Norm Harper‘s roots in nerd culture run deep. For proof, just check out his house.
“I actually have a custom Lego city in a permanent state in my house where I built Ghostbusters and GI Joe and M.A.S.K. and Masters of the Universe and all that living together in a little city,” Harper told Geekscape in a telephone interview.
Harper tapped into his love for the pop culture of the 1980s for his latest project. His four-issue miniseries, The Sequels, recently was announced by Fanbase Press.
Harper expounded on the project, which he described as a mash-up of The Breakfast Club and The Avengers.
“This is the story of four people who, in 2019, are in their early 40s but back in the 1980s they were each sort of the protagonist in their own Spielberg-style movie adventure story,” Harper explained. “Now they’ve grown up, and they’re actually meeting for the first time … they discover a way to tap back into the adventures that they had before.”
Once the protagonists meet as grown-ups, the shenanigans begin in earnest in this action-comedy miniseries.
Along the way, Harper dives rather deep into the entire subject of nostalgia.
“It’s a little bit of a very bittersweet look at nostalgia and how it can impact your life,” he said. “My whole generation is holding more tightly to things from childhood than any generation before it. …I certainly approached it with a great deal of reverence and love for the things that I was going to homage. At a certain level, you have to put that aside to make the story work. You have to be willing to find the drama within that.”
After moving to Los Angeles and trying to carve out a career as a screenplay writer, Harper turned back to his childhood love of comics and hasn’t looked back. In 2017, he was nominated for an Eisner Award in the Best Publication for Kids (age 9-12) category for Rikki, a comic adaptation of the classic Rudyard Kipling short story, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.
“I enjoy comic writing a lot more, because I usually know who my artist is going to be at some point during the process. The comic script can just be a letter to the artist. You can be a lot less formal. You can literally just say, ‘Here’s a link to what I’m trying to reference.’ … it’s like I’m making something with a friend.”
According to a press release from Fanbase announcing the series, it will be available first digitally through Comixology with an approximate launch date some time in February of 2019. A printed TPB will follow, scheduled for a July 2019 release. Pre-order your trade paperback now through www.fanbasepress.com and receive an exclusive set of prints representing each of the four covers.
