The Comicverse is a sci-fi romantic comedy set in a comic book shop on a space station, written by Bianca Alu-Marr and drawn by me, Steve Peters. In 2013, we started a comic called Comicverse: Behind The Counter, a spinoff that Bianca wrote for other artists to illustrate. At the time, I'd already started Parallel Comicverses, though I didn't have a name for it yet. I did know it would feature an alien character based on me named Esteban (a comic book artist that had a small role in the Comicverse series), and that it would be written by me and by other guest writers. Of course Bianca ended up writing part of it too, just as I drew parts of Behind The Counter. The final product, Parallel Comicverses #1, will be a softcover black and white, digest-size book, with 70 pages of comics and over 30 pages of glimpses at the creative process.
THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS: Parallel Comicverses #1 focuses on three things I am passionate about: Star Wars, the music of a band called Yes, and comic books, most specifically a comic called Cerebus. However, since the comic's stories are told through the eyes of a 31st century alien, these three things are familiar yet...different.
The new comic includes an 18-page homage/parody of Star Wars written by Bianca and drawn by myself and a host of guest artists: Samuel Alexander, Corey Bechelli, Dre Grigoropol, Flor de Canela, Max Ink, Brian Payne, Bob Pistilli, Daniel Sponton, Joe Tedesco, Lee Thacker, Raphael Tiberino, Jason Young, and Caitlin Zellers.
Our version has elements similar to Star Wars but uses Comicverse aliens as the main characters, and also recalls the old Flash Gordon comics that were a big influence on Star Wars. Bianca and I had a huge amount of fun creating it and getting our artist friends involved in the project.
In Esteban's world, the music of Yes has become a teaching that is passed on, much like Zen Buddhism has been given from master to student over the eons here on Earth. In Parallel Comicverses, the band is called "Yeah", and look and sound very much like the classic Yes lineup. Max Ink wrote a story for me which shows how Esteban takes refuge in Yes music to get away from the noise and chatter of everyday life. I've also done a longer story in which my character has a cosmic religious experience at a "Yeah" concert, which is based on one of my experiences at a Yes show.
For the Cerebus portion of the comic, I've created a 3-headed aardvark called Cerberus. I decided the best course would be to turn to Cerebus' creator himself, Dave Sim. Dave has been kind enough to participate in several of my jam comics in the past, but he's had problems with his hand and had to stop drawing, so I asked him to write a story for me instead. The end result, "Cerberus Conquers The Universe!", has a lot of in-jokes that I'm sure Cerebus readers will find amusing. It was a blast drawing Cerebus characters in their mutated alien forms!
The book also opens with a 24-page prologue (which originally began as a 24-hour comic that I ended up finishing later because I got a little too ambitious...but that is another story!) that introduces Esteban and details the three things he loves, and explains how each have their own controversies attached to them, and how this nearly poisons his love for them, because the 31st century version of the internet has trolls that are 10 times worse than our present-day ones.
Dave Sim talks about this comic in his Weekly Update #410 on YouTube (User ID is Cerebus Online). He says: "A very entertaining read; certainly, heartily recommended...If you call yourself a Cerebus completist and you don't have a copy of Parallel Comicverses, you're definitely missing out on one of the strangest Dave Sim scripts ever done, and a definite Cerebus Universe tangent." In response to receiving an advance printout of his story, he also wrote: "'Cerberus Conquers The Universe' is a REMARKABLE piece of work and well worth the years-long wait. I had forgotten how caustic my script was. 'Ooo, we are sharp today, mind we don't cut ourselves.'"
124 page softcover Manga-size book, Black and White.