Necronomicomicon Update
Added 2025-09-11 19:33:09 +0000 UTCWas just sent the coloring pass on the new EC/Oni story. All the pages look terrific, very moody, great atmopshere and the "EC" bits look very creepy. Once again, the art is by Lukas Ketner, I don't have a credit for the colorist yet.
One last little thing to deal with, we'll probably lose Lukas Ketner's shout out to The Stand, or it will be adjusted so no one's lawyers get itchy. All the other Easter eggs have been addressed and revised or allowed outright.
Necronomicomicon is scheduled for Catacomb of Torment #5, due out in November. I believe folks can preorder it from their local comic shop now, or preorder it online wherever online places do preorder. I have no idea how things work these days.
I should hear about whether or not my latest story pitch, "Death Groove" will get the green light or not in a week or so. Apparently EC has some odd questions about it that are holding up the approval process. Based on the story, I honestly can't imagine what they are. It's a pretty straightforward story as far as the mechanices go. Fingers crossed I get a green light and can have a nother script to work on. I've enjoyed doing these a lot. And the checks help a lot, that's for sure.
Comments
I tend to save drafts just for the hell of it. Somewhere on a hard drive we might have two dozen revisions of the Supergrirl scripts from STAS, some with a few lines changed, some revised further. The second episode was the script we had the most revisions and headaches over. Everyone was throwing their 2 cents in, after the original plot was ditched last-minute. At least none of them were to dodge lawsuits. I've always kept the legal stuff in the back of mind when doing WFH, but when it's my own stuff I've pretty much let er' rip. I think I was asked once in Instant Piano to change something about Coors beer, directly calling it Nazi beer was too much for Dark Horse. Otherwise I haven't cared about referencing real world stuff, and sometimes drawing it . The only time I've had to seek permission was for the Eltingville pilot re: Boba Fett, and one of our producers knew someone at Lucasfilm and it was arranged.
Evan Dorkin
2025-09-12 00:14:54 +0000 UTCYeah, my first thought on seeing the last page of the Matt Bors' story was "Cenobites!?!", but an homage that doesn't include the trademarked name and/or copyrighted imagery/characters doesn't get you into legal hot water. I don't know if it was an intended homage or just a riff, but they're not called Cenobites and they don't look like Cenobites, so even though it seems very close to Hellraiser territory nothing is going to Cenobite anyone in the ass. Legally-speaking Glad you enjoyed the story from #2, thanks for pikcing the comic up.
Evan Dorkin
2025-09-12 00:10:09 +0000 UTCI'm a little surprised that you have to be so careful with the references in Catacomb when the final (I think) story in #2 had what seemed to me to be a pretty explicit homage to Clive Barker, to the point where I went to check the inside front cover blurb afterwards for Barker getting some kind of credit or thanks. No shade on the story, I thought it was great, as were they all, and I enjoyed the seeming homage too, I was just surprised! But maybe my ignorance is showing and this is actually a more common horror trope than I realise, or a reference to an older work that CB was also pulling from... Anyway, looking forward to #5 and hope you get more pitches greenlit - your story in #2 was excellent!
TimeGentleman
2025-09-11 23:00:17 +0000 UTCBeen on an archival kick lately and I never considered the importance of archiving drafts pre editing. Contemplating the vast amount of works that had edits to avoid lawsuits and the ones where artists were sneaky enough where no lawsuits happened but punitive measures were still done internally well after publication/editor checks
Ami
2025-09-11 22:14:20 +0000 UTC
