The ultra-talented Dustin Weaver has a new creator-owned comic coming out from Image, Paklis, and in a post on Tumblr he shares some details on the project.
Image Comics’ press release described Paklis as “an unsettling, surrealist anthology.”
“My influences on this series range from Kafka to Miyazaki. The Twilight Zone, Aeon Flux cartoons, and the comics of Moebius and Otomo are all major touchstones,” Weaver said in the press release.
You can see both the Kafka influence — and the unsettling part — in the preview images he shared on Tumblr:
The first issue of the anthology will include three stories: “Mushroom Bodies,” which is previewed above; “Sagittarius A*,” a science fiction story about a war hero investigating his dead father’s scientific experiments; and “Amnia Cycle,” a story he’s been sharing online for awhile now. All three are completely done by Weaver; he notes that he even wrote the solicitation copy for the first issue. “I’ve never written this sort of thing before, but that’s a lot of what this comic is–me doing things I’ve never done before,” he said on Tumblr.
Probably best known for his work on Dark Horse’s Star Wars comics and Marvel’s Avengers and SHIELD, Weaver notes this is his first foray into creator-owned comics, and it’s very much a creator-driven endeavor for him as he goes all in. Even the name, Paklis, is personal, as it’s the name of the former studio he had with Ben Bates and Jeremy Barlow. Image has brought some interesting anthologies and formats to market recently; they are publishing Corey Lewis’ Sun Bakery, also an anthology, and recently Brandon Graham’s Island wrapped up. It’s fun to see creators dive into these sorts of projects and publishers like Image help get them into readers’ hands.
“My plans for this series are extensive, and I’ve decided that, whether people like it or not, I’m just going to keep making it, even if it means I gotta sell all the originals I’ve saved over the years and start a Patreon,” Weaver said on Tumblr. “Already, I’m almost done with issue 5, I have up to issue 10 planned out, and I have ideas that could fill up to issue 20 at least. And in this series, I could literally do anything. You never know what will be in the next issue. It’s going to be a real adventure and I’m inviting you. I’m inviting you on an adventure.”
The first issue arrives at the end of May and will cost $5.99 for 56 pages.