“The TR!CKSTER mission is one of positivity and sharing, in looking for the best way to showcase, promote, and share talent and ideas in the fields of comics, graphic arts and beyond.

The [...]]]> I’m happy to announce I will be appearing at Trickster! July 12-15 during Comic-Con International in San Diego.

“The TR!CKSTER mission is one of positivity and sharing, in looking for the best way to showcase, promote, and share talent and ideas in the fields of comics, graphic arts and beyond.

The TR!CKSTER brain trust hails from the East, West and Central United States. We have been involved in comics, animation, fine art and toys as designers, artists, writers, self-publishers, and performers.”

Josh Flanagan: Proof: Endangered #1 is back out in December. Was it always a sure thing that you were going to come back to Proof?

Alex Grecian: Oh, yeah! Some other [...]]]> This is an excerpt from my interview on iFanboy where I talk about the return of the sasquatch character John Prufrock…

Josh Flanagan: Proof: Endangered #1 is back out in December. Was it always a sure thing that you were going to come back to Proof?

Alex Grecian: Oh, yeah! Some other cool opportunities were presented to both Riley (Proof artist) and me and we ended up not saying “no” to anything and getting completely bogged down. The book started running late and Image suggested to us that we take a few months to get caught up and then relaunch.

Image always wanted the book back on the schedule and we’re glad of that because, although we’ve had a good run on Proof, we haven’t finished the story we set out to tell. I’ve always said that we could probably keep going forever on this book, but that there’s a definite arc we’re telling here.

So, we’re absolutely going to finish the story we set out to tell over the next couple of years and then see where things stand, how tired we are, and how much demand there might be for more stories set in this world we’ve created.

JF: Was this story always part of the overall Proof story?

AG: Well, even though I was just talking about having a goal in mind with the overall story, I’m a little hazy on the middle bits. There are definite beats we need to hit along the way in order to get where we’re going and those beats are clear in my mind. But getting to the end wouldn’t be nearly as much fun (for me) if I knew every step we were going to take along the way.

So there are things that are happening in Proof: Endangered that were planned from the beginning, but there are other things happening that have been a complete surprise to me.

One advantage of having some wiggle room in the middle of the overall story is that we can decide how to present the story in order to get the attention of both old readers and new. We’ve been able to ratchet up the action and suspense in this arc and pull out some pretty big surprises. Of course, the biggest coolest moments were planned all along, but there’s a new villain in this arc who just stunned me. She gets introduced in a cool and pretty grizzly way and I think readers are going to be pleasantly surprised. (And then later they’ll be pretty mad at us.)

JF: What’s something you really enjoy about writing the character, John Prufrock?

AG: Mostly I find Proof to be enjoyable company. He’s the sort of guy I’d sit down with and we’d discuss literature over a good brandy. He’s a gentleman. In that sense, he’s much much cooler than I’ll ever be and it’s fun to write someone who’s an idealized version of some aspects of my own self that I wish were more refined.

Right now, it’s also fun to start tearing down his cool exterior and getting at the angry frustrated guy who’s been sort of dicked around for the last couple of centuries and is ready to nail someone to the wall. That’s an idealized version of some aspects of myself too.

JF: Are there any characters who organically became a bigger part of the story than you originally envisioned?

AG: Sure. That’s one of the advantages of leaving the middle part of the overall story loose. We have room to explore some things and let some characters grow naturally and do what they would do if we gave them some rope.

Elvis was sort of famously slated to die way back in #2, but he zigged where I meant for him to zag and somebody else died in his place. When that happened, a whole new rule about how chupacabras operate got established and then Elvis went on to become an important part of the ongoing story. He sort of became the stand-in for Riley and me, a relatively normal guy caught up in this bizarre world.

The chupacabra that was supposed to kill him became a larger character too. She ended up in an old lady’s body, an old lady named Nadine, and now she’s become sort of the litmus stick for all the weirdness in the book. She plays a surprising part in Proof: Endangered.

And so does Colonel Dachshund, another of the bad guys. Really, all the villains in Proof have expanded their roles a lot because it’s incredibly fun to explore their motivations. They all want things that are very logical human things to want, they just go about getting those things in ways that aren’t really socially acceptable. Which is what makes them fascinating to write about.

Read the full interview here

Alex Grecian: Proof is an ongoing series about The Lodge, a top-secret government organization jointly funded by the US and Canada. The Lodge is headed by a mysterious man named Leander Wight whose goal is to [...]]]> Here is an excerpt from my interview at the MO-KAN Comics Conspiracy show in Kansas.

Alex Grecian: Proof is an ongoing series about The Lodge, a top-secret government organization jointly funded by the US and Canada. The Lodge is headed by a mysterious man named Leander Wight whose goal is to ensure that humans and cryptids live in harmony.

Cryptids are monsters that might actually exist, creatures that have been witnessed, but never caught: The Loch Ness Monster, El Chupacabra, The Mothman, Bigfoot,… all cryptids.

Speaking of Bigfoot, The Lodge’s star agent is a sasquatch. He’s the only non-human agent and he goes by the name John Prufrock. His friends call him Proof for short. He’s a stylish guy who cares deeply about his appearance and manners, but for obvious reasons he can’t interact with the public.

Proof’s partner is Ginger Brown. She was a rookie FBI agent and was recruited by The Lodge after she met a golem while on a case in New York.
Other agents include Elvis Chestnut, who came to The Lodge after his mother was killed and inhabited by El Chupacabra; Wayne Russet, Proof’s best friend and lead cryptozoologist; and Noel Russet, Wayne’s estranged son.

The first story arc [issues 1-5] was collected in the Goatsucker trade. In it, we’re introduced to all these characters, plus an agent named Autumn Song, who isn’t terribly nice, but is good at her job. The second arc [issues 6-9] is called The Company Of Men, and will be collected this December. That book takes the Lodge agents to Africa in search of a baby dinosaur, then to Seattle to find Elvis a new suit.

Currently, Proof is in the American Midwest, dealing with giant thunderbirds, in the arcThunderbirds Are Go, which also follows Ginger back to New York to wrap up loose ends in her life there.

You can read the full article here.