Australis Incognito: Behind the curtain.

So as promised here's a peak behind the curtain for the story behind the story of Australis Incognito.

Now I'd love to say the whole thing came to me in a one big hit but that's not true.  Some of the ideas had been floating around in my head for some time.  The Rusting Death had been a title that been waiting since the mid 90s when I mistyped the Doc Savage novel The Rustling Death for my book list.

But the story really started on Watchmen's 25th anniversary in around 2011.  Like many fans I wondered how things would have went after the events of Moore and Gibbons' story.  It's a world now without a superman just people in costumes.  Was there a third wave/generation of heroes, did the peace last?  What might a third wave look like?

I let myself imagine.  Silk Spectre II and Nite-Owl II would have kids The Nite Spectre, Silk and Nite-Owl III.  There would be a Rorschach II, the daughter of the original's landlady who believes that Walter Kovacs is her father.  There would be original characters like the Cutlass.

I never wrote anything down and at some point reality set in assuming that DC was going to do anything they wouldn't be hiring me anytime soon (and shorly after we got the Before Watchmen collection of miniseries)

As any Watchmen fan worth their salt knows the story was written with the Charlton characters.  DC looked at the story and realised that it would render their newly acquired characters unusable.  Moore then created new characters who if you squint looked a little like the Charlton Characters,

So I squinted - The third generation Watchmen siblings became The Dingo, Risque and Risk.  Rorschach II became The Question Mark II.  I left the Cutlass alone.  I dropped several characters and created new ones.

One of my new characters was the Aggressor, a veteran of Afghanistan or Iraq and fighting a bloody crusade against organised crime.  Then I found the Cutter series by James Hopwood - and also published by Pro Se Press.  Hopwood did what I was planning and in all honesty did it better.  So I changed tack The Agressor was active in the 1980s and was involved in The Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption in the Queensland Government and police force, which worked much better for me.  So James if you read this - Thank you.

Around the same time, I was looking at myself as an Australian new Pulp writer and what I wanted to write.   I discovered a history of Australians creating pulp and pulp adjacent characters and I met several other creators who were crafting new stories in the same vein.

I wanted to write a big Australian pulp story. I had the basis for my story.  I pitched the idea to Pro Se as Oz Pulp.

The good news they liked the idea, the bad - they were not so keen on Oz Pulp.  I wasn't keen on their suggested replacement Aus Pulp.

I sat brainstorming when  I remembered that on old maps Australia was called Terra Australis Incognita - and Australis Incognito was born.  (Several Australian horror anthologies have used Terror Australis)

Australis Incognito became more than the title of the story but the collective name of my heroes and would go back to the settlement of New South Wales in 1788 allowing me to weave a backstory that allowed me to reference several characters I had read about.  It also gave me a reason that these characters all knew each other.

I had the idea for a villian so big that these characters couldn't battle them alone.  I distinctly recall the idea that one of the heroes was suggesting the unknown villian was a Moriarty-type.  The mysterious villian lurking over the skyline of Brisbane on the cover.

Around this time I had been invited to contribute to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Was Not (IFWG, 2019) an anthology that paired Sherlock Holmes with a different doctor instead of Watson.  I selected Dr Nikola, the villian of five novels by Australian writer Guy Boothby that were just as popular as the Sherlock Holmes stories back in the 1890s.  Nikola became a large piece of the this new story and his actions in the past served as a catalyst for this modern day adventure.

I had a great time building a world where modern pulp heroes could operate and link in with other Australian pulp and pulp-adjacant characters.

Pro Se Presents October 2011: The Hunter Island Adventure by Wayne Reinagel

Originally published

Sunday, August 26, 2012 9:42:59 PM

After reading Pulp Heroes: More Than Mortal and Pulp Heroes: The Khan Dynasty I saw that Reinagel had written this shorter piece focusing on the female pulp sidekicks, Pam Titan (an analogue of Pat Savage from the Doc Savage Series), Cassie Greyson (an analogue of Nellie Gray from The Avenger), Megan Meriwether (Margo Lane from The Shadow) and Whitney Van Pelt (Nita Van Sloan from The Spider). Set between The Khan Dynasty and More Than Mortal , the four heroines are on a cruise taking the place of Simon Blake The Guardian who was suddenly called away on a case.
The four women are kidnapped and taken to Hunter Island where Simon Blake was to be put one the trial and hunted for the rape and murder of Judge Armstrong’s wife and daughter. Reinagel quickly lets us know that Hunter Island was formerly known as Ship-trap Island (from Richard Cornell’s The Most Dangerous Game) making this a follow on from that novel. One of the hunters is Lord James Roxton, the son of Lord John Roxton from The Lost World and the other Professor Challenger stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The women arrive at a time when there is some dissent between some of the hunters and the leaders Armstrong and Roxton. The mutiny sees the women on the run and hunted by the mutineers.
None of the women are fainting damsels in distress and react just as capably their male counterparts (in some cases they are more effective than their male counterparts simply because the hunters underestimate the women).
I really enjoyed this novel, The Hunter Island Adventure is not as epic in scope as More Than Mortal and The Khan Dynasty but that is not a bad thing as I felt that this brought a better focus on the plot with a smaller cast of characters.
(One of the problems I had with More Than Mortal when Doc Titan and The Guardian’s teams joined forces I had trouble recollecting who was who from what team although that might be more on my dodgy memory.)
The four women are written as four different characters with different skills and knowledge who seem to be genuine friends who interact often with a light hearted banter and girly gossip. Not surprisingly this relationship is consistent with what we see in the two other adventures.
The Hunter Island Adventure is a good rollicking adventure and well worth reading. 

The Four Legendary Kingdoms by Matthew Reilly

I don't think I've reviewed any Matthew Reilly on this blog which is something I will have to rectify in the near future.  Let me just say after reading my first Reilly book he immediately leapt into my top ten authors.

I was lucky enough to meet him at the 2014 Supanova and I will be seeing him again at this year's as well as attending his talk at the Brisbane City Hall.


He has two series The Scarecrow series and the Jack West series with several stand alone novels.
The Four Ancient Kingdoms is part of the Jack West Series (although some of his other characters make a guest appearance in this book)  Jack West Jnr is an Australian Soldier with a bent for archaeology.  This is Indiana Jones ramped up to eleven with a team of special forces soldiers racing the world looking for ancient knowledge.  The Four Legendary Kingdoms is the fourth in the series following on from The Seven Ancient Wonders, The Six Sacred Stones  and the Five Greatest Warriors.  Reilly has said that this series is counting down to something and I'm now super keen to see where this is going. 

Reilly is such a good writer each of his books is typically four hundred odd pages but they fly by.  I've spoken to other fans and they've all mentioned that they start one of his books and before they know it, it's 2am.  It doesn't feel like there is any padding in the books, yet each book tells an complete story and in the case of Jack West Reilly is able to seed the ideas for future books in an organic way that doesn't feel shoehorned in like some big blockbuster movies I could name **Cough Dawn of Justice***Cough**Iron Man 2**cough.

The story opens with Jack awakening in a world of trouble and we discover that he has been kidnapped to participate in a contest of champions.  There are similarities to his first book Contest which features a similar reluctant participant in a contest but in many ways it's like the final round of American Idol where the contestants sign their audition piece again and we see how much they have grown as an artist.  Similarly we see how much Reilly has grown as a writer  in this book by his utilisation of a similar idea to his first work. 

In the same vein characters from earlier Jack West books reappear and we discover that there is a larger history and back story than we first thought.  Jack is pitted in a series of challenges that explain why certain heroes like Hercules and Gilgamesh have similar stories.

I'd recommend all the Jack West books hell, I'd recommend all the Matthew Reilly books and The Four Legendary Kingdoms is a slam bang action ride and worthwhile reading

Oz Comic Con Report

So on Sunday 20 September 2015, I attended the second ever Brisbane  Oz Comic Con.

It was a full day, I left home at 7am and didn't get back until after 8pm.

I got down and lined up before the doors opened.  Once the doors opened we flowed in fairly quickly.  Some other cons I've attended that hasn't happened.

Oz Comic Con allows you to buy autograph tokens which is a huge time saver and I was able to slip straight into the Richard Dean Anderson autograph line.  I was glad that I did as that line became massive fairly quick.  I was lined up behind a really nice family and we had a bit of a chat as Mum and Dad tag teamed in and out of the line.  They had a cast photo of Stargate SG1 signed by all the cast members except one Richard Dean Anderson. 

There I was the almost lone MacGyver guy in a sea of Stargate fans. I had taken my copy of the only MacGyver tie in from the 1980's an original novel MacGyver On Ice.  As best I can tell it's set before the TV series.  (The only other Tie In I've found is the recent five issue comic book miniseries.)

 

Richard Dean Anderson had never seen it before. So I was stoked.  I also mentioned how much I also enjoyed his one season follow up Legend.  It was a steampunk western about a dime novel writer Ernest Pratt essentially living the life of his hero Nicodemus Legend. "So you were the one." He quipped. I shook his hand. 

After that I saw that Mark Sheppard's line had no one in it.  Like a flash I was over there.  Mark's filmography reads like a list of cool genre shows from the last two decades.  Supernatural, The X Files, Charmed, Leverage, the list goes on and on. I grabbed my DVD copy of Soldier of Fortune Inc.  The show was basically an updated version of The A Team.  Mercenaries hired by the government.  In the second season, the name changed to Special Ops Force, Sheppard and a couple of other actors were out replaced by Dennis Rodman.  I quite enjoyed the second season myself but I never saw the first season except for the DVD I'd found with two episodes.  As far I could find that was the only release for the series.

Mark Sheppard was really nice, he made a comment about being nearly hidden on the cover (that's him over on the far left) as he signed it. I commented that I loved his work and shook his hand. 

The first panel of the day I was planning on seeing was at 11 and it was nearly 10 so I decided to have a bit of a wander.  I hit the Dark Oz booth and grabbed a copy of Retro Sci Fi Tales.  This a great anthology title of fun old school Sci fi stories.  If you see a copy I recommend grabbing it. (The companion horror title Decay is pretty good too.)

I then got some issues of Birds of Prey signed by Nicola Scott and Greg Rucka signed my copy of Huntress: Cry for Blood.  I then saw Dr Paul Mason and grabbed a sweet print of the new Supergirl for Abbey.

After that I saw Jim Beaver and got him to sign Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting.  He called me an Idjit. (Why? Because I asked him to.)

Then I was off to the first panel From Comic to Screen to Comic. Jim Beaver took a little longer than planned so I missed the start but it was interesting to hear the stories of adapting from one medium to another.  Everything I heard from Wolf, Tom and James makes me so keen to see The Deep animated series.  And the Fury Road tie in comics sound very interesting.

After that it was time for lunch and some more shopping before heading back to stage 3 for more panels.  I took the opportunity to grab a couple of Gesalt books Unmasked and Wasteland Panda.  I briefly spoke with Wolf mentioned how much I enjoyed the documentary Comic Book Heroes and got him to sign my copy of Wasteland Panda.

Dean Rankine, Dr Paul Mason, Kylie Chan, Queenie Chan and Doug Holgate talked about the realities of publishing.  Very few people in Australia (and around the world) make enough from their art be it writing or drawing or other.  The need to have a second career.  Dean made a point that he would like to be JK Rowling and it's true we look to the outliers, the ones who got the million dollar advances.  I know I'm probably never going to make a lot of money from writing but I have stories I want to tell which is the same for everyone else on the panel.  It was sobering and Paul, I think, jokingly referred to it as the kill your dreams panel.

After that I quickly popped down to Dean Rankine's booth and grabbed The Itty Bitty Bunnies save Christmas.  This book is just the right level of messed up.

The rest of the day was filled with panels.

Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott's Black Magick panel was interesting and the presentation got me really excited to read this new comic.  Greg Rucka described it as "Witch Noir" which sounds intriguing and Nicola Scott's grey washed style makes this a must get for me.

Next was the Scrubs panel with Sam Lloyd and Rob Maschio.  While the pair did answer the questions asked there was a lot of joking around and by the end of the panel it was standing room only. 

That ended my time on stage three.  I must say that Amanda Bacchi and her volunteers did an amazing keeping things moving and making the panels enjoyable and interesting.

Next I was up to stage one to see Richard Dean Anderson.  Man he is funny and irreverent.  I think Jack O'Neil is probably closer to the real Richard Dean Anderson that Angus MacGyver.  There were alot of questions asking him to pick his favourite thing - favourite line, favourite cast mate, favourite show etc.  But there were some funny stories like the time his brother tried the egg to fix a radiator trick that MacGyver did in one episode.  It didn't work for the Anderson brothers but they did enjoy the scrambled eggs. Or the last time he came to Australia there was a water leak on the plane and it had to turn around.  The next morning on the new plane, the pilot saw RDA and said had he known MacGyver was on board he would have kept flying and gotten MacGyver to fix it as they flew.

Lovely stuff.

Next was the Kevin Smith panel.  I've enjoyed Kevin's movies over the years.  Clerks, Mallrats, Jersey Girl, Chasing Amy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Clerks II are all enjoyable films and I'd heard that he is really funny.

I wasn't disappointed, he went over time but it didn't feel long.  Stories of film financing blended into stories about Johnny Depp and making a stupid walrus movie.

I liked the message at end about as long as you're not hurting anyone have a go at your dreams.

While a long day it was a fun and enjoyable day.