Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

[jedimarley]

Hi Josh.

Has Dino shown you his pube collection yet?

Yes.

Interesting.

Has Dino shared with you his fascination with vertically challenged Latino men in superman underoos?

I ain't making this up

[MarkRoseHFX]

Hi Josh.

Has Dino shown you his pube collection yet?

Yes.

Interesting.

Has Dino shared with you his fascination with vertically challenged Latino men in superman underoos?

I ain't making this up

[Dr. Solar]

Was the Buzzcocks mention meant to be an allusion to the song, "Ever Fallen In Love With Someone (You Shouldn't've Fallen In Love With)?"

You're amazing!!

You're the first person to catch that in all this time! Not even my editor got that! There should be a prize for you!!

Right on. Up the punx.

Not amazing, just another one of those weird kids that grew up listening to punk rock.

[Phoenix8008]

I love videogames too, I'm the first generation gamer, my mom brought home pong, but videogames feed the imagination - which is good - but they don't force you to imagine and world build, they do all the work for you. Pencil and paper RPG's are still the best way for imaginative growth and empowerment in my book.

Well now... so may I infer from that statement that you are a pen and paper gamer? If so, what games have you played most or liked most? And with all things Valiant going on, do you get to play still (assuming you do or did play)? I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons for almost 30 years now and I agree fully with your statement about the empowerment of imagination brought on by pen & paper roleplaying. Although I do love me some Skyrim too!

[Joshua Dysart]

2. Well, we sort of collapsed Ax's power into Livewire. So we'll see how it goes. There does need to be a very powerful hacker in the Valiant U. I agree with that. That might eventually become Livewire.

damn, was hoping we'd be seeing Ax in the new Valiant U but looks like that won't be anytime soon.

You never know!

[Joshua Dysart]

Dude?! I can't say *SQUEE*?! What a bunch of *SQUEE* *SQUEE*!

I tested the Carlin 7 dirty words and only *SQUEE* and *SQUEE* don't get censored

*SQUEE* and *SQUEE* it is then!!

[jedimarley]

*SQUEE* noobs.

[caniac]

Please don't kill Faith.

[Joshua Dysart]

I love videogames too, I'm the first generation gamer, my mom brought home pong, but videogames feed the imagination - which is good - but they don't force you to imagine and world build, they do all the work for you. Pencil and paper RPG's are still the best way for imaginative growth and empowerment in my book.

Well now... so may I infer from that statement that you are a pen and paper gamer? If so, what games have you played most or liked most? And with all things Valiant going on, do you get to play still (assuming you do or did play)? I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons for almost 30 years now and I agree fully with your statement about the empowerment of imagination brought on by pen & paper roleplaying. Although I do love me some Skyrim too!

I haven't played in years. Once I started being creative for a living it became harder and harder to make the time to be creative for play. Especially because what I loved the most was building campaigns, and that's pretty time consuming, as you know. My absolute favs back in the day were TRAVELER (most fav of all time), CALL OF CTHULHU and JAMES BOND... those were my core gaming systems. But over the years I'v seriously played all the classic TSR stuff (D&D, Gamma World, Boot Hill, Top Secret, Chill) and lots of other classics, including Judge Dredd, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Paranoia, Robotech, Conan, Elfquest, the GURPS system, Champions, Torg, the earlier White Wolf stuff, 2300 AD, Elric, Warhammer (rpg not baordgame), The FASA Doctor Who game, Ars Magica, Oriental Adventures... dude, I could do this all day long, I better just stop now.

Anyway, we played everything we could get our hands on.

[Joshua Dysart]

Please don't kill Faith.

Thanks for the impassioned plee.

[caniac]

Please don't kill Faith.

Thanks for the impassioned plee.

The passion doesn't show through my key strokes but it's in my heart.

[MarrowMan]

He already killed Faith, Torque, Charlene and Kris. Did you miss that issue?

[caniac]

He already killed Faith, Torque, Charlene and Kris. Did you miss that issue?

[grendeljd]

Hey, I'm late to the party here, but welcome to the board, Joshua - from another fellow Josh! Do you prefer Joshua or Josh? My father is the only one who gets to call me Joshua, since he named me & all that.

I must say how cool it is that you've signed up on here along with the other Valiant creatives. You sir, are truly a gentleman & scholar across all the social media outlets you use.

One final bit of fanboy-ish praise before I move on - your work on Harbinger & HW passes my personal acid test every issue, I've read each of them about 3 times within a few days of release. That just doesn't happen with very many other comics for me, and yet I have a huge passion for all things comics. Keep it up! Harbinger #200 might be a tad far off, but realistically I want to be reading your stories to #111 at the very least!

Very cool that you were a big p&p rpg'er. I can't agree more about the powerful creative imagination development it fosters - very fertile grounds. Personally, I drew tons of characters for my group, my good friend who was the mastermind GM also drew and now is working on being a writer as well. I was always impressed by his ability to tell stories & act out all the npc parts. I can absolutely relate to how much it contributed to your writing prowess. And hey - no Shadowrun?! Surely you played that one?

Also, I can't thank you enough for posting my Young Harada drawing inspired by Harbinger #0 on your FB page awhile back. I'm sincerely glad you liked it that much. However, if I ever draw another piece that you end up loving that much again, could you throw up a link to my deviantart page? (check it below in my signature) I could use all the love (and exposure) I can get.

Man, that last bit smacks of sheer desperation, doesn't it... Uh... I'm gonna leave it in there anyway.

It seems like you have a healthy, diverse range of musical taste, just like most of the artists I know. I'm seriously loving Foxygen thanks to you & your ComicCon fashion-sense. So addicted to '21st Century Ambassadors...' Have you heard the album 'Love This Giant' by David Byrne & St. Vincent? Probably my other top favourite new album I've heard in the last year...

I don't seem to have any questions specifically about Harbinger right now... But I've rambled enough. I'm going to show my true colours as a Canadian here, and apologize for the lengthy post (I hear we all tend to apologize a lot more than most).

Take care,
Josh Deck

[apainter]

Okay, I love this question, but I'm not going to answer all of it. I WILL tell you what Kris was listening to in the car though, because it was in the original script and we took it out to keep from namechecking too many modern bands that no one had ever heard of. She was listening to the new FALTYDL album HARDCOURAGE. It's electronic scape jazz. Kris has the widest range of musical taste, but she does like punk and electronic goth quite a bit. But this wasn't one of those days. This was an expansive chill electronic music day (good desert music).

Want to hear more of what Kris likes? Here's the spotify playlist I made while conceptualizing issue #6... it's all her music.

http://open.spotify.com/user/joshuadysa ... RHvZk7KOy6" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I wanted to do this for the other characters, but haven't gotten around to it. Awesome question!


And you're absolutely right. HArada loves Jazz and Classical.

Gah! Just reading the song titles, I have the same reaction Faith did when she looked through Kris's book collection. ("Hey, this one's called c - uh, the c-word!")

Thanks for the response. I appreciate that you live in these characters' heads enough to have thought out these kinds of things.

Here's a more geeky inquiry: the tin foil hats. Faith made them to keep Harada out of their heads while Pete recovered. The question is, did they actually work? If they didn't, then what prevented Harada from finding them as soon as Pete collapsed (as Harada said he'd do). If they did, then why didn't they continue to wear them? Now that Pete's on his feet again, is he somehow able to shield the team, 24/7?

Similarly, PRS uses those fancy helmets to keep out nosy telepaths, but do they also block telekinesis? What's to stop Pete or Harada from just telekinetically ripping the helmets off, then diving into their brains?

Art

[Joshua Dysart]

Do you prefer Joshua or Josh? My father is the only one who gets to call me Joshua, since he named me & all that.

You can call me anything but *SQUEE*.

And hey - no Shadowrun?! Surely you played that one?

I totally played Shadowrun! Good catch!

Also, I can't thank you enough for posting my Young Harada drawing inspired by Harbinger #0 on your FB page awhile back. I'm sincerely glad you liked it that much. However, if I ever draw another piece that you end up loving that much again, could you throw up a link to my deviantart page? (check it below in my signature) I could use all the love (and exposure) I can get.

I absolutely will, I'm not sure I had access to that information last time I posted some of your work on my wall.

It seems like you have a healthy, diverse range of musical taste, just like most of the artists I know. I'm seriously loving Foxygen thanks to you & your ComicCon fashion-sense. So addicted to '21st Century Ambassadors...' Have you heard the album 'Love This Giant' by David Byrne & St. Vincent? Probably my other top favourite new album I've heard in the last year...

I haven't sat down and listened to it. But I LOVE David Byrne, so it should certainly be on my list. Thanks for reminding me of it!

Long live the Josh's!

[Joshua Dysart]

Here's a more geeky inquiry: the tin foil hats. Faith made them to keep Harada out of their heads while Pete recovered. The question is, did they actually work? If they didn't, then what prevented Harada from finding them as soon as Pete collapsed (as Harada said he'd do).

Naw, Pete was just sort of humoring Faith. I don't think a little tinfoil could keep Harada's probing mind out if he wanted to find them. It's more likely that Peter was able to shield them even while unconscious. He's a more powerful psiot than Harada or even Pete fully understand. Now Peter is just always able to keep them off the grid from Harada's searching mind and Harada himself is limited in his abilities to scan the whole human race. Sometimes he dreams about other psiots, as they cause all kinds of disturbances in a sort of collective consciousness space. But masking that is a pretty low level skill, and Peter has had some training in these sorts of things now.

Similarly, PRS uses those fancy helmets to keep out nosy telepaths, but do they also block telekinesis? What's to stop Pete or Harada from just telekinetically ripping the helmets off, then diving into their brains?

Absolutely nothing. The helmets are a line of defense only against mind-control, memory wipes and thought reading. Peter's not terribly accurate with his telekinetic pulse, it's just sort of physical blast, so he couldn't really crack the helmets alone, he'd probably just end up smashing his targets head to pulp. Harada probably could, but again, I think it would be hard to extract or disintegrate the helmet without causing some physical damage to the user. So yeah, the helmet has pretty limited use and is meant solely for routine psiot engagement, not for the big guns like Harada and Peter, or for the way we're seeing them used in the earliest Rising Spirit/Harada International meetings... as a way for an opponent to keep his thoughts his own.

[jmatt]

Dino: "Dysart! What the hell are you doing posting on that damn fan website again?! We're paying you to write great stories, not play patty-cake with a bunch of drooling fanboys! Now get back to work! I want that script for Re-Unity on my desk in 72 hours or else!" Slam!

My question: Is it okay for people to do bad things for good reasons? I won't qualify the question with caveats. It seems, to me, to be the underlying predicate of Harbinger.

[blujay]

Dude?! I can't say *SQUEE*?! What a bunch of *SQUEE* *SQUEE*!

You can't say a lot of stuff my favorite swear edit is s t rip club because it turns into piano recital

[Carson]

you got me into comics... for i had never read one until Harbinger #1. Joshua Dysart until Harbinger #200

Dude! Awesome!!

But 200 issues is like seventeen years... Let's scale those expectations back a bit.

Stranger things have happened! Larry Hama's still writing GI Joe almost 200 issues in. It's about creating and owning a universe. How many chances in a lifetime will a writer have to create such a legacy?

It would thrill me to no end to see a healthy Valiant still putting out books in 15 years and you still writing the Harbinger book(s).

BTW, Welcome to the boards! I've really enjoyed tweeting my reactions to you as I read the books. It'll be nice to talk on here in more detail. Harbinger is still my favorite comic on the shelves (and I'm buying 25 or so a month). I am still moved deeply by the Torque intro. You've improved every single character, and introduced some intriguing new ones. I love all the shades of grey.

Keep up the phenomenal work! I'll certainly be along for the ride.

[Bone-A-Fach-ee]

Hi Josh.

Has Dino shown you his pube collection yet?

Yes.

Ummmm I...... never mind.

[myron]

Hi Josh.

Has Dino shown you his pube collection yet?

Yes.

Ummmm I...... never mind.

Dino once recieved some comics from a member of this forum and trapped in the tape there was a hair that appeared to be of the pubic variety...

oh the hoar, the hoar...

[bygranddesign]

1. The list is far, far, far too long to fully go over, but growing up I read a lot of Bradbury, Clark, Lem, Bestor, Heinlein, Dick, LeGuin, Wilson, McKenna, Moorcock, Barker, King, Campbell. So I was a big Science fiction/horror geek. Then I got into "high-lit" (which is a terrible term - it demeans genre, which sucks) and discovered Paul Bowles, Toni Morrison, Steinbeck, Phillip Roth, Ballard, etc. With comics it was all about Moore and Rude and Miller and Veitch and Ostrander and Alan Grant and Mike Baron and Dave Sim and Los Bros Hernandez and Katsuhiro Otomo and Mobius and jodorowsky, etc... the list goes on and on. But to be honest, I attribute role playing games as responsible for beig the bigest force for personal creative empowerment in my life. I played them all. Moved on from D&D pretty early in the 80's. If there was a pencil and paper RPG put out from 1980 to 1990, I played it, and the odds are I also GM'd it. That's where I learned how to tell stories, by telling them to my players. I recommend everyone play pencil and paper RPG's with their kids. It's so much fun, and really good for them. I love videogames too, I'm the first generation gamer, my mom brought home pong, but videogames feed the imagination - which is good - but they don't force you to imagine and world build, they do all the work for you. Pencil and paper RPG's are still the best way for imaginative growth and empowerment in my book.

Very cool ... Love many of these writers. And I enjoy the fact that you have such diverse influences growing up, to have so much passion about different sides of the artistic spectrum really reflects in your writing. As a reader you definitely feel like the words, the stories, the wide ranging characters (and their unique differences) are coming from a real place of passion and authenticity.

I also grew up playing some dungeons and dragons and then I started playing card games like Magic and recently into this online card game called Ascension. I think it's great advice to play D&D type games with your kids .. I think its become so easy to consume media and get cheap entertainment that many bypass the enjoyment of trying to be creative and instilling that passion onto their kids.

2. Well, we sort of collapsed Ax's power into Livewire. So we'll see how it goes. There does need to be a very powerful hacker in the Valiant U. I agree with that. That might eventually become Livewire.

In the original, I liked the idea that Ax was this loner that had weird thoughts but probably would have lived a "normal" life until Peter activated him .. and inadvertently created this super villain. It sort of showed the dangers of activating without proper screening or understanding the full consequences. Something that Harada is perhaps more conscientious about.

[greg]

I love all the shades of grey.

All 50?

[erwinrafael]

I do use full scripts! I'm not sure what you mean by "Watchmen"-like transitions. Can you elaborate?

When I have worked with an artist a little and start to have a feel for what they do best I absolutely right to their strengths. But if I've never worked with an artist before I just sort of do the best I can based on what I've seen of their work.

I LOVE that Perez issue. He was AMAZING on that book. I'm really happy with the way that whole thing turned out.

Here, this will probably screw up the formate, but I'll cut paste page 1 from issue 9 into this window and see how it turns out...

PAGE 1 (4 PANELS)

PANEL 1 EXT. FREEWAY - DAY
Open on a car, model circa 2002 (or before). It’s a sensible four door. But it’s also flipping violently across the freeway in a horrible auto accident. How anyone is going to survive this, I have no idea.
1. CAPTION: MY NAME IS FAITH HERBERT.
2. CAPTION: AND IT SEEMS LIKE I’VE BEEN FLYING MY WHOLE LIFE.
3. CAPTION: ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

PANEL 2 INT. CAR - DAY
Inside the car we see a pretty, but heavy, eight-year-old in the backseat, strapped in a booster seat. This is YOUNG FAITH HERBERT. She’s scared to death. Screaming. The car she’s in is flipping. Not quite upside down, but on its way. Capture the horrible force of the motion and weightlessness on her little body.
4. CAPTION: THIS HAPPENED THE SAME YEAR MOM AND DAD TOOK ME TO SEE “SPIDERMAN” AND “ATTACK OF THE CLONES”.
5. CAPTION: THE YEAR “FIREFLY” STARTED.

PANEL 3
Show her parents in the front seats. Father on the driver’s side. Mother on the passenger’s. They’re both overweight, not terribly, but they’re certainly big people. The father has a beard that’s intentionally cropped like Riker’s on “Star Trek Next Generation”. The inside of the car’s roof is crumbling in from impact of the hard roll. The crushing roof is smashing in on them as the car is now fully upside down. It’s obvious that neither parent is going to survive this. Shattered glass speckles the image like glinting flakes of snow.
6. CAPTION: THEY LOVED “FIREFLY”. BUT THEY NEVER GOT TO SEE THE BEST OF IT.

PANEL 4 EXT. CAR - DAY
Emergency crews have arrived now. It’s chaos. The highway is blocked off. EMT’s are pulling the dead bodies from the wreckage. In the f.g., the focal point of the image, is little Faith, being carried away from the destroyed upside down car by a Fireman. She's screeching. The kind of wail only a lost child can manage.
7. CAPTION: I WAS PULLED FROM THE RUINS.
8. CAPTION: LIKE SUPERMAN CARRIED AWAY IN A ROCKET FROM A WORLD THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN…


*

So there you go. As I said, the format changed in a few places, bolds, underlines, etc. But that's what my scrips look like.

Thank you for sharing, Joshua. It's interesting that you do not seem to direct the artist on how the panels would be laid out. I guess that would explain why the in the Renegades story arc, the artists had different takes on designing their pages. Pere Perez is the one that really caught my eye, I loved his storytelling in his issue.

Anyway, as to my comment on the Watchmen-like transitions, my studies on comic book history point to Watchmen as the popularizer of some visual storytelling techniques like the following:

1. The use of parallel visuals in scene to scene transitions:



In Harbinger #0, there were a lot of these types of transitions although it did not involve one character but rather Darpan and Young Harada. In page 16, for example, the top widescreen panel of young Harada transitions into a widescreen panel of Darpan in the same pose, taken from the same angle, both characters placed at the center of the panel with medium zoom to their upper body.

Then a similar parallel visual of scene-to-scene transition in the bottom of page 16 of Darpan opening a door and then in page 17 we transition to a panel of Japanese soldiers reacting to an approaching young Harada. I love this transition trick. It is something that really works well in the comic book medium.

And then the transition trick is used again in page 21. The middle two panels of a full body shot of Darpan in the left panel and then a young Harada in the right panel both emerging from their violent deeds. Loved these shots.

2. The ironic voiceover / narrator



I loved your use of this in Harbinger #0. In the bottom panel of page 20, Harada's narration "In the end, they [referring to ordinary people] are never really more than children themselves" juxtapose nicely with the image of the child, Harada, in his full destructive power.

In page 21, Harada's narration "great men must rise, must take power from the petty" juxtapose nicely with the image of Darpan. And then Harada narrates "and great men do hard and amazing things. even when they're just small" while juxtaposed with the image of small Harada after he did hard and amazing things killing a unit of the Japanese army. BRILLIANT.

Anyway, I've talked too long. I hope you would do more work with my fellow Filipino, Mico Suayan. He's an amazing artist who deserves a big break in the industry. Just like you who deserves to be in the spotlight for your brilliant work in Harbinger.