Troy Signs In . . .

Lest everyone think that it will be all Matt Brady all the time up here (not that that's a bad thing or anything), I figured that I'd chime in with my part of the introduction.  I'm Troy Brownfield.  I teach, I write for Newsarama, and I write/have written elsewhere.

In addition to still writing regularly for Newsarama as a columnist and occasionally checking in with other assorted pieces for places like Wired, I've spent some time in the past few years doing various work in the comics field.  I'll talk about some of those eventually, including my participation in Fangoria Comics.  You have been warned.

More recently, I had the chance to write the "Tales from Wonderland: The White Knight" one-shot for Zenescope.  That was a great working experience, and it clears up one mystery about comics: sometimes it's just the right story at the right time that gets published.   This is how it came about.

I met Raven Gregory several years ago on the convention circuit, and we became friends.  One day, he asked me and some other writers if we'd be interested in hitting him with some possible stories for a Wonderland anthology annual.  It hadn't been something that I'd been actively considering, but after revisting that world a little bit, I found myself with a three ideas.  I took a swing with those.

One idea was tossed right away.  Like Charlie's Brown's Christmas tree, it wasn't a bad little tree; it just wasn't right for the moment.  Another was picked as a possible choice for the annual.  The third, which would become the White Knight, generated enough interest to move higher up the stack.  My whole concept was to do something with the White Knight, a Wonderland character from the novels that Raven simply hadn't gotten to yet.  And somehow, for whatever reason, he stuck.  After a few discussions, we pulled the short for the anthology into a larger story, and that became the book whose cover you see above.

Sure, it sounds easy.  But the moral should be that it's completely not.  It's a combination of luck, an idea that could be stretched, and a 33% success rate with ideas for one anthology.  The funny thing is that my anthology story ended up NOT being used when the annual came around.  Hey, that's comics.

At any rate, I really like how the story turned out.  Tommy Patterson and the rest of the artists killed the visuals, and I got some good response.  I'd like to revisit the Knight for Zenescope one day, mainly because I have a great idea for him.  Then again, maybe I should come up with two more, just in case.