Ric Croxton Talks to Van Allen Plexico
Van Allen Plexico in Atlanta,2005
Van Allen Plexico, writer of The Sentinels Trilogy tells Ric Croxton about his new series of comic book style heroes set in novels.
What is the Sentinels Trilogy?
It is a series of three books—When Strikes the Warlord, A Distant Star, and Apocalypse Rising—about a team of super heroes, their various foes, and the many complications that arise in their private and public lives as they do their thing. While each book can stand alone, together they tell one big, ongoing story: “The Grand Design.”
The books are written as novels rather than comics, though there will be a good bit of pin-up art and even “action scene” art included in the hardcover omnibus coming late this year. There are elements of science fiction/space opera, old-school Marvel Comics, and pulp adventure mixed into the stories. And the chapters are short and fast-paced so that they can mimic the many scenes found in a typical super hero comic.
In short—they’re fast-paced, action-packed, and fun!
What made you decide to write this series?
A lifetime of reading comics. I wanted to tell great super hero stories like the classics I read growing up in the Seventies and Eighties. But I can’t draw worth a flip! So I honed my craft and skill at writing and decided to make them straight-ahead novels instead of scripts.
Will there be more in the series?
Yes, definitely. The second trilogy won’t be finished for quite a while, yet, but it already has a name: “The Rivals.” The books are tentatively entitled The Sheva Advent, Worldmind, and Galactic Conflagration, and they pick up a bit after the first series.
But before those books come out, look for a “Widescreen Special Edition” late in 2007. We’re really proud of that—it will be a huge, roughly 700-page (!!) hardcover coffee table book, with a limited run, signed and numbered. It will include all three novels, plus behind-the-scenes features, short stories from more than a half dozen noted authors/comics writers, interior art and pin-up sketches from dozens of artists, RPG write-ups, and more. All that, and the cover was painted by artist extraordinaire Mitch Foust (whom we were very, very fortunate to get for this!).
Who were your artists?
The interior artist for the upcoming editions is Chris Kohler, whom I’ve known for a number of years now. He does a lot of commission work online for comics fans, and has known these characters for quite some time, so he was the ideal choice—and he absolutely knocked them out of the park. Readers will love turning the pages and encountering each of Chris’s interpretations of the action as they go along.
For the sketch/pin-up section of the “Widescreen” hardcover book, we have quite a few contributors, including Jeremy Haun, Rob Davis, Tony Perna, Chris Moreno, and more. And, as I mentioned before, Mitch Foust did the cover. His style reminds me of Greg Land or Adam Hughes, in a way—gorgeous women! Pulsar, the star of our show, is drop-dead stunning in it. (This painting also made the cover of Mitch’s art book at San Diego ComicCon this year.)
Did you have any help in creating your characters?
The characters and the plots of the first three novels were almost entirely collaborations between me and my longtime friend, Bobby Politte. He and I got together over a decade ago and started throwing around ideas for characters, just for fun—and pretty soon we were working out their backgrounds and stories of their adventures. We did a lot of short stories with them but never took it much further, until I decided in 2005 to rewrite some of them as novels—leading to the Sentinels books. Bobby is a brilliant “idea man,” in particular, and the stories would not be as solid and entertaining as they are without his efforts from the beginning. (He is also the master of all things RPG, and is writing up the main characters in “Mutants and Masterminds” style, for a feature in the “Widescreen” hardcover book.)
Were any of your heroes or villains based on established characters?
As much as anything new was influenced by what the creator(s) read in the past, sure. In the case of the core Sentinels members, you could probably find connections between some of them and some of the better-known Avengers. For example, we have a guy in armor (though not really like Tony Stark, in several ways), and we have a sort of android character, and a guy who has the charisma and leadership abilities of a Captain America. I think it was simply inevitable for that to be the case, since I’ve always been a huge fan of the Avengers. But the similarities are mostly superficial; these characters are their own people, and I think that becomes abundantly clear as you read the books.
Of course, our lead character is a teen-aged Chinese-American female with energy powers—but she was created long before Kurt Busiek’s “Jolt.” You can imagine my reaction when I read the Thunderbolts for the first time and encountered her! Wait long enough and every good idea gets done by someone else…usually more than once!
What character was your favorite?
I think Pulsar (Lyn Li) is my favorite, though most readers have tended to disagree, so far. She’s in many ways the “point of view” character—we encounter the world through her eyes, and meet the other heroes and villains for the first time as she does. She’s just getting into the business of super-heroics, and so there’s that learning process, complete with mistakes—sometimes catastrophic, deadly ones. Some say she’s whiny and annoying, but I beg to differ. How can you not love a college freshman nerd-girl in a skin-tight golden mesh leotard, who devours popcorn, watches football, and can fly, create force fields, and fire lightning blasts? And sometimes accidentally makes your TV explode??
Which was your least favorite?
This is the flip side of the coin—I never liked Damon Sinclair, aka “the Cavalier”…but most of the readers so far have adored him. He’s a showoff, a spoiled brat, he hits on the women reporters who interview him, he mangles the weapons and armor that resident genius Esro Brachis makes for him… and yet people can’t get enough of him. So even the writer doesn’t always know how the characters will come across to the public.
Any plans on doing solo adventures of the heroes?
I do have plans in that direction, yes. That may well be the third series, with each book named after one of the “big four” of Ultraa, Pulsar, Vanadium, and Esro Brachis, and an interwoven plotline running through them all. I envision covers in the style of Alex Ross’s Justice Society solo pics.
In addition, the “Widescreen” hardcover book contains more than a half-dozen short stories that are mostly solo adventures of the team members (and villains!). And that includes a Cavalier story, so all those Damon fans will be excited to hear that.
I noticed that the Warlord had some similarities to Marvel Comics’ Kang and DC Comics’ latest version of Monarch. Were they inspirations for him?
I would say that Kang and old-school Doctor Doom and Magneto all contributed something to my construction of the Warlord—that over-the-top, bigger-than-life, arrogant villain who prances around in flaring robes and mask and just knows he is destined to conquer the world/galaxy/universe—or destroy it. But the Warlord also includes influences from Eastern religions such as Hinduism, with the cosmic wheel turning and the sense of birth and death and rebirth and eternity. I think the Warlord makes a lot more sense when looked at that way. That’s the “Grand Design” of the series title.
Francisco is a very unusual character and seems to be more than just The Warlord’s lackey. Did you think about just using him instead of The Warlord?
I’m glad you caught that about Francisco! He is indeed more than just “the Toad” to the Warlord’s old-school Magneto. He is an integral part of the Grand Design, and you can’t have one of them without the other. He’s also there for comedic effect—he’s a silly, goofy character; yet often he makes more sense and is more level-headed than the Warlord, thus revealing just how absolutely nuts the Warlord actually is. In fact, by the third book, he actually becomes one of the more important protagonists on his own.
Speaking of lackeys, several appear in the series, in fact some of them could have been made into a main villain in any series. Can you share a bit on a few of them?
Well, by that I assume you are referring to villains such as the Field Marshal, the Blue Skull, Blitzkrieg, Distraxion, Okaar, Eclipse, and the like. They all have their parts to play in the story, and they have distinct personalities—something the novel format allows even more room to develop than a comic book would.
The most enjoyable thing about writing them, I think, is the fact that once I had gotten inside their heads pretty well, they simply wrote themselves. The Blue Skull’s actions in book three, for example, as things are going to crap all around him, were never consciously “thought up” by me—they simply played out on the page as my fingers moved on the keyboard. I was as surprised by his actions as (I believe) the reader will be, but they came naturally, based on who he was and the kinds of things he would do. That’s generally a sign that characters, and a book in general, are “working.” I hope so!
As for main characters, it seemed like the limelight was shared equally by several. Was this done on purpose?
Absolutely. While Pulsar is the primary “point of view” character, my goal was to give each of them a certain amount of space and pages to do their thing, either together or individually. The first book focuses mostly on Pulsar and on the Cavalier, while introducing the others. The second book includes an extended section with Esro Brachis and his beautiful alien companion, Mondrian, off in space. The third book really belongs at the end to Ultraa, stepping up and being “the Man” when he has to. I think Vanadium gets a lot of “face time” toward the end, as well. And of course the Warlord is a major presence throughout—he’s as much a main character as is Dr. Doom in the FF!
Is Marvel Comics’ Avengers your inspiration for the Sentinels?
There’s no question my lifetime of reading the Avengers affected and continues to influence the way I write the Sentinels. It couldn’t be otherwise. (Heck, the cover art of the three novels each directly recalls a classic Avengers cover, some more openly than others.) But these stories are their own thing. I’m not sure an Avengers fan, actually reading the books, would say there was anything more than a surface similarity.
Who were your writing inspirations?
Without a doubt, my main influences when writing super hero fiction are Jim Shooter, Jim Starlin, John Byrne, Jack Kirby, Chris Claremont, David Michelinie, Doug Moench, and Bill Mantlo. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few others, too—more recent ones would include Kurt Busiek and Joe Straczynski. But I am pretty widely read in SF and Fantasy, too, so I have to acknowledge my debt to the work of Roger Zelazny, John Varley, Larry Niven, Dan Abnett, and a whole slew of others. They all shaped elements of whatever style I have evolved as a writer.
I have a theory that the first comics writers one encounters as a child sort of lay down the hard-wiring for one’s perceptions of stories forever after. There is no doubt that Jim Starlin and Jim Shooter “wired my brain up” the way it is today!
Any chance on Sentinels being made into a comic book?
I would love to see that. I’ve been fortunate to have many good artists do single pages of art (and, in Chris Kohler’s case, multiple interior scenes). I can only hope that, one day, an artist whose work meshes with my ideas of how the characters and stories should look will want to tackle such a project. I would even be willing to write shorter scripts—maybe assemble a book with a set of short comics stories by various artists. That would be something I’d be very interested in approaching. We shall see what develops.
Will the Sentinels be doing any crossovers in other universes?
As “booked up” as the team is, on into the next couple of years, what with their second (and third) series coming up, and the big “Widescreen” book and more -someone would have to approach me with a very good opportunity, to cause me to alter those plans. But I would certainly be willing to listen.
Have any comic book companies approached you to work for them since your books have come out?
Not yet, but they have only been around for a relatively short time—the third book debuted in the spring of 2007. They’ve been selling pretty well, for a very-small-press set of books. I’m confident that as more readers find out about them and check them out, good things will happen.
What books have you done that have been published?
Aside from these, the other one out now is ASSEMBLED!, which I edited and contributed to. It’s a book of opinion and analysis of Marvel’s Avengers (there they are, yet again!). The profits from that book go to the HERO Initiative charity, and we’ve sold quite a few copies in only the first few months of its release. (It was quite the hit at DragonCon, for example.)
Any other books in the planning stage?
For next year, I’m writing a retro-pulp SF novel set in the Flash Gordon-esque world of “Mars McCoy,” created by Ron Fortier (Terminator: Burning Earth). And I’ll have a “Kerry Keen: The Griffon” pulp adventure novella, “Conspiracy of Terror,” published by Wild Cat Books sometime in 2008. The Griffon is a wild, Shadow-esque hero who flies seaplanes in combat against the bad guys in the late Thirties. It was a blast to write. I also have a series of SF/Fantasy novels I’m pitching to agents as we speak, involving a pantheon of godlike beings in a far-future galactic war. And of course there are the next set of Sentinels books, which should begin coming out late in ’08. Busy busy busy!
Where can we find the Sentinels books?
They’re available from Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and the like, and can also be ordered directly from the publishers, White Rocket Books, at www.whiterocketbooks.com. White Rocket has several other great books by various authors and editors coming out soon, including James Palmer (Voices for the Cure) and Mark Bousquet (Dreamer’s Syndrome).
What formats are they offered in?
The original Sentinels trilogy is available in trade paperback and hardcover. The “Widescreen” book will be available only as an oversized, casewrapped hardcover, in the style of the big RPG books. At 700-plus pages of stories and art for less than forty bucks, it should be a steal. Look for it to appear before Christmas on the White Rocket site.
Will you be doing any book signing at Conventions in 2008?
I will be a guest of OmegaCon in
Those interested can go to
and visit the Message Board there—under the “Convention Appearances” section, I list the latest news on where and when I’ll be showing up for things. A good bit of discussion by Sentinels readers has been going on there, as well, of late. So I hope folks will check out the books and then jump into the discussion on the board. I’d love to hear what people think!
