Juggling, juggling, juggling projects. Fiiiinally bought Final Draft software today so I can get cracking on my first screenplay this summer. I’ve got two stories in mind already, adaptations of short stories I’ve published before in anthologies. But I haven’t forgotten about my comic book project, The Masters; far from it. To the right you’ll find more fine artwork by the guy who’s (most likely) drawing this miniseries or graphic novel, Mshindo Kuumba I. To recap, The Masters are folks like you and me who’ve achieved a certain level of spiritual mastery that in turn enhances them with superpowered abilities. My monthly progress for April involved a simple roundup of potential publishers for the book. Following personal advice from Sin City creator Frank Miller, I don’t plan to offer The Masters to comic powerhouses Marvel or DC. Instead, my list of potentials looks more like this, in no particular order:

1. Top Cow Universe
2. Wildstorm
3. Dargaud (they’re French, they’re putting out a Paul Pope project)
4. Image Comics
5. Vertigo
6. IDW (John Byrne is drawing FX for them these days)
7. Dark Horse Comics

Month number four is coming to a close, regarding my year-long plan to bring a comic book into the world full-grown from the head of MML (that’s a Zeus reference, sun). But lately I’ve been pouring energy into my next book The Noir Album, and getting inspired to gear up for my first screenplay this spring. So there’s a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on, but this month, I did manage to give names to all my main characters. Visiting NYC last month for a quick second, I nabbed my old copy of The X-Men Companion vol. 2 from pop’s closet for inspiration, a collection of interviews with writers and artists of The X-Men circa the 1980s (Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Terry Austin). Recap: my comic is entitled The Masters and involves twentysomething spiritual Masters raising consciousness. The artist on The Masters (cash willing) will be Mshindo Kuumba I., whose artwork is above; all rights reserved.

So. We got:

• Christian Max. The Masters centers largely around him. Christian’s a 25-ish spiritual guru who travels the world giving forums, appearing on Oprah like an Eckhart Tolle. On his world tour, he slowly encounters others who have achieved spiritual mastery (and superpowers in the process).
  
• Sun Weaver. Born to a black dad and a Korean mom, Sun fronts a rock band called Fingerpop. She’s got really big hair. According to her lyrics, it’s like she’s the next messiah, but of course (wink) it’s only rock n’ roll.
  
• Basma Khélifaoui. She’s a French-Algerian who Christian meets in Paris, leader of the French faction of Humanity’s Team, the real-life spiritual activists organization.
  
• Punch Isigny. A whiteboy more knowledgeable about hiphop you’re not likely to find, though he also dipped his toes into the pool of Eastern mysticism and fell the fuck in.

That’s the crew. You can’t go wrong with an awesome foursome: Challengers of the Unknown, the Fantastic Four, Danger Unlimited… More next month.

Been a month since I updated about the progress on my comic book project, set for 2009. Well it’s got a tentative title now – The Masters – and in a major development, I’ve pretty much nailed down an artist: Mshindo Kuumba I.! His artwork graces this post at right; all rights reserved by Mshindo and all that.

Mshindo is holding it down in North Carolina right now, but he used to rest his head in Brooklyn once upon a time. I got turned onto his art through the cover artwork of local independent artists like Supa Nova Slom and my close homeboy Mrk Drkfthr, and I tracked Mshindo down through MySpace. Where else? His only reservation in being the George Pérez to my Marv Wolfman (Teen Titans reference for the geeks out there) on The Masters is that he be paid; hardly a reservation, but he’s been jerked before working pro bono. No problems there. If I get paid, he gets paid, and I’m gettin paid or I ain’t doin it.

No more progress made on the plot of this thing, but I’ll put in more work once my book proposal is done this month, and it looks to be winding up. So far, The Masters is about a group of superpowered, twentysomething spiritual Masters raising consciousness. The bad guys are the Landmark Forum. (Just kiddin.)