[comix] TUPELO
DEBUTS IN JULY FROM SLG
SAN JOSE, CALIF. - In 1977, Captain Tupelo and the 11 O' Clock Man were part of the Famous Monsters, the band that ruled New York City's punk scene. Now, they have resurfaced, patrolling the streets of Greenwich Village in a beat-up cab and defending the city's homeless and oppressed. Captain Tupelo, the World's Forgotten Boy, has become the World's Greatest Junkie Superhero.
SLG Publishing's new bi-monthly series,
Tupelo by Matt DeGennaro and Phil Elliott, tells the story of Captain Tupelo and the 11 O'Clock Man, sliding between the past, when the boys played to riotous slam-dance pits at the club Zero Hour, and the present, when they cruise the streets of New York City, avenging the wrongs that the pretentious and privileged commit against the poor and unfortunate. Committed to shaking up the status quo, the Captain and the 11 O'Clock Man inevitably attract the attention of those who maintain it. After attacking a television producer, they fall into the sights of Boz Williams, a television psychic whose abilities are suspect, but whose connections are powerful.
The 11 O'Clock Man and Captain Tupelo make an unlikely pair. While the 11 O'Clock Man, who got his start as a street punk handing out revolutionary tracts, is cool and cynical, Captain Tupelo still sees the world with a fresh-faced optimism. "Despite all the anarchy he's seen?and propagated?he's still an innocent," said writer Matt DeGennaro of the Captain. On the other hand, he said of the 11 O'Clock Man, "His personal motto is 'Destroy What Bores You on Sight.'"
The real-life team behind Tupelo also form a contrast. Tupelo is the first comic book DeGennaro has written, but artist Phil Elliott is a veteran of the industry. He has previously worked with SLG, illustrating
Bluebeard and
Second City, and did the artwork for
Illegal Alien, an 80-page graphic novel to be published by Dark Horse this June.
DeGennaro met Elliott through a comic book message board, where he posted a want ad for an artist. After receiving many responses from well-meaning young artists who sent him sketches of superheroes, he says he "was just about to give up when I got an e-mail from Phil with a link to his site. It blew me away. I sent him a synopsis and later on some script, and he sent me back the first few pages, which were brilliant."
"It all sounded really cool, something different and something I'd like to illustrate," said Elliott." He added that he was "particularly drawn to [
Tupelo's] contemporary setting and how it also draws on material from the New York music scene in the mid-seventies. While I was nurtured on UK punk music as a youngster, I also had a real fascination with what was happening in the US."
Tupelo will be a four-issue miniseries, and each black-and-white issue will be 32-pages long. It will published bi-monthly beginning in July 2003 and will retail for $2.95. For more information, visit SLG Publishing's website at
www.slavelabor.com and artist Phil Elliott's website at
www.elliott-design.com.
Established in 1986, SLG Publishing is a San Jose, CA-based publisher of comics books and graphic novels. Operating under its imprints Slave Labor Graphics and Amaze Ink, SLG Publishing has distributed the work of such notable cartoonists as Jhonen Vasquez, Roman Dirge, Evan Dorkin and Lawrence Marvit.
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