Goin’ “Nowhere Man” Mighty Fast!

Continuing in my quest to re-publish some of my “older” article originally published elsewhere, in order to have a more unified umbrella for my works. This piece is all about one of my favorite Independent creators, the extremely talented Jerome Walford, whom I met a a comic con in New Jersey several years ago, and whose work I have enjoyed ever since.

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“Imagine. You have been chosen to save the world, but it will cost you everything: your life, your reputation, and everyone you ever loved.” According to Jerome Walford, creator of the graphic novel series, Nowhere Man, that is precisely what happens to his main character. Walford tells us that Nowhere Man is a psychological thriller which follows its main character, Jack Maguire, an ambitious NYC police detective, as he is caught up in the biggest conspiracy of all time. After years of being haunted by his father’s death on 9/11, Jack is granted the opportunity to become an honest-to-goodness superhero, but to achieve this; he is also called upon to pay the ultimate price. Walford said that “This multi-trade series has the heart of a classic superhero tale, told with the sophistication of a detective drama and elements of a sci-fi thriller.” 

Walford’s team consists of himself at the helm, as creator, writer, artist, and producer, leading a talented team to assemble this book series. He is backed up by his wife, Amy Walford (producer), and Maya Rock, Russ Lane, and David Wu as editors. Jerome is an award-winning illustrator with over a decade of experience in marketing, advertising and commercial illustration. He graduated a Merrill Presidential scholar from the fine art program of Cornell University. Maya Rock is an accomplished fiction editor, currently finishing up her own novel and freelance editing on a number of projects. Russ Lane has had a long history as an editor in the magazine industry. In addition to writing and editing for his own start-up magazine, Russ occasionally seeks out opportunities to edit for comic projects that interest him. David Wu and Jerome go as far back as their days in college. David is a talented programmer and project manager, yet his incredible eye for detail may reveal an editor in disguise. 

According to Jerome we should we care about his project because he is truly attempting something different with the superhero genre. “My goal is to establish a definitive ‘superhero’ character born out of the post-9/11 world in which we live. By this I mean less so the political controversy, although there is some of that, and more so, an attempt to create a reflection of how we have individually changed and collectively changed as a society. To me this is more than just a comicbook. It is a visual narrative effort to capture that sense of loss of hope, disconnectedness, rage, regret, and the determination to carry on, which just happens to be in this particular form of literature we call comics.” 

Secondly, he is hoping to create a series that will appeal to die-hard comicbook fans, while being accessible to a wider audience. He managed to successfully publish a trio of trades in 2013 and has scheduled three more for 2014. Each of the trades is 40-50 pages in length and encompasses both story and some background material. “This is a big story nine years in the making with lots of material for the reader to enjoy.” Jerome tells us that Nowhere Man is loosely based on a one-shot comic he wrote and illustrated in college titled The Becommers; that won him top grades in his communications class. “I always thought there was something there I wanted to further develop. On a personal level, I know what it is like to lose family members and how that changes a person, how it becomes a filter through which you see the world and motivates one’s actions. I’ve lost family under different circumstances, but I can relate to the main character Jack Maguire, and I think a lot of other people can too.” 

For his part, Jerome likes to think of Jack Maguire as the new spirit of New York: split motivated personality, at odds with itself and his sense of purpose. Yet with some determination and the help of those who won’t quit on him, Jack just might be able to do the impossible. “That’s my main intention, but the characters have developed quite organically over the past eight years I have been scripting this series. The current script is a better interpretation of the characters’ choices and the consequences that would occur.” Like most of the rest of us, as kids, Jerome grew up on a healthy diet of comics and fiction. “I can remember reading a great story and saying. ‘Yeah! I want to be that brave, confident, daring, etc.’ Comics are a nice way to escape in amazing adventures in a different place and time with an imaginary role model, a great place to process stuff without really thinking about it.” 

He went on to share with us that he believes that a truly great story is one that lifts you away on an amazing journey to return to reality as a stronger better self. “Every kid (and grown-up kid) that walks into their neighborhood comic shop, buys trades online or gets issues on their app, they are buying entertainment and making a deposit on that kind of adventure; one that will change them forever. This is what has brought me back to comics, the small possibility that I could help move comics forward.”

Jerome believes that the thing that makes his comic unique is that there are nuances that he thinks a close reader can appreciate, these include the following: 

• There aren’t any capes or masks. Yet the way a character’s clothes move in a scene, or the way Jack treats his hat, gives the reader the echoes of things they would expect from a superhero tale. 
• Secondly, much of the architecture and backgrounds have a “voice.” Walking down the streets of NYC, the positioning of a billboard or signage often sends a different message than what was intended. In the same way he often uses backdrops in the story to break the fourth wall with the reader. 
• Thirdly, the series is a bit of a Rorschach test on issues of race. He feels that there are only two places in the entire series where the character(s) mention race, and they are both to say that race is not a predominant factor. Often potential readers will look at the cover of first trade and make certain assumptions that either attract or repel them. Jerome finds this phenomenon interesting and assures us that we’ll see how it all plays out by the end of the series. 

In addition to Nowhere Man, Jerome is working on a young adult novel series titled Curse of the Griffin; which is a coming-of-age saga about Daniel, a homeless artist attempting to survive life in a town that is run by vampires without becoming one of them himself. It is an epic adventure that re-imagines the origins of vampires and puts them in conflict with refugees from a fallen kingdom of gargoyles and other mystical creatures. The first book, Daniel’s Pride was published in the summer of 2013 that garnered great reviews from Kirkus Reviews and others. “I’m currently working on the manuscript for the second book. Amy and I are also in the early stages of an all-ages comic that we will be talking about more sometime in 2014.” 

You can always learn more about Jerome’s published projects from Forward Comix and on his Facebook page. In “real Life” Jerome started his own marketing and advertising studio called The Blue Griffin. “I work with start-ups and small business owners to design and program websites, as well as develop online and offline marketing materials to promote their business, ventures or creative endeavors.” 

Characters, Story and Content of Nowhere Man, Curse of the Griffin, and Daniel’s Pride are © 2014 Jerome Walford. All rights reserved.

The Boston Metaphysical Society

This article was originally posted on Feb 19th, 2014 on another website, but as with several other previously published articles, I am re-posting them here so as to accumulate then in a single spot. This article was originally posted to support the launch of  Madeleine Holly-Rosing's then upcoming comicbook series, The Boston Metaphysical Society.

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Writers — especially writers of fiction — are often asked from where they get their ideas. People seem fascinated with how some people can look at the world and say “Why,” while writers seem to be able to look at that self-same world and say, “Why not?” Essentially, that is what lies at the core of what makes a fiction writer tick, their ability to craft out of whole or even partially woven cloth, a world of wonder and magic, because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but sometimes (though, admittedly, not often, and not for everyone) it is the jumping off point to a world of Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans if you will. 

For Madeleine Holly-Rosing, the author of The Boston Metaphysical Society the creation of her wonderful steampunk-driven world was the marriage of her love of The X-Files and history itself. In fact, the tag line for the on-line and print comic is “Before Mulder and Scully, there was Hunter and O’Sullivan.” According to Holly-Rosing the historical part of the story evolved out of a feature script that she wrote for the Sloan Fellowship (which she won in 2007). Called Stargazer, that feature script was the true story of Mina Fleming, a Scottish-American woman who — in the late 1800s — arrived in Boston pregnant, penniless and abandoned by her husband. She was hired to work as the maid at the home of Edward Pickering, the director of the Harvard Observatory who soon discovered her amazing attention to detail and hired her to crunch numbers for him. Over the course of her life, while working for the director, she discovered over 10,000 stars and developed a new stellar classification system.

Boston Metaphysical Society is a steampunk adventure where inventors Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla, along with the magician and escape artist Harry Houdini are part of a secret organization that is intent on tracking down a serial killer who — they believe — has slipped through into their plane of existence from another dimension, and is now stalking and killing people so as to inspire fear which in turn feeds him. Unable to capture the creature (whom they have dubbed “The Shifter”) they seek out the aid of an ex-Pinkerton Detective, named Samuel Hunter, whose wife was slain by the Shifter and is now driven by revenge to slay him. When Hunter is brought onto the case by Houdini, Hunter brings with him an odd collection of paranormal hunters, that includes a medium-in-training named Caitlin O’Sullivan (who is a “spirit photographer” as well as the daughter of his previous ghost photographer, who recently died, and Granville Woods, a Scientist extraordinaire. Together they hope to be able to stop the Shifter before his malevolent presence tears Boston apart.

Originally Holly-Rosing had intended Boston Metaphysical to be a TV show, but after writing a couple of episodes while at UCLA, it was suggested to her that she turn it into a comic. “I thought it was a good idea not realizing how overwhelming it can be,” Holly-Rosing told us. “However, I was very fortunate to have wonderful mentors (Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Strain, and Dave Elliott) who are still there for me when I need them.” Now, she loves writing comics, even though she admits that the production, marketing and selling can be daunting on top of all her other projects. In order to get around some of those issues, she chose to launch Boston Metaphysical as an online webcomic, later collecting the online pages with the help of Kickstarter to raise funds, re-publishing them in print. (In January 2014 she went back for a second Kickstarter round to raise additional funds to produce several issues.)

When asked, “Why Steampunk, why not SciFi, mystery or straight-up horror?” She responded by saying, “The TV pilot it was adapted from was originally a supernatural detective period piece, but a friend suggested that I set it in a steampunk world, and I liked the idea. So, I redeveloped the pilot to make it an alternative 1800s show.” She then went on to say that while she didn’t really have much exposure to steampunk prior to that, she did a volume of research on the genré, reading up on it and discovered that the genré perfectly blended her love of history and science fiction. “I finally found the genré I was made for.” 

For Holly-Rosing the story of the Boston Metaphysical Society is first and foremost one that is character-driven. “Unlike some other steampunk comics or literature, the gadgets in my story take a backseat [to the story itself]. I wanted to create a world where the technology was organic to the world the characters lived in.” She does admit that occasionally, there will be an “OMG” moment over some tech thing but pretty much it is all a part of the characters’ everyday lives. Further, she tells us that the story resonated with everything she likes to read: a strong female character, class struggles, a lead character who is torn between doing what is right and doing what he/she wants. “Using some of the leading historical characters of the time (Bell, Edison, Tesla, and Houdini), I was able to bring a sense of place to the world I was crafting. It took a lot of time and a lot of research but bringing this story to life became an obsession.” 

Assisting Holly-Rosing in bringing the world of Boston Metaphysical to life is artist Emily Hu, who is a graduate from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Emily has been drawing ever since she was little, and it’s been her lifelong dream to succeed as a comic book artist. Her main influences are Eduardo Risso, Becky Cloonan, and Junji Ito. Emily’s other hobbies include reading, sleeping, and eating. Boston Metaphysical Society is her first comicbook series. 

As for herself, Madeleine Holly-Rosing holds a Master of Fine Arts in screenwriting from UCLA and is a TV and feature film writer. Holly-Rosing has recently completed her first novel, a middle-grade fantasy, and has published a number of short stories as well as novellas based on the Boston Metaphysical Society universe which are available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords. Her short story, The Clockwork Man was published in eSteampunk magazine (March 2013) and The Way Home was published in an A1/Atomeka/Titan Comics anthology in November 2013 which was accompanied by three illustrations by Emily Hu (those three pieces now accompany this article). 

Characters, Story and Content of The Boston Metaphysical Society are © 2014 Madeleine Holly-Rosing. All rights reserved. 

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This article is © 2014 & 2020 Robert J. Sodaro, D.B.A. Freelance Ink. All rights reserved.