Dave's World: Emii, Heavy Metal, & Wasted Lands Revisited

Dave Dorman has long been known as “the Star Wars guy,” but that label seems to be taking a back seat now given where the man’s going these days with his creator-owned property, the Wasted Lands. The skinny: there’s a big picture on the horizon now that he has others sharing his same vision.

But the Wasted Lands wasn’t the only topic of our conversation. Of course not. You can never talk about just one thing with Dave Dorman. For those of you who know the man, he was the Energizer Bunny long before that commercial was put on television. In fact, his dedication, growth, and continual output of fantastic illustrations has recently placed him in the "Top 100 Fantasy Artists" by the fans for Imagine F/X Magazine.

And STILL the man has one foot in the comics biz, as Dave also talked with us about his latest “armed and angry” Obama painting for IDW’s The Other Dead (news of which had just hit The Blaze, and was already getting people fired up).

When asked how the new cover came about, Dave replied that “the writer/editor just gave me a call, and said you interested in doing this Obama cover? And he gave me a rundown of people who were working on the book…people who I had known for a long time, and I said…sure! You know, I’ll do something fun!”

Fun, in truth, which ended quickly because he and his wife Denise are both working as producers on an upcoming Heavy Metal documentary. Plus, Dave had just landed a gig for Kevin Eastman's Heavy Metal magazine in which he would draw a cover featuring Emii, a rising star singer who came to San Diego to meet Dave, and who was nice enough to pose for the above picture at Dave's booth where she showed up in full costume.

"She looks great, doesn't she?" Dave said. "You should hear her sing. The girl's got pipes!"

But, coming full circle, the hot topic of his collaboration with Mike Bawden’s company Silent Gunfight was the crux of our interview, as their teamwork would soon produce Iron Wars, a Wasted Lands board/trading card game which they were able to show off at the booth as Mike had brought the prototype with him.

“Wasted Lands is a project I’ve been working on for about fifteen years. The first real iteration of that was the graphic novel the Rail that came out from Image ten years ago. Originally it was supposed to be a five graphic novel series. I’m going to reboot the graphic novel coming up in the spring. One of my business partners Mike Bawden and his son Tim have created a game specifically for the Wasted Lands and the Rail project. It’s a board game mixed with a card game.”

Game scenarios were something Dave never envisioned for The Wasted Lands. But it didn’t take long for him to realize it wasn’t just a good idea…it was a great idea.

For more details on the project, and a look at the actual prototype, check out the above YouTube video!

The Iron Wars game prototype.

Download Dave's recent interview on The Dennis Miller Show!

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