Throughout history, mankind has lived on many continents. In fact, our diversity as a species has been shaped by this fact. But imagine if we had all grown up on a single continent–a supercontinent, if you will.

There have actually been at least four such supercontinents since the birth of our planet. The one you’re probably familiar with is the most recent of them: Pangaea. Of course, Pangaea split up long before mankind’s first ancestor reared his head.

But…what if humanity had evolved before Pangaea split up? What if a supercontinent was all we had ever known?

It’s an interesting question. Interesting enough, we decided here at Crazy 8 Press, to make it the basis for an anthology. And what more appropriate name for this anthology than Pangaea?

But we didn’t want to hog the idea. So we opened up this anthology to some of the most vital imaginations in science fiction and fantasy. Imaginations like those of Michael A. Burstein, Adam-Troy Castro, Lawrence M. Schoen, Geoffrey Thorne, Kelly Meding, and the team of Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore.

Together, we’re creating a world that’s familiar in some ways and remarkably alien in others. A world we trust you’ll enjoy.

And to make it all possible, we’re asking for your help via a Kickstarter campaign. Check it out. See if it’s something you’d like to support–in return, of course, for a host of really nifty rewards.

We hope that you, like us, will want to be an enduring part of Pangaea.

Crazy 8 Press sees its first audiobook and what better title to work with than Rob Kelley’s loving trip down memory lane, Hey Kids, Comics!? The book and its three dozen or so essays talks about our personal love affair with comic books, from collecting them to storing and trading them. There’s a nice, diverse assortment of writers and finally, the book is now available as a Kindle eBook or an audiobook, narrated by Ross Landy.

As Rob writes at his blog, he is soliciting and collecting essays for a second must-read volume. But first, check out this book.

By Paul Kupperberg

Recently, Bob Greenberger wrote about the satisfaction of creating and writing a recurring character of his own and that got me to thinking about characters I’ve worked on in my career. Having spent more than a little of the past forty years laboring in the comic book field, a majority of the stories I’ve written were about OPCs (Other People’s Characters), from the Atom and Archie to Superman and Scooby Doo. I’ve never had a problem with that; as a lifelong comic book fan, I was always happy to get my paws on the classic characters I grew up reading. But a writer comes to these established and long running characters weighed down by the character’s baggage, allowed to bring to them a certain limited amount of individual interpretation but always bound by what came before…and with full knowledge that no matter what story they tell, things have to be reset to the status quo when they’re done.

Still, along the way, I managed to create a few new additions to the DC Universe of characters. A sorcerer here, a spy agency there, a science fiction hero way out there in deep space…but though I created them, they aren’t really mine. Mainstream corporate comics operate (for the most part) under the work-made-for-hire provision of copyright law, meaning that the corporation is considered the legal “author” of the work. The actual creators have some (small) equity in the creation, but no real control over its destiny or use. The editor, as representative of the “author,” has more control over the character than does the creator and the corporation is free to make whatever changes or alterations it deems necessary.

I’ve also written a considerable number of words in prose for OPCs, including the Green Hornet, the Lone Ranger, Star Trek, Doctor Who, the Avenger, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Archie, Powerpuff Girls, and others, and I’ve enjoyed them all. But, again, these characters were all well established before I got to them and I was obliged to leave them pretty much as I found them once I’m done. As much fun as I’ve had with all the neat toys in those different sandboxes, I always knew they belonged to someone else and that when I went home at the end of the day, I had to leave them where I had found them for the next writer to play with.

The difference between writing OPCs and your own creation is the same as the difference between running a race with and without leg irons. In corporate comics or prose featuring licensed properties, you’re hobbled by the rules of the characters’ owners. But with your own characters, you’re free to run like the wind, limited only by your own imagination.

And, thanks to the paradigm shift in publishing I wrote about last month, I’m free to write my characters, my way. Of course, I was always free to write the stories…I just wouldn’t necessarily have had a venue in which to publish them so someone other than myself could actually read them. But thanks to Crazy 8 Press (and Charlton Neo for comics projects), now I do. And what I write remains mine, to do with as I wish and retain full rights to them should I ever be lucky enough to have any of them optioned for licensing or other media.

Maybe corporate comics and book publishing can offer me greater exposure (although neither seems to be offering much these days in the way of anything except to the Big Names who can sell Big Numbers), but they take away much more by what they demand in exchange for the privilege of being published by them. Junker George and F.B.I. Special Agent Irwin Benjamin in the ReDeus stories, shabby and put upon little Weekly World News investigative reporter Leo Persky in a quartet of tales (previously published in R. Allen Leider’s Hellfire Lounge anthology series and soon to be included in my upcoming Crazy 8 collection of short stories, In My Shorts: Hitler’s Bellhop and Other Stories), the comics characters Blank and Neo (and others to follow) in various Neo publications…mine, mine, mine, all mine.

As Janice Joplin sang, “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” but in this instance, I think it means everything to gain.

You know inspiration, right? It’s that thing you wait for patiently, hour after hour, hoping it’ll sit next to you and whisper sweet nothings and turn that blank screen into a bestseller. In the meantime, your keyboard grows cobwebs Shelob would be proud of.