Heart of Empire Online

By John Freeman on January 7, 2008 • ( 1 )

The whole of the first chapter of Bryan Talbot’s stunning story Heart of Empire is now online for free!

Taken from the CD-ROM, the “Director’s cut” of Heart of Empire, the online promotional version includes every page in its original penciled format – then the interim inked format and then the final coloured format.

“Every page in very high rez,” says James Robertson, webmaster of The Official Bryan Talbot fanpage (www.bryan-talbot.com) of the Heart of Empire CD-ROM, “and then there’s 60,000 words of annotations from Bryan on where he gets his ideas, with rants, digressions anecdotes and influences… and then every front and back cover, and biographies and interviews…. and also the whole of the Adventures of Luther Arkwright in the best ever digitally remastered format too…. it’s a massive and insane labour of love.

“Precisely because it is so big and hard to describe we thought we would put the first chapter online for free so we could say ‘y’know what? – here’s the first part; go check it out and then you’ll know what we are talkin’ about!’

With online comics growing in popularity, Talbot again takes the comics medium to new levels by showing just what can be done with digital comics to create a distinctly different form of the original print tale. A more definitive explanation of the CD is online can be found on Bryan’s site.

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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.