This is a concept piece for my huge, looming, and intimidating comics project, “Empire State Patrol”. Which I think will take about as long to finish as the cathedral at Chartres. Go on, look it up. I’ll still be here.

There’ll be a common layout for all ten covers, which I think will be pretty much what we see here, and I’ve added an illustration for a scene in the second chapter. Since this is the cover for issue #2. I’m probably not really done with it, but finishing things like this makes me feel like I might be getting something done. Silly, silly me.

That’s Jake Rothman up on the rock, Marco Lippi down below, and Clay Hooper out back. They used to be construction workers. Now they’re rocket pilots. Life’s just crazy that way.

Technorati Tags: empire state patrol, comics, comic book, graphic novel, sci fi, science fiction, retro futuristic, dieselpunk, retrofuturism, rockets, buck rogers, flash gordon, dan dare

I don’t actually read the io9 blog every day, but I make up for it when I do. They’ve featured some great science fiction related topics and some entertaining silliness in the few months they’ve been up, and I enjoy it enough that I’ve been linking to it in the “Notable Blogs” blogroll over on the left column (well, on my main pages, that is).

So imagine my surprise and delight to find that they’ve chosen my Retropolis Transit Authority site as the only T-shirt vendor in yesterday’s Triviagasm feature, Scifi Clothing You Can Wear on the Street Without Fear of Reprisals.To wit:

So how do we pick just one? The answer is simple: we don’t. We just have a giant closet full of scifi shirts ready to go at a moment’s notice, and the flavor of the day is Retropolis. These awesome t-shirts have a steampunk/BioShock feeling to them, and the designs are retro-cool. Plus check out their entire vintage futurism t-shirts section as well for extra retro-style. The t-shirt really is the most widely used geek badge of honor out there, so make your selection esoteric and fun.

My vacuum tubes are glowing in appreciation!

Technorati Tags: t shirts, retropolis transit authority, science fiction, sci fi, robot, rocket, retro, tee shirts, tees, io9

Here’s a public service poster from the Future That Never Was: the Retropolis Civilian Conservation Corps’ TREES FOR TOMORROW program endeavors to replace all the trees we foolishly chopped down before we realized that we needed them.

Under the watchful eye of a Corps member, even an inexperienced robot is able to plant a new, living sapling out in the wilds beyond the wind farms and thereby make his own investment in breathable air for Tomorrow. Which he won’t need to breathe, of course - being a robot - but that’s just proof of his selfless dedication to a good cause.

This sprung up (if anything that took this long can be said to have sprung) out of my thinking about how Retropolis can do better than we’ve done not only when it comes to flying cars and faithful robots, but in making sure our planet stays a nice place to fly our rockets around in. I’m ditching the worst mistakes of the retro future (highways? cars?) and trying to reimagine it into something that makes a lot more sense than what we’ve actually done. So far.

One of the things I like best about the future is that there’s still plenty of it, after all.

There’s an archival print and there will be a poster quality print - once a bug in my printer’s online system is resolved, so I can make it available.

Technorati Tags: retropolis, trees for tomorrow, public service announcement, robot, retro future, dieselpunk, science fiction, reforestation, wind power