Link du Jour: Rick Remender

You guys know how much I dig the pirates right? Well, even I have to draw the line someplace and I was pretty convinced when I first heard about the Sea of Red comics series that "vampire pirates" was going to be the place. (I would also be willing to draw it at "ninja pirates," just in case you're wondering.) Still, there was something about the design of Sea of Red, with its parchment-like paper and unique mixture of red and black ink. It was too pretty not to give a closer look, and I'm glad I did because I learned that writer Rick Remender has the same attitude towards genre that I do: ignore it.

Remender took a silly high-concept and made it work because he concentrated on telling an interesting story about sympathetic characters. Rather than being locked in by the restrictions of its genres, Sea of Red quickly became a book in which anything could happen.

Remender's follow up book, Strange Girl, about a teenager stuck in the demon-infested, post-Rapture world, did the same thing. It's a post-apocalyptic horror/adventure story with healthy doses of drama, comedy, intrigue, and theological exploration.

Next, Remender came up with Fear Agent, a series dedicated to putting the sexy back into scifi, another cause that I can absolutely get behind. And Fear Agent's focus on action and adventure proved that Remender was just the right guy to write Dynamite Entertainment's comic based on the classic version of Battlestar Galactica.

Remender's a great example of a writer who obviously loves genre, but doesn't feel trapped by it.