Active Images Trumpets Elephantmen

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on July 11, 2006 Sign up now!

by Thomas J. McLean -- Publishers Weekly, 7/11/2006

After working to help convert the comics industry to digital lettering in the 1990s, Richard Starkings knew that the process had made lettering so easy that it was going to be difficult for his company, Comicraft, to survive by just lettering comics. So he did what he'd been planning to do all along: publish books.

The newest effort from Starkings's Active Images is Elephantmen, a monthly comic book prequel to the painstakingly lush, European-style Hip Flask series Starkings, artist Ladronn and scripter Joe Casey have been producing about once a year since 2002. Hip Flask is the story of a sinister genetic experiment that turned animals into intelligent superweapons engineered to destroy humans. "I had ideas for the characters in Hip Flask that didn't fit into the story," Starkings says. The original plan was to do an anthology issue to fill in the gap between issues, but Starkings soon found he had enough material to do a monthly series.

Elephantmen #1 hits shelves July 19, just in time for the San Diego Comic-Con International, and features stories by Starkings and art by Justin "Moritat" Norman. Also contributing art are Henry Flint, Tom Scioli, Duncan Rouleau and David Hine. Chris Bachalo will draw issue #7, "Captain Stoneheart and the Truth Fairies," as the conclusion to a deal that had Starkings lettering Bachalo and Joe Kelly's Steampunk series a few years back. Ladronn will keep a hand in the series by supplying covers, while Starkings has recruited artists Brian Bolland, Steve Skroce, Ian Churchill, Tim Sale, J. Scott Campbell and Joe Madureira to draw alternate and flip covers for the series.

Unlike Active Images' other titles, Elephantmen will be published through Image Comics. Starkings says having Image handle the printing side was the only way he could produce the book on a monthly schedule. It has also resulted in more attention from the market. "A lot of retailers have ordered more as an Image book," he says.

Most of Active Images' list is in the graphic novel category. Starkings began his publishing efforts by contacting his friend Al Davison in England and offering to publish his out-of-print graphic novel The Spiral Cage. Many of Active Images' titles are reprints; the publisher has put back into print David Hine's much-praised story of sexual repression, obsession and horror, Strange Embrace, and Skidmarks by Ilya, a story about British youth that has been compared to the Hernandez Brothers' Love & Rockets.

Active Images has a strong association with Man of Action Studios, a development/production house formed by Duncan Rouleau, Joe Kelly, Joe Casey and Steven T. Seagle. Starkings says the relationship began when writer Seagle saw Strange Embrace and asked Starkings to release his library of work. That led to the publication of the Seagle's thriller Solstice last year and will continue with a reprint of another Kafka, this year. While all the Man of Action members have worked with Starkings, the biggest splash came from Duncan Rouleau's original horror graphic novel The Nightmarist, which was set up as a movie at Paramount before the graphic novel was completed.

Starkings's interest in comics began at the comic marts he used to attend as a child with his older brother in the U.K. After breaking into the British comics scene as a letterer, Starkings worked at Marvel U.K. as editor of Transformers and Action Force (the U.K. version of G.I. Joe). He then headed to New York to do freelance lettering for Marvel and DC and worked on such projects as Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's The Killing Joke before the strain of deadlines prompted him to move to California, where the three-hour time difference allowed him to keep more normal hours. "We were able to start lettering right when the scripts were ready," he says.

Starkings founded Comicraft with John Roshell in 1992, and the company sold fonts and lettered just about every comic under the sun in the 1990s as digital lettering quickly became the industry standard. "Comicraft was lettering so many titles there was a sense we were out of control," he says.

But Starkings knew the day would come when lettering would not pay the bills, and that's when his publishing efforts began. Starkings says he has no strategy for publishing beyond putting out books he likes from creators he admires and looking for new talent. "I don't make comics because I think it can be sold as a movie," says Starkings, who operates out of a studio in his home near Los Angeles International Airport.

Small publishers often struggle in both the direct market and the bookstore market. "Black-and-white graphic novels are a very hard sell, especially mature ones from British talent," says Starkings. And in bookstores, the shelves have become so crowded that anything that's not a new release is shelved spine out. "It's a real uphill battle." Active Images recently signed with Partners Publishing Group for distribution to the book trade and libraries.

Comicraft continues to letter comics and still does all of Jeph Loeb's titles, as well as The New Avengers for Marvel and Astro City for Image. "But we don't depend on it any more," he says.