Hacktivist Signing at Paradise
Hacktivist Cover courtesy of Archaia Black Label
Paradise Comics celebrated the launch of a new Archaia Black Label mini-series, Hackitivist, with a signing by Marcus To and Ian Herring, the Illustrator and Colorist respectively.
Hackitvist has received a lot of buzz because its creator is actress/businesswoman Alyssa Milano. In chatting with To, he said that Milano provided them with enough details for them create the visual world of a business partnership and friendship being pulled in different directions, and then she trusted the team to do their jobs and “was nothing but kind” during the consultation process.
The story focuses on Nate Graft and Edwin Hiccox, partners in hacking the net and programming new possibilities since their teens. Now in their late 20s/early 30s, the first issue explores these Silicon Valley billionaires’ two main activities. It opens on the Keynote day and extravagant party for “yourlife”, a social network they co-founded and own. The other half of their activities is much more behind the scenes. Calling themselves .sve_urs3lf, and acting in an Anonymous style, they also hacked the Tunisian servers to allow government dissidents to reach the people.
Ian Herring summed up the series as “[a] wonderful story of duality: the dangers and opportunities of technology.” Herring further explored this duality with the use of his background and colour choices, similar to the method Steven Soderbergh used to reflect different stories lines in his 2000 Oscar winning film “Traffic”.
A glimpse of the two worlds in Hacktivist
This is the second project these artists have done with Archaia, worked together, the first being last fall’s Cyborg 009 hard cover, which re-envisioned the Japanese manga and anime that ran from 1964-1981. That project was To’s first one as both penciler and inker, the same double duty he’s doing with Hacktivist. “However, Hacktivist is a completely different style,” said To.
One of the series’ challenges, and “the fun part” according to To, is the clothing. Since it’s a new series and one that isn’t about superheroes, (between them they have worked on such titles as DC’s Red Robin, Huntress, The Flash, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) there were no predetermined uniforms. “We wanted their clothes to be realistic,” said To. “On the first page is a girl wearing cargo pants and a [not skin tight] tank top.” Since one of Milano’s business is Touch by Alyssa Milano, a sports fan clothing for women that are in the team colours, and NOT tight and pink, it was important to the whole team that the clothes were real world based. “She set the beginning beats of the fashion and hair styles of the characters,” To said. He used the clothes to reflect the character growth of Nate and Edwin, just another detail to keep an eye on. (I loved the shoes seen above!)
And if you want to keep an eye on the artists, you can find them on Twitter (https://twitter.com/marcusto and https://twitter.com/TweetIanHerring) Facebook (Marcus Anthony To & Ian Herring) and Tumblr: http://marcusto.tumblr.com/ and http://iherring.tumblr.com/ .
The four issue series is coming out monthly, and from what both Marcus and Ian have told me, I can’t wait to read more.
