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Indie Edge September 2016: Brandon Easton

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Please tell us a bit about yourself!

I'm a professional writer based in Los Angeles, but I was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. I was a U.S. History and Economics teacher in NYC for 6 years before moving to the west coast in 2008. I broke into the Hollywood writing scene with the 2011 Thundercats reboot from WB Animation and Transformers: Rescue Bots from Hasbro. I won the 2012 Glyph Award for my Shadowlaw series and multiple 2014 Glyph Awards for the Watson and Holmes comic series, and a 2014 Eisner Award nomination. In 2015, I was selected as one of the eight winners of the 2015 Disney/ABC Writing Program which led to my position as a Staff Writer for season two of Marvel’s Agent Carter. In 2016, I was nominated for the 2nd annual Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics, for the graphic novel Andre the Giant: Closer to Heaven (SEP150492)

What are your favorite projects you’ve contributed to over the past decade?

It would have to be the Transformers: Deviation one-shot from IDW — it postulated a "What If?" scenario where Optimus Prime survived the events of 1986’s Transformers: The Movie. That was a dream come true, being a lifelong Transformers fan! I also did a great Night Thrasher story in Civil War II: Choosing Sides #1, and one of the best experiences I've had as a writer was writing the graphic novel biography about Andre the Giant. It's not often a writer gets to work on projects based on material that has directly influenced them, and as a Transformers geek and a fan of pro-wrestling, it was as if the stars aligned for me!

What are you currently working on?

Other than being the first writer in the Western World to tackle Vampire Hunter D in comic book form, I'm having a blast writing the new M.A.S.K. comic book series for IDW (see page 159)! There are a couple of cool things I'm working on that I cannot discuss, but these are the main two books I'm currently working on, and I'm deeply honored to be trusted with these amazing properties!

What fun titles are you reading?

All of the current Transformers titles from IDW. These books are absolutely amazing because of the tight continuity and the intense character development of the massive cast of characters. What could have been a simplistic robot story has morphed into a galaxy-spanning sci-fi space epic that deserves to be read from the beginning.

I'm also loving Faith from Valiant because it's rare to see a body-positive woman superhero — actually, it's rare to see a body-positive character in comics at all, and I do believe the final frontier of social bias is body shaming. Human beings come in different shapes and sizes and this bizarre, unhealthy and obsessive desire to see impossibly thin and plastic physiques in pop culture has to come to an end. Books like Faith can help lead men and women to a more reasonable expectation about what's considered "hot" in our society.

I just started reading Horizon from Image. It's an excellent sci-fi comic with a cool twist on an alien invasion concept. Writer Brandon Thomas is crafting a unique new universe that made waves with the first issue and he's got me salivating for the next installment. Excellent stuff there!  

EDGE ESSENTIALS

Pick up these books to learn more about Keith Foster’s Indie Edge style!

  • Andre the Giant: Closer to Heaven (SEP150492)
  • Watson & Holmes Volume 2 TP (OCT141563)
  • M.A.S.K.: Mobile Armored Strike Kommand #1 (SEP160411)
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