Project Nemesis – Issue #1 Stomps into Comic Stores

Twenty years ago, fresh out of college, I was ready to tackle the world of comic books. I finished my college’s art program in 2 years with a 3.89 GPA, took bonus illustration classes at a nearby art school, and felt ready to leap headlong into pursuing my dream of working in comic books. I quickly had a short 8 page story, “Ralph”, published in an indie collection and then scored my own title, writing and illustrating for a different indie press. Needless to say, that book never saw the light of day and the twists and turns of life shifted my focus to screenwriting and then novel writing, where I found success and plowed forward. Now, twenty years later, I have made my return to the comic book world with Project Nemesis! I’m as excited about this as I have been about any of my novels. While many novelists spent their younger years dreaming of writing books, I dreamed of working on comic books, and now, not only have I worked on a comic book, I created one. Childhood mind blown. Big thanks to Matt Frank, Phil Kim, American Gothic Press and Famous Monsters of Filmland for helping make this a reality. Now, on to the comic!

Project Nemesis, the novel, was first published in November, 2012 and included illustrations of this never before seen monster, drawn by Godzilla artist extraordinaire, Matt Frank. At the time, I made the bold claim that I was creating Nemesis to be America’s iconic kaiju, to rival Godzilla and eventually, become a household name. I knew how ridiculous it sounded (and still sounds), but I like to think big and create colossal-sized goals (how else can you attain them?)

In the years that followed, I published more novels, created more kaiju, and fleshed out what would become the bestselling original (non-Godzilla) kaiju novel series ever. But let’s be honest, it was also the only kaiju novel series aside from Godzilla. And I called them “kaiju thrillers”, which is now a rapidly expanding sub-genre on Amazon. Then Nemesis became the feature kaiju in a video game, Colossal Kaiju Combat – The Fall of Nemesis. More novels came out, the fan base grew, and then, a comic book illustrated by the artist who first brought her to life, and published by American Gothic Press, an imprint of Famous Monsters of Filmland, who have always supported the novels.

Project Nemesis #1 is not only super cool and a dream come true, it’s also a massive step forward on that crazy goal of making Nemesis, a female Kaiju, a household name and “America’s Kaiju.” And none of this would be remotely possible without the amazing amount of support Nemesis has received from readers. The outpouring of word-spreading, fan art, and kaiju-scaled good will has been encouraging and humbling. Nemesis and I thank you from the bottom of our glowing orange hearts.