For most of us, Memorial Day is synonymous with vacation, but for those that have or continue to serve in the military it means much more.  In that spirit, I thought I’d take the time to once again mention one small way you can give back to the men and women who continue to serve this country.

One of the most rewarding aspects of working on GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES has been the chance to interact with so many veterans.  Some helped me research the book, many contacted me to thank Paul Azaceta and I for the book, and others reached out to share their stories.

Paul a I will never forget, for instance, the Marine who after showing us his shrapnel scars, asked us if he could used Paul’s amazing image from Graveyard of Empires #1 as the basis for tattoo.  He wanted to ink the names of the four men in his unit lost in the roots of the poppy plant.

If you spend time with anyone who’s served, and hear the stories of what they and their loved ones have sacrificed…you can’t help but want to do something.  I did.  You can too, and it doesn’t have to cost you anything.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably amassed a huge collection of comic books.  You may not have room for them, and it’s unlikely you’re going to re-read most of them.  The secondary market for comics has collapsed to the point where you not only can’t make money by selling old books, you can’t even get most comic stores to take them off your hands for free.

But there are men and women who could use the diversion that comics provide.  War has been described as “long periods of boredom punctuated by punctuated by moments of sheer terror”.  There’s not much you can do about the sheer terror short of enlisting, but there is something you can do to help alleviate the boredom.

Donate your comics to Operation Gratitude.

Here’s how they describe what they do:

“Operation Gratitude annually sends 100,000 care packages filled with snacks, entertainment items and personal letters of appreciation addressed to individually named U.S. Service Members deployed in hostile regions, to their children left behind and to Wounded Warriors recuperating in Transition Units. Our mission is to lift morale, bring a smile to a service member’s face and express to our Armed Forces the appreciation and support of the American people. Each package contains donated product valued at ~$125 and costs the organization $15 to assemble and ship.  For safety and security, assembling of packages occurs at the Army National Guard armory in Van Nuys, California. Since its inception in 2003, Operation Gratitude volunteers have shipped more than 660,000 packages to American Military deployed overseas.”

I’ve driven hundreds of comics, graphic novels, books, dvds and videogames over to their HQ and the Van Nuys, CA National Guard Armory.  I’m not saying that to brag, but rather to give you an idea how easy it is.

My poorly taken photo doesn’t convey the massive volunteer operation they have going, but I felt uncomfortable taking pictures at a military installation, even with permission.

But everything you see here, and more, gets sent directly overseas to the troops:

(Those are Marines standing by a Cobra gunship like the ones in GRAVEYARD)

You don’t need to drive to Van Nuys, you can mail your comics there.  They don’t need to be comics…You can donate candy, cellphones, cars, even cash (here’s a more complete list of things you can do, including volunteering your time).  But do something.

Trust me…I’m lazy, self-involved and practically a shut-in, and I did.

At the very least, please re-blog, re-tweet and re-post the hell out of this on Facebook so others can.

P.S. Although I hate making this at all about me, for those of you asking where GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES #4 is, Paul is completely done with the art, it’s just waiting to be colored and lettered, so it should be out in June.  Here’s a never page from the final issue to whet your appetite:

Hope you all had/have a great Memorial Day.

Not too long ago, I tweeted that the last known surviving WWI vet from any side, a woman who served RAF, passed away.  Shortly before that, pop culture scholar Jess Nevins (who writes those great essays in the back of Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips’ Incognito, Fatale etc.) wrote a great blog post on the mystery of Amy Johnson, the British Emilia Earhart. 

There must be something in the air, as writer Kelly Sue DeConnick (Osborn, Castle) has been blogging about women pilots as well.  This post and the above pic concers “The Night Witches”, women WWII Russian bomber pilots with ovaries of steel (Garth Ennis did an arc about them in my favorite war comic that is not Graveyard of Empires, Battlefields).

kellysue:

queernonymoose:

timelessalice:

goddamnitreddas:

gatheringbones:

wrathofprawn:

lostsplendor:

stalins-princess:

Nightwitches

Die NachtHexen

Ночные ведьмы

for those not in the know, night witches were russian lady bombers who bombed the shit out of german lines in WW2. Thing is though, they had the oldest, noisiest, crappest planes in the entire world. The engines used to conk out halfway through their missions, so they had to climb out on the wings mid flight to restart the props. the planes were also so noisy that to stop germans from hearing them combing and starting up their anti aircraft guns, they’d climb up to a certain height, coast down to german positions, drop their bombs, restart their engines in midair, and get the fuck out of dodge.

their leader flew over 200 missions and was never captured.

HOLY SHIT THIS IS RAD AS FUCK

HOLY SHIT

omg that is just so cool aaaa

Russians get shit done apparently.

Ennis did a comic about the Night Witches.  

It’s not just 11-11-11, it’s Veteran’s Day.  GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES’ research and reception afforded me to interact with a many veterans, and as a result the day has added meaning for me.  Spend any time with someone that’s served, hear the stories of what they and their loved ones have sacrificed and you can’t help but want to do something.  I did.  You can too, and it doesn’t have to cost you anything.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably amassed a huge collection of comic books.  You may not have room for them, and it’s unlikely you’re going to re-read most of them.  The secondary market for comics has collapsed to the point where you not only can’t make money by selling old books, you can’t even get most comic stores to take them off your hands for free.

But there are men and women who could use the diversion that comics provide.  War has been described as “long periods of boredom punctuated by punctuated by moments of sheer terror”.  There’s not much you can do about the sheer terror short of enlisting, but there is something you can do to help alleviate the boredom.

Donate your comics to Operation Gratitude.

Here’s how they describe what they do:

“Operation Gratitude annually sends 100,000 care packages filled with snacks, entertainment items and personal letters of appreciation addressed to individually named U.S. Service Members deployed in hostile regions, to their children left behind and to Wounded Warriors recuperating in Transition Units. Our mission is to lift morale, bring a smile to a service member’s face and express to our Armed Forces the appreciation and support of the American people. Each package contains donated product valued at ~$125 and costs the organization $15 to assemble and ship.  For safety and security, assembling of packages occurs at the Army National Guard armory in Van Nuys, California. Since its inception in 2003, Operation Gratitude volunteers have shipped more than 660,000 packages to American Military deployed overseas.”

I’ve driven hundreds of comics, graphic novels, books, dvds and videogames over to their HQ and the Van Nuys, CA National Guard Armory.  I’m not saying that to brag, but rather to give you an idea how easy it is.

My poorly taken photo doesn’t convey the massive volunteer operation they have going, but I felt uncomfortable taking pictures at a military installation, even with permission.

But everything you see here, and more, gets sent directly overseas to the troops:

(Those are Marines standing by a Cobra gunship like the ones in GRAVEYARD)

You don’t need to drive to Van Nuys, you can mail your comics there.  They don’t need to be comics…You can donate candy, cellphones, cars, even cash (here’s a more complete list of things you can do, including volunteering your time).  But do something.

Trust me…I’m lazy, self-involved and practically a shut-in, and I did.

At the very least, please re-blog, re-tweet and re-post the hell out of this on Facebook so others can.

I have two - count’em, two - creator-owned graphic novels out in November, and if you’d like to own them, the best way to do that it is to pre-order them TODAY from your local retailer.

First up: out in November, and available for pre-order TODAY is my latest Original Graphic Novel, DECOY, from Kickstart Comics.

DECOY is the story of an seemingly average guy who learns he’s a robot when he miraculously survives a terror attack. But not just any robot - he’s a robot replica for Agent Zekiel Dax, the world’s deadliest secret agent.

Unlike the Life Model Decoys that say, S.H.I.E.L.D. uses, Zekiel’s Decoy wasn’t created to be used in the field or fake his death. The Decoy was designed to safeguard Agent Dax’s family and otherwise provide cover while he’s off saving the world.

When Agent Dax is captured, The Decoy is forced to rescue him…only to learn that the man he was created to replace is a gambling, womanizing gun for hire. When the “family” the Decoy was programmed to protect is put in jeopardy; this unlikely pair has to team up to save them.

The art is by TERMINATOR’S Andy MacDonald and it’s phenomenal.

Just give your local comic shop Diamond Code SEP111131 and they should be able to put one on hold for you.

Also out in November is the trade paperback collection of FEARLESS, my Image Comic book series co-created by writer David Roth and artist PJ Holden (2000AD).

FEARLESS chronicles the adventures vigilante with a crippling anxiety disorder who becomes dependent upon on anti-fear drug - not just to fight crime, but to function in everyday life. Volume One is the story of what happens when that drug supply is mysteriously cut off.

If you weren’t able to pick it up all the single issues, give your retailer Diamond Code SEP110399.

Last, but not least, the first TWO issues of my latest comic book series, GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES, are available in stores NOW.

GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES features Marines and Taliban teaming up against zombies in Afghanistan. The first issue sold out and immediately went into a second printing. The second issue (of four) has been out less than a week, so now would be a great chance to pick it up before it flies off the shelves.

The art is by GROUNDED co-creator (and Amazing Spider-Man) artist Paul Azaceta, and I think is his best work to date.

Here’s the cover to issue 2, which I’m not sure I’ve featured on here yet:

Newsarama is running an exclusive 6 page preview of some pages of GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES Issue #2, which is in stores TOMORROW, Wednesday, August 24 2011.

Notice I said 6 page preview rather than the usual “5 page preview” or even “the first 6 pages”.

That’s in part because there’s 25 pages of story (still for the low price of $2.99).  At least 3 more pages of story than you’d get from most books that charge more.

It’s also because I decided not to show the 1st 5 pages in sequence.  Why?

We open issue 2 by cutting back and forth between Marines fighting zombies in the present, and flashbacks that give an “origin story” for some of the Taliban who will start to take more of a role in the comics.

I thought it made more sense to present the Taliban sequence without interruption. 

That means there’s still plenty of this to see:

(For you enterprising comic book journalists, bloggers etc…that means that there are 5 pages of Marines on Zombie action we are willing to give you an exclusive on - just contact me here or dm me at twitter - I’m @marksable).

To get back to the Taliban, there were a lot of thorny issues to deal with.

The first was - most coalition troops in Afghanistan never see the enemy they are fighting up close.  Fighting is done at greater distances than in videogames like say, Call of Duty: Black Ops.  Much of that fighting is done at night, and the Taliban blend into the civilian populace.

So, despite the fact our Marines come under sustained assault by the Taliban twice in the first issue, Paul and I made a conscious (and I think, risky decision) not to show the enemy on panel. 

(Although those of you who re-read the first issue after reading the second might notice that the Taliban we “introduce” in the Issue 2 are amongst the civilians the Marines deal with in Issue 1)

The bigger challenge was - how do we depict of The Taliban? As a writer, I needed to make them, if not likable, at least somewhat relatable.  Meaning human beings whose motives a reader can understand, if not root for.  After all, I’ve teased that they may be teaming up with the Marines to take on the real enemy, the undead.

Make no mistake, despite what some right wing comics bloggers (there’s a niche if there has ever been one) have said - I don’t like the Taliban.  They’ve hurt countless innocents, badly wounded veterans I’ve had the privilege of getting to know, and harbored and/or acted in concert with terrorists who have killed people I’ve cared deeply about.

But the Taliban don’t fit neatly into our perceived notions of them as mindless religious fanatics.  Their tribal culture - Pashtunwali - often plays more of a role than Islam.  The drug trade often plays a bigger role than either.  They are a hybrid of a terror organization, an insurgent movement and a drug cartel.

You may ask, how do I know all this?  Researching the Taliban was the hardest part of making this comic.  The Taliban are more likely to behead journalists than speak to them.

I’ve mentioned before that the late photo journalist and war correspondent Tim Hetherington helped point me in the right direction in this area. He was the Academy Award nominated director of the documentary Restrepo, the best film I’ve seen on Afghanistan in particular and on modern warfare in general.

I’ve been thinking about Tim a lot this week.  Not just because of this issue, which directly benefited from his help and his life’s work.  But also because he was killed covering the conflict in Libya.  As I write this Gadafhi’s government is falling, and I wish Tim were alive to bring that to us in a way no one else could.

Without revealing sources and methods, Tim wasn’t the only person who helped Paul and I in researching the Taliban.  The best thing I was pointed to was a series of interviews with actual Taliban fighters.  The only way the Canadian journalist Graeme Smith was able to safely do so was by having his Afghan researcher go out and ask a series of very basic questions to them with a handheld camera.

He couldn’t touch on things like Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden without the natives getting restless.  But you get the idea that ideology is not their primary motivation. Don’t just take my word for it, the interviews are fascinating. 

The goal of spending countless hours researching the hell out of the Taliban was to create as accurate a portrayal of the Taliban as we’ve seen in comics.  That, and to tell an entertaining story.

I hope all the work Paul and I put into bringing the Taliban to life (and un-life) om Issue 2 has paid off.  I’m looking forward to hearing whether you think we’ve pulled it off.

I’ve talked a lot about the extensive research that Paul Azaceta and I have done for GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES.  How it wasn’t just books, or watching films, but speaking to real people - veterans of Afghanistan and other conflicts, intelligence officers and journalists who can give you an insight to war and Afghanistan that no one else can.

I haven’t mentioned peoples names for, well, security reasons.  Nobody broke any laws for me, but war is a serious business and as seriously as I take comics…there’s no comparison.

Today I lost one of those sources, and the world lost an amazing photojournalist in Tim Hetherington.  Tim was best known for shooting the Sebastian Junger film “Restrepo”.  That movie, along with Junger’s War, chronicled the lives - and deaths - of soldiers in a remote combat outpost in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan.  Together with Tim’s book of photos “Infidel”, Restrepo and War were some of the most influential works of Graveyard of Empires.

(The above picture, depicting at an exhausted soldier in combat outpost Restrepo won the World Photo Press Photo of the Year award.  If one picture could sum up the war in Afghanistan…that would be it).

After seeing the film with Paul, I reached out to Tim over the internet to tell him how moved I was by the film, and ask him to recommend books on The Taliban.  He was generous enough to take time from his job of covering wars from Liberia to Libya to give me some suggestions. One of them was Captive, by Jere Van Dyke.  Another was, “The Photographer” by Emmanuel Guibert, a graphic novel. 

I’d like to think the fact we both liked comics (or even A comic) was a small bond we shared.  It may be the only thing I have in common with a courageous war correspondent.

The Taliban (or more correctly, the “neo-Taliban”) are one of the hardest things in the world to research. They don’t talk to journalists so much as the kidnap and murder them. 

Tim’s help was invaluable to fleshing out the book.  To the extend we got either side of the conflict in Afghanistan “right”, it’s in large part due to his work and help. 

I had hoped to show Tim the comic when it was done, perhaps do an interview and some mutually beneficial press for both our books.  To say this isn’t the kind of press I wanted is an understatement.

The title of his book, Infidel comes from the tattoo worn ironically by a soldier in this photo:

We gave a character (The Sniper, below) in the GRAVEYARD an “infidel” tattoo as a kind of shout out to the book and film that helped us so much.

It will be impossible for me to look at that character without thinking of Tim now.

My condolences Tim’s family, friends and colleagues, particularly Sebastian Junger.  I know Tim’s work will live on in the books, films and photographs he gave his life to share with us.  I hope, in some small way, through his generous contribution to GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES, that his legacy will extend to our little nerdy slice of pop culture as well.

Rest in Peace, Tim.