The final installment of EXPANSION PROTOCOLS—with art by my BEEF BROS cocreator Tyrell Cannon—is in stores everywhere. Go get Free Planet #8 from your local comic shop NOW.

Need to get caught up? Free Planet volume 1 is available from Bookshop.org or anywhere else books are sold. Wherever you snag it though, help us spread the word by leaving reviews on Amazon, GoodReads and League of Comic Geeks.

Make no mistake: Free Planet is a specific book and it ain’t for everybody; a glance at reviews from, let’s say…less diligent readers, makes that abundantly clear. Good reviews from thoughtful readers who appreciate what we’re doing are critical for continuing to find our audience.

ENTER: Apostle Niketas

In Free Planet #7, we explored the Interplanetary Development Alliance’s approach to expansion; this month, it’s the Orouran Empire’s turn. Writing this issue was a treat, an opportunity to adapt the Free Planet approach to an entirely different type of story: A violent, kinetic action romp touching on matters of loyalty, devotion, and faith, and their relationship to—you guessed it—freedom.

Dig the preview pages:

How good is Tyrell? Process breakdown—and a never-before-seen spread—coming up next, but first…

BEEF BROS BEHIND BARS

Years before Free Planet, Tyrell—my brother-in-BEEF—and I cocreated the fellas you see up above: Ajax and Huey Beef, brothers and bodybuilders, the biggest guys, the strongest guys, the nicest guys…but not the smartest ones. They live by a simple credo: If you can help someone, you do it. Trouble is, it never fails to bring them into conflict with the powers that be.

In BEEF BROS BEHIND BARS, the boys get sent to a prison owned and operated by the world’s largest multimedia company, which, after gobbling up all its competitors, moved into private prisons. Things progress, outrageously, from there. Think: Throwback populist superheroes filtered through 90s beat ‘em ups and Kropotkin. Seriously.

Go snag BEEF BROS BEHIND BARS from Power Pulp!

Process breakdown

As much of a treat as writing EXPANSION PROTOCOLS was—getting to work with two of my favorite artists, Tyrell Cannon and Ilias Kyriazis—I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hard work. On top of capturing that signature Free Planet feel, I also wanted to play to my cocreators’ strengths. That’s a huge part of why I went to Tyrell for this issue; track down his DOOM-inspired IDKFA and buy the absolutely stunning ERIS to see science-fiction action comics done right.

Two of the many things at which Tyrell excels: Big, hulking figures (see Huey & Ajax, above) and high-energy, kinetic action. I kept copies of BEEF BROS and ERIS by my side while doing my thumbnails for Free Planet, flipping back and forth, keeping all of Tyrell’s unique techniques for depicting movement in the forefront of my brain. This particular spread is among the most Tyrell-esque in all the bits I asked him to pack in there. I even wrote in “DOOM shot.”

Tyrell does the next stage digitally; he calls them thumbs but they’re detailed enough I’d deem them layouts. Potato/tomato; either way they rip. All the elements of the final page are here: The charging space marine, the weapon bursts, the motion-blurred combat, the hordes of monsters, and, crucially, drawn-in SFX ideated as part of the page.

Next, Tyrell goes to the boards, where he works in traditional pencil and ink. During our time workin together, Tyrell’s inking has developed in really interesting ways, becoming looser, more fluid and more expressive. It works perfectly here, as despite the heinous amount of ink and action on the page, the eye is still guided smoothly across it, even without panel borders or color!

Then it was colorist Vittorio Astone’s turn. Vittorio is the MVP of EXPANSION PROTOCOLS, tasked with adapting the Free Planet style to not just one, but two very different artists. I actually learned an immense amount working with Vittorio on this issue, as the normal approach wasn’t compatible with how Tyrell handles lighting, necessitating that Vittorio—counterintuitively—color differently from normal in order to make it look like normal.

Finally, it all comes down to letterer Taylor Esposito for the finishing touches. This spread was a pretty simple one (compare with my placements above) but don’t worry: Taylor got to strut his stuff on a number of other pages. You’ll know them when you see them!

“Space G.I. Joe defending Venezuela on another planet”

Back on December 19, the incredibly generous, Pulitzer-prize winning author and journalist Spencer Ackerman interviewed me for his Forever Wars website/newsletter. I was honored that he asked; Free Planet is a huge swing for me, the culmination of years of study and research, so it for it to be recognized by a writer and thinker of Spencer’s caliber is enormously gratifying. We had a fantastic, hoot of a chitchat, talking about how I become a “history sicko,” the revolutionary potential of religion, and music very specific to men of our age, laughing ourselves silly the entire way.

Then there was the bit quoted in the heading, in which I described the origin of the Free Planet concept. There’s nothing prescient in my taking inspiration from Venezuela or even in mentioning it; the relentlessly topical nature of Free Planet is proof that these issues are timeless and recurring ones; it’s another aspect of the book about which I remain enormously proud, while also remaining distressed about which elements are most topical.

Substack is telling me this is already too long for email, so time to wrap it up. Thanks, as always, for supporting my work; Free Planet absolutely would not be possible without folks eager to spend some time with cocreator Jed Dougherty and I each month. As a special treat, check out the first page of Free Planet #9; Jed’s back on the boards and things are not going well on Lutheria…

xoxo,
Aubrey