This October we give a massive welcome to two new members of the Luna family: Scottish writer Chris Kelso and, all the way from the Pacific, artist Jim Agpalza!
Chris and Jim are working on a new comic, Apollo Unbound, which will transport us from the glitz of Hollywood to rural Ayrshire, in true Lynchian fashion. It's not a journey for the faint of heart.
Chris Kelso is an award winning genre writer, editor and illustrator from Scotland. His short stories and articles have appeared in magazines and journals across the UK, US and Canada. Unger House Radicals won the Ginger Nuts of Horror Book of the Year in 2016 and The Black Dog Eats the City was featured in the Weird Fiction Review's best of 2014.
Raised on an island in the Pacific Ocean, Jim Agpalza now lives outside Portland, Oregon, where he works as a freelance illustrator, cover artist, character designer, and storyboard artist. His work has appeared in a multitude of formats, including cartoons, books, slot machines, comics, and t-shirts. Jim is the co-creator of the animated show Spacefish, the novel Fantastic Earth Destroyer Ultra Plus, and Not Safe For Kids.
Chris told us:
"I’ve always been a huge cinephile, and I had this idea buzzing around in my head to do a script. At first I thought I’d adapt one of my old short stories, but I quickly discovered they weren’t easily translatable to the screenplay format, nor were they very coherent or cinematic. So an original script became my focus. I’d been reading a lot of European novels and Greek dramas for inspiration, and one of my favourites was Shelley’s 'Prometheus' trilogy. I thought 'Apollo Unbound' was a nice pun on 'Prometheus Unbound', so that was my starting point. Simple as that – cheap wordplay!
I had a lead character called Apollo. My screenplay would focus on his torments and the futility of his existence.
The script came pretty naturally after that. I’m from rural Ayrshire and I always thought it’d make a fantastic setting for a science fiction story. Even more interesting than that – what would it be like if a Hollywood celebrity found himself superimposed onto a grim, dystopian Ayrshire village? Imagine the culture shock.
I’m always interested in change, both psychological and physical. I’m interested in dynamic shifts in our perceived reality, and the subsequent task of adapting to an alien environment. I love stories where characters just wake up in a completely new world (Kafka’s 'Metamorphosis', 'The Selkie') . I’d been aware of Jim Agpalza’s art for a long time. He even did the cover for my collection 'Terence, Mephisto and Viscera Eyes', so getting him on board was a no-brainer. I think he is doing an amazing job."
Apollo Unbound will be published by Luna Press Publishing this coming winter (date TBC).