parker has finally hit the Big Time. He’s a full-fledged Avenger, he just landed a high-paying science job, and he has an amazing new girlfriend. But big-time living means big-time pressure! When the Hobgoblin returns, Spidey will need a slick new edge to defeat him. And when the Scorpion targets J. Jonah Jameson and his loved ones, Spider-Man must grapple with matters of life and death in a moving and compelling tale. Then, Spidey is asked to join the FF, adding even more to his already overful plate. Peter has never been one to shirk his responsibility, but will all his new commitments prove too much to handle? Plus: a new and strangely familiar Venom makes his debut!
COLLECTING: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #648, 649-662, 654.1

Click this link to buy the Spider-Man Big Time Ultimate Collection from Amazon.com