Ex Astris: Episode 6

Mike says he worked darned hard on making "The Neural Chair" look right without looking silly!

Ex Astris: Part Five

I've been involved in some online discussion on creating WebComics over the past few days on a couple of comic creator forums, so I've done a bit of digging around and compiled a brief article for my web site, downthetubes, about Creating WebComics.

It includes some other links I found along the way which may be of interest to would be or indeed existing webcomic creators.

If you've got any thoughts on the subject yourself, please feel free to leave your comments here.

And talking of webcomics, in addition to Ex Astris appearing on ROK Comics, we're also going to be doing a version for the Bulletproof web site, to complement EA's appearance in Bulletproof #2 soon!

Ex Astris Part Four

Trouble below decks aboard the spaceship Armstrong...

Secrets of Ceres: Character Design

Here's one of Mike's early designs for Sarah Blake, a major character in our three-part story Secrets of Ceres, which will be published later in the year in the brilliant SF comic magazine, Spaceship Away.

The story is set in an earlier time period than the main story running on ROK Comics and as featured in the Homecoming story that will run in Bulletproof #2. Here's the promotional copy for the tale...

By the mid 21st Century, the race to space has been rekindled, borne from both the need for raw materials and a desire to explore. With bases on the Moon, Mars and the asteroids, humankind has truly expanded beyond the confines of home planet Earth... but is this fast expansion driven by other needs, unknown to the general public at large?

By 2040, the major asteroid Ceres had been selected as staging post for the mineral exploitation of the Asteroid Belt, with big corporations paying for the base in return for property rights. By 2050, Ceres base is fully up and running -- moved using giant ram jets into Mars orbit to better exploit its resources.

But beneath the surface of Ceres secrets are about to be uncovered - secrets investigator Sarah Blake may not live to reveal!

John Freeman (writer of The Science Service, and once group editor at Marvel UK) and Mike Nicoll (artist of top adult comic Saffyre Blue) bring their space odyssey Ex Astris to the pages of Spaceship Away, with a tale that sets the scene for a story that spans not just space - but centuries!

Ex Astris Part Three

Ex Astris Part Two

Ex Astris Part One

• More information on this strip at www.exastris.co.uk