Graze Anatomy: Destiny

I just received a couple more of fantastic pages from Genius artist Afua Richardson and it inspired this sketch. Enjoy!

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Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman talk Genius with Newsarama

In Genius, the winner of last year's Pilot Season from Top Cow, the world's greatest military mind just happens to belong to a 17-year-old girl named Destiny who lives in L.A.'s South Central.

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The Beat notes Glyph Award nominations

Publisher's Weekly The Beat blog reported on the Glyph Award nominations and we can't help but notice the image they chose to use to highlight the nominees. Excellent choice!

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Congratulations to Genius for 6 Glyph Award Nominations!

THE 2009 GLYPH COMICS AWARDS NOMINEES ARE NAMED; THE FAN AWARD POLL IS OPEN

Now in its fourth successful year, the Glyph Comics Awards (GCA) continue to honor the best in black comics and creators. Many new faces are among this year’s nominees, as well as some old familiar ones.

The nominees for 2009 are:

Story of the Year

Bayou, Jeremy Love, writer and artist

Incognegro; Mat Johnson, writer, Warren Pleece, artist

Justice League of America: The Second Coming; Dwayne McDuffie, writer, Ed Benes, artist

Pilot Season: Genius, Marc Bernardin & Adam Freeman, writers, Afua Richardson, artist

Presidential Material: Barack Obama; Jeff Mariotte, writer, Tom Morgan, artist

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MESSAGES FROM THE 2008 PILOT SEASON WINNERS

Hey Pilot Season fans!

Here are messages from the creative teams behind the 2008 Pilot Season winners, TWILIGHT GUARDIAN and GENIUS:

"I can't begin to thank all the people who put Twilight Guardian in this wonderful situation, though rest assured I'll be trying to do so for a while (so if you get a strange call at two in the morning...). For now, I'll just say thank you to Reza for his fantastic work, and to everyone who voted and got the word out there, and all the gang at Top Cow for giving it a chance. It's great to win this, but it's even cooler to know we've got folks behind us." -- TROY HICKMAN

"First and foremost, a huge 'thank you!' Many fans bitch that they want new, fresh ideas while simultaneously rejecting anything that is not mainstream. You put your vote where your mouth is. For whatever reason, something in Genius grabbed you and, as the creators, there is no bigger compliment. You've put the pressure on us to deliver. We will not disappoint you." --ADAM FREEMAN

"And we appreciate you coming to the table with an open mind. Genius is not your average comic book. This is the story of a villain, presented as if she's the hero, free of any of the 'comfort' trappings one usually gets in comic fiction. There are no costumes, no secret identities, no lanterns of power or irradiated spiders. We're playing in the real world, telling a story with real-world parallels. The fact that Genius didn't scare too many people away is incredibly heartening." --MARC BERNARDIN

"A million thanks to you who voted and took the time out to read and give your opinions, support and well wishes. You chose Genius and it's a privilege to continue doing this story knowing easily you could have picked any of the other really great books in Pilot Season. We won't let you down." --AFUA RICHARDSON

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Announcing the winners of 2008 Pilot Season!

TOP COW ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF 2008 PILOT SEASON

Fans vote for TWILIGHT GUARDIAN and GENIUS to get their own series

LOS ANGELES, Calif., September 18, 2008 – Top Cow Productions, Inc. announced today that the winners of the 2008 Pilot Season campaign are Twilight Guardian by writer Troy Hickman and artist Reza and Genius by writers Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman and artist Afua Richardson.

For over a month, fans went to the Top Cow website, the Pilot Season website or other sites once per day, every day, to vote for their favorite 2008 Pilot Season one-shots. Pilot Season is an annual initiative Top Cow began in 2007 that borrows its concept from the television industry: Six “pilots” are submitted for consideration to be “picked up for a season,” except instead of TV executives deciding their fates, it’s the fans! 2007’s top two vote getters, Cyblade and Velocity, will debut with new series later this year. 2008’s winners will debut with new series in 2009.

Twilight Guardian and Genius beat out Urban Myths by Jay Faerber and Jorge Molina, The Core by Jonathan Hickman and Kenneth Rocafort, Alibi by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Jeremy Haun and Lady Pendragon by Matt Hawkins and Eru.

Twilight Guardian is about an average woman with a particular kind of OCD that drives her to patrol a nine-block area in her neighborhood every night, and about the other “night people” and situations she encounters because of it. Genius asks the question, “Alexander, Hannibal, Napoleon, Patton. What if the greatest military mind of OUR generation was a 17-year-old girl who grew up on the tough streets of an urban war zone?” Both books resonated with a majority of the voters and their creators are ecstatic, excited and even surprised.

“Holey crullers! I really don’t know WHAT to say,” said Troy Hickman. “I feel like I did once at a convention years ago when I somehow wound up on an elevator with Mr. Curt Swan, and I remember thinking, ‘Something’s gone terribly wrong. They’ve accidentally let me on the IMPORTANT elevator!’ The creative teams on the other Pilot Season comics are just terrific, some of the most talented people working in this, or any, medium, and I feel so proud to even be included in this competition. And big congrats to Genius for winning the other spot!”

“I’m shocked, really,” said Adam Freeman. “Genius is not a traditional comic and I suppose that is one of its greatest assets as well as its biggest obstacle. We weren’t sure how readers would react but we knew it was a story we were passionate about. Kudos to Top Cow for being the only publisher willing to take that risk with us. Someone wiser than me once said, ‘Never underestimate your audience’ and, truth be told, we did a little on this one. We didn’t think people would ‘get it’ but apparently they did.”

“Hell, I’m just thrilled to have won something,” added Marc Bernardin. “Seriously though, it’s like Adam said: We knew Genius was an uphill battle, but every now and then, those uphill battles get WON.”

“I blew my voice squealing like a happy pig for a half hour and came up with at least five victory dances,” exclaimed Afua Richardson when she found out Genius was one of the winning titles. “I feel like I won one for all the oddballs out there—all the artists left of center, for the chicks who fight stigmas in comics, all of them!”

Now that the winners have been declared, the creative teams will work with Top Cow’s editorial department to start planning out their series, which will debut in 2009.

“Issue #1 of Genius sparked a few pretty heated debates in some circles but that was only the first act to a much larger story,” explained Freeman. “There is a lot more to tell. I am very curious how the future issues will be received because, trust me, this book is not going where you think it is.

“We’re going to dip a bit into Destiny’s back-story and the forces that combined to make her the woman she is today,” teased Bernardin. “And we’re going to show just how bloody revolution can be.”

“I look forward to a) seeing what happens next; b) getting the chance to work with Marc and Adam again; and c) really getting a chance to show my stuff,” asserted Richardson. “I just really want put my best foot forward on this.”

“Well, now comes the fun part: making comic books,” conveyed Hickman. “Let’s see if we can take Twilight Guardian where comics haven’t gone before. I don’t want to give anything away, but I promise you there will be comedy, and drama, and plenty of the unexpected. Maybe she’s a Skrull…”

“Everyone here at Top Cow wants to wish a hearty congratulations to the teams on Twilight Guardian and Genius for a hard-won victory in this year's Pilot Season,” proclaimed Top Cow Publisher Filip Sablik. “It was an incredibly close race across the board and these two teams campaigned hard for the fans' votes. The fans have spoken and we've already got the wheels in motion to give them more of what they want!”

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Joo-see.com Posts GENIUS Interviews

Steven Lowis at joo-see.com interviewed the entire creative team of the upcoming Pilot Season: Genius and got some good insight into the makings of the book.

Click here for the interview with writers Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman.

Click here for the interview with artist Afua Richardson.

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