Lyn Byrd and myself started developing Argent Starr — Tales From The Archives a few years ago, working on it for a few weeks here and there, in between client projects at our design business Krel Studios.
We’re both avid Si-fi fans and active comics readers. Lyn had several fat folders filled with draft chapters of various book projects and I had a massive collection of un-used production designs. We felt we were well-equiped with all the tools to create something in the genre, especially in the adult category. Lyn wanted to do a snappy three-book comedy arc, I on the other hand wanted to tackle a longer more richly developed universe, so blame me.
Lyn is an excellent writer, lyricist and poet and has been published in a number of magazines over the years, my published writing tended to be in the form of articles for trade publications or marketing copy. I’d worked at major magazines as an Art Director for many years and had the good fortune to work closely with a lot of talented editors, writing more headlines and sub-heads for stories than I can count.
It started out with a basic concept of doing a story that explored the relationship between magic and technology as embodied by a ‘Teklok’, the character of Argent Starr. We wanted it to have humor without relinquishing darkness, and be filled with action but not plot holes.
Lyn created and developed a number of uniquely interesting characters; BoB Sixtwo, Reeno (the Lupetin), Rey Zyten, Queen Soodoh, and Lazarus Stern along with their basic character design. There are more great characters that show up in later parts of the story as well.
The story of The Quest For The Cardinal Stone, evolved over an extended period and has continually grown and morphed. I created an in-depth back story for Argent and a rich time-line for the the underlying universe in which our story takes place. We wrote the core of the story in a narrative form which I then converted into script format.
We started writing new scenes, dialog and gags that either Lyn or I would come up with and integrated them into the script. Many of these ultimately get removed or put aside as part of future stories or spin-offs. As things developed I took the lead on story structure and pacing, and we continued until we had a massive script, enough to support a multi-year run of a monthly comic book.
I started serializing the story, while we continue to develop all aspects of Argent Starr’s universe and story.
