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Channel Zero #Designbook
Public Domain
PUBLIC DOMAIN collects close to five years of preliminary and post-CHANNEL ZERO design and artwork, including close to 60 pages of never-seen comics from creator Brian Wood's art school years. Also included are dozens of deleted scenes, rejected pages, posters, sketches, script excerpts, creator's notes and character designs from the original series, as well as the contents of the special CHANNEL ZERO issue "Dupe", which remains out of print and unavailable since early 1999. All told, PUBLIC DOMAIN is a complete and fascinating collection detailing the origin of the concepts and characters that appeared in CHANNEL ZERO, the method that Wood employed to produce the series, and a detailed behind-the-scenes look at the whole creative process. Beautifully designed and meticulously compiled and edited by the creator himself, PUBLIC DOMAIN is a must-have for all CHANNEL ZERO and Brian Wood fans, for budding artists and writers, and for students of the graphic narrative format.
- GenresComicsGraphic NovelsArt
144 pages, Paperback
First published February 12, 2002
24 people want to read
About the author
Brian Wood
1,174 books961 followersBrian Wood's history of published work includes over fifty volumes of genre-spanning original material.
From the 1500-page future war epic DMZ, the ecological disaster series The Massive, the American crime drama Briggs Land, and the groundbreaking lo-fi dystopia Channel Zero he has a 20-year track record of marrying thoughtful world-building and political commentary with compelling and diverse characters.
His YA novels - Demo, Local, The New York Four, and Mara - have made YALSA and New York Public Library best-of lists. His historical fiction - the viking series Northlanders, the American Revolution-centered Rebels, and the norse-samurai mashup Sword Daughter - are benchmarks in the comic book industry.
He's written some of the biggest franchises in pop culture, including Star Wars, Terminator, RoboCop, Conan The Barbarian, Robotech, and Planet Of The Apes. He’s written number-one-selling series for Marvel Comics. And he’s created and written multiple canonical stories for the Aliens universe, including the Zula Hendricks character.
From the 1500-page future war epic DMZ, the ecological disaster series The Massive, the American crime drama Briggs Land, and the groundbreaking lo-fi dystopia Channel Zero he has a 20-year track record of marrying thoughtful world-building and political commentary with compelling and diverse characters.
His YA novels - Demo, Local, The New York Four, and Mara - have made YALSA and New York Public Library best-of lists. His historical fiction - the viking series Northlanders, the American Revolution-centered Rebels, and the norse-samurai mashup Sword Daughter - are benchmarks in the comic book industry.
He's written some of the biggest franchises in pop culture, including Star Wars, Terminator, RoboCop, Conan The Barbarian, Robotech, and Planet Of The Apes. He’s written number-one-selling series for Marvel Comics. And he’s created and written multiple canonical stories for the Aliens universe, including the Zula Hendricks character.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 2, 2015
Before me lay two books, unopened. One was the Channel Zero Complete Collection. The other, this Design Book. I opened this one first. That may have been a mistake.
This is basically a scrapbook of material that Wood created during the making of Channel Zero, or comics he published before Channel Zero that show his progress toward it, but are now out of print.
It's very similar to the back matter one may find at the end of a graphic novel or collected comic trade. Unfortunately, I have to say I've seen back matter more substantial than this book, and nobody had to pay extra for that.
It does give me an idea of what to expect from Channel Zero, though, and my interest is piqued. So, here I go now into the actual book from which these scraps were salvaged...
ADDENDUM:
I just read the Channel Zero Complete Collection which, it turns out, was published much more recently than the design book.
Channel Zero is great, recommended to fans of indie comics, and nineties hacker punk fiction.
This Design Book, however, should be skipped.
As I suspected, this Design Book is essentially the same as the back matter one finds in a quality graphic novel or collected trade. And nearly everything, but for the tiniest scraps of the lowest quality, are featured in the back matter of The Complete Collection, but reproduced at higher quality, and with more quality back matter even beyond this book. So, this book is essentially obsolete.
This is basically a scrapbook of material that Wood created during the making of Channel Zero, or comics he published before Channel Zero that show his progress toward it, but are now out of print.
It's very similar to the back matter one may find at the end of a graphic novel or collected comic trade. Unfortunately, I have to say I've seen back matter more substantial than this book, and nobody had to pay extra for that.
It does give me an idea of what to expect from Channel Zero, though, and my interest is piqued. So, here I go now into the actual book from which these scraps were salvaged...
ADDENDUM:
I just read the Channel Zero Complete Collection which, it turns out, was published much more recently than the design book.
Channel Zero is great, recommended to fans of indie comics, and nineties hacker punk fiction.
This Design Book, however, should be skipped.
As I suspected, this Design Book is essentially the same as the back matter one finds in a quality graphic novel or collected trade. And nearly everything, but for the tiniest scraps of the lowest quality, are featured in the back matter of The Complete Collection, but reproduced at higher quality, and with more quality back matter even beyond this book. So, this book is essentially obsolete.
July 20, 2015
This book compiles sketches and extra material from the original run of Wood's CHANNEL ZERO at Image Comics. You might think of the material here as the kind of thing you'd find on a bonus disc with a film on DVD. There's some interesting stuff here, but nothing that really surpasses Wood's original book. Sadly out of print, I think, as I don't believe AiT is doing much these days. Still, primarily worth getting for Brian Wood completionists.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews