Stories About Stories
First love. First kill. First grace.
Eleventh Era collaborator Nick Sivakumaran gives us First — The Movie, a meditation on firsts in a setting of geopolitical tumult, apostasy, and love. The trailer will hit you like a one-two sucker punch, but will have you itching to see more . You’ve been warned.
Ana is a very cool artist who I found out about from her work on posters for the Charm City Roller Girls, a B’more area establishment made up of badass grls on some low-friction wheels. Her humble autobio:
“Ana Benaroya is an illustrator and designer working out of NJ. Her passions include drawing, screen printing, acrylic paint, Photoshop, colorful sneakers, hot sauce, and turkey sandwiches. And she is a nice person.”
Check out some of her stuff in the ‘Art‘ category or by clicking here!
Check out the killer beats and dope club nights put on in NYC and around the planet. These are the leaders of the new sound, with blazing beats and a belly-droppin’ bass.
It had been the greatest period of growth, ever, punctuated by soaring wealth, the extremes of hope and despair, and more bombs than anyone cared to count. The twentieth century was everything that the prior ten centuries weren’t. I’m guessing that most people reading this spent more time in the prior century than in this one, so we know what it was like. Especially towards the very end of it when there was a race of maddening changes - technology kept slapping us in the face with leaps forward that made life before each change obsolete. It would seem that a tech-utopia was nearing. Of course we all had those jarring horror-fantasy daydreams of confrontation with our collective and irrational “The Machines will rise up!” fears. But the real danger, it turns out, is the human machine… (more…)
Why misrepresent ourselves? I’m writing this at 1.30 a.m., listening to ambient music, feeling that distinct and self-serving moroseness that comes when the comfort tea you brewed to stay awake has gone cold. We nearly disbanded tonight. If anything is noteworthy about our beginnings, it is that. It should be part of our genesis story — that is, even before we launched, we nearly threw in the towel. But first, some back story.
A whopping year ago, the four of us went to San Diego to attend Comic Con. We went as content creators, not as mere fan boys (though clearly, fan boys we were; where’s the fun in it otherwise?). Our angle was our unwavering belief in ourselves. Our plan: to pitch artists, movie makers, and just make magic happen with the stories that were rattling around in our heads. Who knew what could happen, we thought? Then it occurred to us that we needed a name for our eclectic group of writers and artists. What would we call ourselves? So Daniel Onetree called me up asking that very question, and he said something about how this whole thing was so eleventh hour (isn’t it always?). And then I said, ahh, but what if we usher in the eleventh era of comic books? I’m prone to flights of fancy like that — it’s all the mythology I read (Kaal Yug, Ragnarok, the whole deal — change is coming; just ask the presidential nominees). We printed these zany 11th Era business cards which honestly looked like two lean stick figures doing the nasty.
So some people talked to us at Comic Con (I said hello to the Hernandez brothers and got an autograph), and we read a lot of comics. And later, we worked on our ideas, and we read a lot of comics. We still did our day jobs — doctor, consultant, statistician, engineer, movie maker - and we read a lot of comics. Then, we’d get together and talk about stories and ideas, and of course (you know the refrain by now), we’d read a lot of comics. Eleventh Era is a celebration of the staccato creative process that has become our m.o. already. We’re fans of the graphic novel, and we share that with you here. This is a place for fans of the graphic novel, or those that want to discover new literature. We’re also storytellers and DJs and we’re overwhelmed with the urge to spin a multimedia yarn or two for you. Hang out and experience whatever shows up here. Got an obscure question about the Marvel Universe, an opinion on gender bias in the Justice League, or just want to meet someone like minded, and even storyboard with them? That’s what we built the forum for — head over there and contribute to the dialectic.
We nearly split up tonight and called it quits because our day jobs seemed egregiously overwhelming, and the vagaries of space and time cause undue occasion to get deeply self-involved. Ultimately, who really likes the tyranny of the action item? But nearly disbanding just reminded us that there are few things that we actually want more than seeing this thing succeed. So here it is, dubious beginnings and all.