‘Young Ancient One’ returns (sort of)
It appears a longtime “Dr. Strange” writer is picking up the thread that I started a few years back with “Young Ancient One”.
“But that’s not all, because in Chinatown, BR meets a gentleman both Marshall and I have met before: a gentleman who’ll one day become known as the Ancient One. And Yao, as we call him — don’t tell anyone, but it stands for Young Ancient One — has a few more peculiar friends. They might even form their own peculiar group — but that would come in future issues of Black Rider, and those will only appear if the one-shot sells.”
Heh. In the three scripts I wrote for “Young Ancient One” I called the character Yao as well, but only for internal reference. To the comic reader, the hero of “Young Ancient One” went unnamed through the three issues and would have remained so had we been allowed to carry on. Stan never named him! Who was I to do it?
But what Englehart is doing is exactly what Andy and I wanted to do with “YAO”: move him through different periods and genres within the Marvel universe.
Looking forward to “Black Rider” and the return of YAO.
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YAO wins 2004 award
Longtime comics blogger and Dr. Strange enthusiast NeilAlieN has named “Young Ancient One” the “Best Appearance of a Dr.-Strange-Affiliated Character, Item, etc.” in his 02004 Neilalien Awards.
I accept the award on behalf of Andy Kuhn, Bill Crabtree, David Sharpe and myself. We are very honored and want to thank the academy of NeilAlieN and everyone else who helped make it possible.
[cue the music]
Read MoreImagine my surprise
Well…I never thought I’d be doing another “Young Ancient One” update. After the bum’s rush the book got from Marvel I figured they’d shredded all copies, burned all emails and dumped all remaining traces of my little comic book into the unmarked grave of forgotten Epic stories.
Imagine my surprise then, when I found out today my YAO mythology (or at least what was revealed in the single issue that was published) is now part of Marvel Universe canon.
Yep. It’s right there in “Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Book of the Dead” in comic stores today. The very first section in the Handbook covers our dear, departed Ancient One.
My contributions to the Ancient One’s story show up in the thumbnail data as such:
Known Aliases: bTsan Saa and the Spirit Leopard — the superhero names (Tibetan and English versions) that I gave the hero of our story.
Occupation: formerly apprentice doctor and village protector
Known Relatives: Leung (wife, deceased)
And then the detailed history segment opens with: “Born in the 1430′s the man later known as the Ancient One was, as a young man, active as the Spirit Leopard, costumed protector of his Tibetan village, Lang Kah, where he lived with his wife Leung and worked as an apprentice doctor.“
As disappointing as the whole Epic fiasco was, it’s fun to see that the Spirit Leopard lives on. I’m proud of the work that Andy, Bill, Dave and I did and still wish we could have spent more time doing it. Anyhow, it’s cool to see that I’m still considered to have made some contribution to the Marvel mythos.
I expect I have the good, Epic-friendly crowd at ComiX-Fan to thank, in particular Eric Moreels, who’s listed as a writer on the book.
UPDATE: I found out that it was Ronald Byrd who wrote the Ancient One bio and included our YAO bits. A big thanks to Ronald!
Of course, it doesn’t take John Byrne to point out that we never really defined what the link between the Spirit Leopard and the Ancient One actually was. Could it be that the Hero of my first issue was really Kaluu?
We’ll never know…
Read MoreKeep hanging….
I promised some of you I’d look into posting the unpublished “Young Ancient One” scripts here.
Marvel has denied me permission to do so, so it looks like the cliffhangers will remain unresolved.
On a completely unrelated note, I have script samples available to anyone interested in my writing work. If you have a professional interest, please feel free to drop me an e-mail and I’ll send out some samples. Remember, specify in your e-mail that you need samples for professional reasons.
Read MoreYAO/Anthology Insulted!
“Young Ancient One” and the rest of the Epic Anthology were neither insulted nor injured by the review at Insult to Injury the groovy new comics blog run by three Scottish students. Here’s a YAO related excerpt:
With a title like Young Ancient One this was going to have to be either really entertaining or a horrible mistake. Guess what? It was great. Between it’s action and humour, I suspect this would have been the thing to keep me coming back to this book. It’s combination of Kung Fu action, magical events and quippy and anachronistic humour made it the sweet you can eat between meals. Fair play to writer Rob Worley and artist Andy Kuhn, who left us involved enough to want to see where their cliffhanger would go next.
You’ll find notices there for “Sleepwalker” and “Strange Magic” too, under the heading of “Attack of the Cliffhangers”.
Speaking of…I’ve been encouraging anyone who wants to see these cliffhangers resolved to dash off an e-mail to ultimateoffice@marvel.com and speak your mind. It can’t hurt.
Read MoreYAO/Epic Anthology praised by Fanboy
Fanboy Planet just posted a great review of Epic Anthology. The review kicks off with a summary of today’s cancellation news and includes a quote by me. Obviously that statement was made during the day, before I got the call from Marvel (see below).
Anyhow, reveiwer Derek McCaw’s main gripe with the book is that it isn’t continuing. Aside from the nice praise for the stories contained within, Derek also had this intriguing suggestion:
To Marvel: bring it back out as Strange Tales Anthology. Make it a manga-sized digest collecting the complete stories. Do whatever it takes to distance it from the previous regime if you must, but don’t let this good work just die.
Sounds good to me, Derek.
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Rob Elsewhere...