Hello everyone, and welcome to the text page for Secret Messages #1
We have had a text page of one sort or another in every comic book we have ever published together, but this time we figured we would do something a bit different and put the text page on the website instead.
For those of you who do not know, Secret Messages #1 is the first issue of a new comic book we are publishing with NBM. This first issue contains Part One of Abductions, the new story in our Silent Invasion series. Abductions is scheduled to run for four issues, and then we will move on to other material that we have planned.
So, why Secret Messages for a title?
That's simple... we decided that we wanted to use an overall umbrella title for our work... similar to Hate and Eightball. Secret Messages has been the title of our letters page/text page in our various comic books and, as an extension, we've been using it as the overall name of our website. So when it came time to pick a name for our ongoing comic book, it seemed natural... right? Wrong.
We actually considered a few other titles first. Our favourite was Rocket Science but when we did some looking around, we found that it is being used by several different folks for internet or published comics. Our next choice was Union City, since most of our stories are set in a fictitious city of that name. We also thought it would be fun to play around with the title on each issue... one issue would be "Union City Blues"... another might be "Union City Comics and Stories".... but some folks, including the publisher, thought that the name Union City would be too blah in the Previews listings.
We eventually came back to Secret Messages, and everyone we talked to said it has just the right hint of mystery and intrigue... and at the same time is generic enough to work well as an umbrella title over top of the various types of material that we would like to present in future issues.
So what does lie ahead in those future issues?
Well, the first four issues will contain Abductions, the next book in The Silent Invasion series. Beyond that, we have tentatively got lined up a unique take on superheroes, but nothing is definite about that yet. We also have several ideas in mind for new Suburban Nightmares stories.
The first issue of Secret Messages is substantially a reprint of The Silent Invasion: Abductions #1 which was published by Caliber in May 1998. We had completed issue #2 by the time that Caliber made the decision to stop publishing creator owned material. We self published a small mini-comic of that material which we distributed at comic shows where we made appearances. We have also been busily working away on what would have been the third and fourth Caliber issues.
As always, Michael is constantly wanting to improve material that has already been published. When Terry Nantier at NBM agreed to publish Abductions, we realized that three years would have passed since the Caliber printing of issue #1 and decided it would be best to reprint that material. This has given Michael the opportunity to go back and make some revisions. So those of you who bought the Caliber issue will find a couple new pages of artwork as well as some revised panels here and there. Oh, and this issue also ends a bit earlier than the Caliber issue did. The remaining material and the pages intended for the second Caliber issue will comprise issue two of Secret Messages.
Starting with Issue #2 we hope to print letters in the published issues of Secret Messages, but that will depend of course on whether we actually receive any letters. We welcome and encourage all comments. We will also reproduce each letter/text page on the web site, and will continue to offer other interesting material here as well.
Please write us and give us your thoughts on Secret Messages, The Silent Invasion and any of our other work.
Oh, and next issue, Michael also plans to give some insight into Canadian Football and the differences between it and the American game!
You can reach us by email at:
hancock@silentinvasion.com or
cherkas@silentinvasion.com
Or you can write us at:
Secret Messages
c/o Michael Cherkas
686 Richmond Street West
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6J 1C3