Hello from "Anywhere out of this world"

Hi there!

Let me introduce myself, I'm Florian R. Guillon, aspiring comic-book artist as well as letterer and translator. I'm not exactly from "Anywhere out of this world" - which is the title of a Dead Can Dance song - but from France.

For years I've been collecting informations and characters from the public domain, and I eventually happened to learn about open source characters, which led me here a few weeks ago. I decided to register today.

What could I add? Well, I'm 26, I write and draw a fantastic/magic/horror comic-book named Dark Fates in my fanzine Forgotten Generation. I'm a huge fan of comics from nearly all around the world - I grew up reading many French comics, then went to mangas and US comics that don't have the same feeling.

Public domain finally determined the published version of Dark Fates since the day I discovered I could use characters such as The Claw. It was in 2007. From then on, I built my series and other projects using characters or concepts from what I could find in international public domain. I'm currently still working on Dark Fates, as well as Le Temps Des Héros (a collective webcomic), Multiversel and Daredevil. Apart from that, I've always created characters on my very own and I think of making some available in open source.

I guess that sums it all. So I'm happy to be here!

Welcome Aboard,Glad To Have You Here!

Welcome Florian! We look forward to learning more about your work.

I'm not well versed in French copyright law, but I'll try to answer questions you might have.

You might look at the public domain horror comics available online for inspiration!

Have you ever thought of using the famous public domain French characters, like Fantomas, Zigomar, Arsene Lupin or the first superhero, Nyctalope? Or Judex ...pre-cursor to "The Shadow" who appeared in French silent films?

Thanks!

First, yes, sorry for the wait, I spent most of this week working on a drawing for an Illustrated Challenge - most of it was spent trying to colorize it with Photoshop, which I'm learning at the same time.

As for French copyright law, it's very difficult to have data on the public domain. In fact, it doesn't work on copyright but on creator's right. You need to wait at least for 70 years after an author's death to have their work become public domain. So I unfortunately cannot use Arsène Lupin, Fantômas or others. I don't know much of Zigomar, and as for the Nyctalope, I'm not sure he is PD.

In the case of the latter, he has been recently used in a comic-book miniseries named La Brigade Chimérique (an allegoric answer to the question why European superhumans disappeared before World War II), along with many other characters from late XIXth-early XXth centuries, but their status is really unclear. I tried to have one of the authors of the RPG adaptation explain it to me, but even he didn't know.

The most recent case of characters lapsed into public domain was the comic-book Les Pieds Nickelés (a comic series that lasted for decades) and it was due to a lawsuit between two editing companies that everyone knows they are PD now. What a shame!

And as far as Judex is concerned, I tend to think he is PD. I don't know much about him either, because I've only seen Georges Franju's movie so far, but I know one interesting thing: when The Shadow's strips were first published in France, the main character had been renamed Judex.

Ouch...life+70 means that there probably isn't much 20th Century work that is actually public domain in France. That sucks! However, the good news is, Arsene Lupin should be public domain in January 2012...16 days from now. The author died in 1941. The creators of Zigomar (a film serial character much like Fantomas), all died before 1940, which should make him public domain. The same is true for the creators of Judex and "Les Vampires" which should make those characters PD. Sadly, Nyctalope and Fantomas will be protected potentially for almost 30 more years...if the heirs still have a claim on them.

All of those characters are PD in the United States. I believe any characters created by Americans that are PD here, are PD in France...

That's what I think. If a character is public domain in its own country, then it is also for the rest of the world.

For my comic-book, I used The Claw, Thomas Carnacki, Fantom of the Fair, Stardust and Green Lama. What I did with them is twisting them so they can fit in a world where magic is rising. The Claw is a Lovecraftian creature who is the major menace the hero has to face, Fantom of the Fair is no longer a hero, Green Lama becomes an actual lama and Stardust will never have bore his "Super Wizard" nickname better.

Actually, that sounds freaking AWESOME! I love the mix, especially an old literary character like Carnaki interacting with more modern comic characters. When/where can we see this?

By the way, almost all of Lovecraft's characters are also PD in the United States.

Thank you.

The comic is published in my fanzine Forgotten Generation, but it's in French only. However, I consider translating after maybe the three first episodes (+ the zero, which is a short story published online and where Carnacki appears) will be published. Sadly, we only have issue one printed for now, the second is really late on schedule due to the fact we are amateurs and some of my collaborators are still students so they don't have much time to work on their comics.

So far, I've been considering a compilation in English on sites like lulu.com for prints on demand. Well, I don't think we have so many foreign readers so that we could afford to print our issues ourselves.

You can download issue #0 from our website, it gathers episodes 0 from Dark Fates, World Justice, Sentinel, Raphael, and The Green Claw #1. What we've published online and printed is old material, we all have improved since then, especially me.

Each comic series has its own gallery and some of the authors' pages have links to blogs or online galleries.

Still French only. Maybe I'll be translating in the future.

EDIT: can't post links.

Seems that I can post links now, so I added my websites to my signature.

Here is a sample of my work that isn't on deviantART at the moment: http://www.comixheroes.com/archives/2011/12/17/22984304.html#comments

It's for an imaginary season of Doctor Who. Here the Daleks attack Doomstadt, and are confronted with Etrigan and French superhero Drak Béryl.

Here it is - my traditional wishcard! See what's to come for this year!



From left to right: Yordi (from Le Temps Des Héros), Ewen Merrick (from Dark Fates), Reject and Eva Vanzetti (from the Multiversel project).

Very nice! It is a pleasure to have a hard working artist in our boards! It seems you have developed quite a few characters...

Thanks!

Yes, I've been working on comic characters for a dozen of years, but never really got to publish them. Well, there was that one time when I was 8, the school newspaper published my very first comic which was a one-page story to be continued and never was.

When I was 12-13 in junior high, I was part of the newspaper club and submitted some comics, but never got published because of the adult supervisor of the club - who had personal grief against some of my family members, what a jerk she was! I had some revenge when some of my school comrades decided not to buy the paper because I wasn't in - a small victory.

Then I decided to work for myself, not caring for other worthless people. If they wouldn't give a f*** to what I did to care for their tastes and stuff, it was fine. I started developping a whole lot of characters, aiming to self-publish myself. But life has been cruel to me and for several years, I gave up but never completely. Everything started again when I met Reed Man in Angoulême in 2007 - watching him draw for me made me want to be a part of it once again. I've never stopped since then and finally got self-published last year, along with the Arcadia Graphic Studio - a collective I've formed with aspiring artists who have a great potential.

Still, I'm not a professional but I work on it. Now I'm done with this "song of myself".

I wish this board were more active so I could see what others can do, but you can't always get what you want. I sincerely hope 2012 will see more activity on this board, which is really interesting.

I wanted to share a few things with you:


Created back in 2010 - the drawing is also two years old. She'll star in a comic I'm making.


Created back in 2003 but not used until 2010 in Le Temps Des Héros: http://forgottengeneration-news.blogspot.fr/2011/01/le-temps-des-heros.html


With my Arcadia Graphic Studio buddies, we decided that it would be great to do a webcomic that would pay homage to the Avengers/superhero team concept while being a nod to the movie. So we put together some of our creations that would fit in the story and I started writing, as well as drawing the cover. I'll also do a fifth of the actual webcomic, with Edwin Boyer, Gaëtan Degasperi, Benjamin Costanza and Eudocimus Ruber. The colors for the cover were made by Bruce Cherin.

Now, the characters:

-Sentinel (created by Edwin Boyer)
First appearance: Sentinel #0 (Forgotten Generation 0)
A nod to the Golden Age Superman and Captain America.

-Cyber-Shield (created by Maxime Saint Michel)
First appearance: Judo Squall (soon in Forgotten Generation 3)
Imagine Sherlock Holmes as an engineer wearing a Sentai armor.

-Thorr (designed by Maxime Saint Michel and me)
First appearance to be published.
God of thunder.

-Midnight (created by Sophie Rumo)
First appearance: World Justice #0 (Forgotten Generation 0-1)
A modern-day ninja who relies on his skills because he has no superpowers.

-Smasher (created by me)
First appearance: Le Temps Des Héros (see above)
A brilliant strategist and tactician who works as a Multiversal agent.

-Red Ann (created by Mort Meskin and Jerry Robinson)
First appearance: Black Terror #24 (soon to be published in French by Arcadia Graphic Studio)
Formerly obsessed with vengeance, she encountered Sentinel when fate stroke.

These are our characters, maybe we'll do open source later. Anyway, enjoy and if you want to see more, I'll gladly show!

that is so cool.

OK, here are some news picture kinda Free Universe-unrelated. I'll put it here because I think it's relevant, as I wrote a few things about my comic in my gallery, so you will know about my production.

Dark Fates:




Translation here.

Dark Fates is about the fate of Ewen Merrick, a wizard who's dealing with a new world of uncertainty and moral ambiguity where supernatural lies. It's urban fantasy, which I often describe as "Harry Potter meets Twin Peaks". In fact, my inspirations are less obvious, because it took 10 years between the first drafts and the first pages. There's some Alan Moore's Judgment Day, Ghostbusters, X-Men, Card Captor Sakura, Martin Mystère (the fumetto, not the crappy animated series) and Dylan Dog (the fumetto, not the movie). I guess it went that way because one of my favourite comic magazines was Mustang, which was a kickstarter (along with the whole Semic Pocket line) for many young artists at the time. Just to name a few: JJ Dzialowski (Detective Comics), Timothy Green II (Ender's Game, Star-Lord), Reed Man (ShieldMaster), David Lafuente (Ultimate Spider-Man), etc. Unfortunately, all Semic Pockets were cancelled at the end of 2003 - so much for my expectations of being published in Mustang, the fantastic/mystery-oriented title in the line. So I decided to create a magazine called Forgotten Generation, which is published since 2011 through my association Arcadia Graphic Studio.


Esprit Vengeur:



The purpose was basically to make a fun webcomic that showcases the main characters of Arcadia's comics, making them team up against a threat from the Golden Age. The result is an action-packed 22-pages comic that can be read for free here: www.amilova.com/fr/BD-manga/982/esprit-vengeur.html
A nod to the Silver Age team comics such as Justice League and The Avengers, that featured our own team of Avengers based on the movie roster.

Deliah Hill's Torment:

The remains of a waste...

Fall 2009, I came up with the idea of doing a cadavre exquis/collective webcomic on a forum. Inspired by gothic and rock songs, it started with a wounded woman who happened to be special agent Caitlyn Douglas, investigating on a case in the town of Deliah Hill. We had good ideas at first with everyone developing the story (one contributed by adding a Lovecraft connection), but... it turned out that the team work and contribution soon became a battle of egos, which each artist trying to have the final word. So I put it to an end to restart fresh and clean, but the comic was deemed too depressive and dark. Still, I want reboot it with a coherent storyline now, but I'm looking for the right person for the job.

Heroes' Time:

On hiatus.

February 2010, I came with a new idea and new rules. A fun superhero webcomic, still in a cadavre exquis fashion. This time, it lasted longer and everyone was really enthusiastic about it. I was really pleased to inject old characters of mine into the story, but the artist who should have continued still hasn't posted her page. I wish I could participate in another fun comic like this one soon.

That said, I'm sorry I still couldn't translate the comics - they're all in French. If you really want me to, I'll do the translation.