CONSPIRACY AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER ON AMAZON NOW!

ORDER NOW!

CONSPIRACY AUTHOR DREW GASKA TALKS ABOUT REBOOTS AND ALTERNATE CONTINUITIES IN THE PLANET OF THE APES UNIVERSE.

 "There are major discrepancies between all the series, and in crafting COnspiracy of the Planet of the Apes I had to take a creative approach to make all these things make sense. In the third movie, Escape, Dr. Hasslien compared time to an infinite highway with infinite lanes, if you change lanes you could change your future.

I have come to the conclusion that the cartoon and television series, as well as some of the comic’ continuity, are in fact different lanes of the same highway. This explains how the cartoon has Corneilus, Zira, and Zaius in a world where the apes have technology, but that is clearly not the case in the feature films. It is my hypothesis, and the foundation of this novel series, that all the astronauts started off in the same lane on that highway, but as they made it to the future, they wound up getting off on different exit ramps. This also explains how each of the astronauts from the different sources are shocked to find out that the future is run by apes, but some of their missions left after Zira and Cornelius return to 1973 and say as much. I have used this idea to create a few interesting characters inspired by the other sources and incorporate them into Taylor and Landon’s timeline, so that they are “this lane’s” version of that character." - Drew G.

'ASHES TO DUST" painting by Chandra Free

AUTHOR DREW GASKA CONSPIRACY INTERVIEW with DIAMOND's SCOOP!

INTERVIEW LINK

LIBERTY ONE TEASE! DESIGN BY ANDREW PROBERT

Everyone knows that the command capsule is the only part of the the Liberty (formerly the Icarus, formerly Air Force One) that has ever been shown in an official capacity in Planet of the Apes film and merchandizing. In designing the full ship for Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes, Author Drew Gaska sought out starship designer extraordinaire Andrew Probert.
To the left is a glimpse at his painting in the book, just a little bit of a tease to whet your appetite for the full reveal this July 25th when the book hits stores nationwide. Not only is there a double page spread of Probert's gorgeous painting of the Liberty in action, but also the book's end papers have been designed to look like "blueprints" based off of Gaska's notes and Probert's design for the ship.

ABOUT ANDREW PROBERT:

Andrew Probert’s artistic career spans over thirty years, ten of which were spent working on some of science-fiction fans’ favorite Hollywood productions.

He began on the small screen, designing the robotic Cylons for the original “Battlestar: Galactica”, moving on to the big screen as a major design contributor for “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”, working to update the overall look of Starfleet ships & hardware.

This led to a number of television and feature-film projects, including “Airwolf”, “Streethawk”, and “Back to the Future”. In 1987, Probert’s last Hollywood project proved to be the one for which he is most well known: “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. As the show’s Senior Illustrator, he designed the Enterprise bridge, battle-bridge, and provided concepts for the remaining sets & other hardware, while designing the exteriors of the Ferengi Marauder, Romulan Warbird, and Enterprise-D spaceships.

In 1989, Probert joined Walt Disney Imagineering, designing various themepark rides & attractions. Years later, he entered the video game industry working with Spectrum Holobyte, Sega, and recently, Perpetual Entertainment.

Andrew is currently involved in producing paintings and an occasional book cover.

For more on Andrew, visit http://probertdesigns.com/

CONSPIRACY COVER FROM PENCIL TO POSTER TO FINISH

Get a look at the three stages of Jim Steranko's cover for the Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes Illustrated Novel, from pencils (bottom) to the poster image (middle) to the tweaked final for the book (top).

MTV GEEK CONSPIRACY OF THE PLANET OF THE APES INTERVIEW with AUTHOR DREW GASKA

Andrew E. C. Gaska talks about the illustrated novel coming from ARCHAIA ENTERTAINMENT on JULY 25th!

http://geek-news.mtv.com/2011/06/01/the-man-behind-the-conspiracy-talking-with-conspiracy-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-author-andrew-ec-gaska/

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM THE LIBERTY ONE!

Hey everyone,

I just thought I'd share with you pictures of a custom Liberty -1 space craft model! It is a 1/6th scale project that Apes fan Chris Hight has commissioned fellow fan Matt Sotis to work on. Matt has been recreating the ship for use with the Sideshow 12 inch Figures, based on the actual set blueprints. Check out the amazing pics below!

Obviously this is still a work in progress, but its looking fantastic. In time, Matt hopes to complete the Liberty - but what he doesn't know yet might kill him! As you know, The Liberty-1 (formerly the Icarus) is somewhat of an enigma - with only its command module sticking out of Dead Lake in the beginning of the original Planet of the Apes - and while there are several theories online as to the design of the the rest of the ship, it has not been officially revealed... until now.

In Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes, we will be showing for the first time ever, the official design of the REST of the Liberty starship, as conceptionalized by myself and an influential film designer whose name will be revealed in time!

Suffice to say, the portion of Liberty - 1 we do see in the film is just the tip of the iceberg - there is much more to the vessel that propelled Taylor, Landon and the rest of the crew to the future, and their final fates.

Have a Happy New Year!

-Drew G.

POTA PRINTS AVAILABLE ONLINE - EXCLUSIVE CARD OFFER

Attention Apes fans!

Happy Holidays! The Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter pages are now live! In addition, the BLAM! Ventures online store, THE AMMO DEPOT, is now open, and carrying exclusive POTA merchadise!

We are selling the remainder of Alpha and Omega prints offered at San Diego Comicon this year for $30 a piece, or you can buy the set of two for $60 and get the five released Conspiracy trading cards AND Landon's dogtags for free!

In addition to that, Any order from now until February 1, 2010 will receive a free unannounced 10th bio trading card - featuring Dr. Cornelius!

Labeled '0 of 9', this extremely limited collectible is yours free with any order placed here! Simply write the text: STINKING PAWS in the notes on your PAYPAL order, and this card will be sent to you with you order.

Already have Alpha and Omega? Don't worry, anyone who has previously ordered the prints from us need not worry about getting the Cornelius card. As a special thank you to the fans, BLAM! will be mailing out the new bio card to everyone who has made a previous purchase, free of charge.

Order soon, supplies are VERY limited!

THE AMMO DEPOT:
http://www.blamventures.com/store/

COPOTA MYSPACE:
http://www.myspace.com/conspiracyapes

COPOTA FACEBOOK:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Conspiracy-of-the-Planet-of-the-Apes-Illustrated-Novel/143168634554

THE LIBERTY LOGS TWITTER:
http://twitter.com/thelibertylogs

COPOTA WEBSITE:
http://www.blamventures.com/pota/

Happy Birthday Chuck

I was on IMDb.com just now and saw it is (at least for the next fifteen minutes or so) Charlton Heston's birthday today, he would have been 86.

Happy Birthday!

pota poster

Over at Graphic Nothing's Flickr page you'll find a set of minimalist movie posters, among which I found this one for Planet of the Apes. Some are cool, some are eh, a few are obscure and the rest I hadn't seen the film they come from.

It's worth a look-see, click through on the poster image to check out the whole set:

(via BoingBoing)

Another future, this one not involving Apes

Just in case you thought all the gang at BLAM! Ventures did was write about Apes, we do some other stuff as well...

(Click on the picture already, see the cool stuff on the other side)

While I'm not working on that property, it is being guided by the able hands of my co-author and BLAM! Ventures creative director Andrew E. C. Gaska.

Check it out, and look for more info in the coming weeks.

In POTA news (because there is a bit of that), we've got a big story meeting coming up as we head into what I believe will be the final draft. Exciting times!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, Conspirators.

Conspiracy Interview

Greetings fellow conspirators!

Our first Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes interview is up! The good folks over at the Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing podcast have been doing a bunch of post-SDCC coverage, and as I mentioned back here, Lou Anders had interviewed me for the show.

The main interview for this episode, conducted as always by host Shaun Farrell, spotlights two of this years L. Ron Hubbard Presents: Writers of the Future contest winners. The SDCC interviews, beginning with mine, come in at around the 37:26 mark. It's OK if you skip ahead to listen (I won't tell), but don't forget to check out the rest, as I've said before AISFP is a podcast worth subscribing to.

Episode 83 of AISFP is available now, go listen and spread the word!

Beware the beast man...

Kinda creepy.

Zaius

True to his word, Bruce Ross delivered a Zaius custom figure yesterday. I think this one captures the attitude of Zaius better than the previous one did of Ursus. Click on the picture to go to the site for more shots, including the two together.

Ursus in action (pose)

Work continues on the book, but things have been quiet blog wise and will probably be that way for a while yet. So to keep you guys occupied, I figure I’ll share a link that was shared with me this morning via Chris Roberson’s blog.

Bruce Ross is a guy who makes cool custom action figures, and here he takes a crack at General Ursus. While I hardly think it’s a dead on likeness, it does make for an interesting Apes soldier at the least. Next up, he’s going to tackle Dr. Zaius. I’m curious to see how that one turns out.

There are more pictures at the site along with commentary by Ross on inspiration and materials used to make it. Check out some of his other figures as well, some of them are really awesome.

In the coming up department, we plan to begin profiling the artists working on Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes sometime in October, so be on the lookout for that. And we'll have updates for you on the novel's progress, conventions we'll be appearing at and more in the months to come.

Until then, fellow Conpsirators...

09/21/09, EDIT TO CORRECT: I was in error. I recently checked back to see if any other apes had popped up, and indeed a few had, specifically General Ursus. My original source for these images had tagged this ape as Ursus, but I looked back at Ross' post and saw it was simply called a Gorilla Soldier. Apologies to Mr. Ross for confusing the issue. For the record, here's General Ursus--with the soldier ape--as Bruce Ross intended (though as with all of his POTA figures, he was going for the feel rather than an exact copy):

An Expert Editor & Some Animated Apes

From the Simian News Desk:

Just before Comic-Con we hired POTA expert Rich Handley to serve as our editor as we get ready to move into the next draft of the novel. Rich is now nearly finished his run through of the current draft and has been nothing but enthusiastic about what we’ve done. His red pen has been hard at work despite that, because he knows we can do better, and we know we can as well.

The artists involved in the project continue to move forward and hand in some beautiful work which we’ll be teasing bits and pieces of in the months to come. So all is going well with the Conspiracy.

* * *

In other news, today's edition of AMC’s SciFi Scanner Daily Scan blog notes that Hulu.com has seen fit to put the entire run of the animated Return to the Planet of the Apes series. Hulu gets the episode order wrong, but someone in the comments on the Return page was good enough to post the correct order (but we know you knew that already).

If you don’t have a copy of the DVD, check it out, Hulu.com streams to your computers for free.

Ken Kelly Spotlight

Ken Kelly is a friend to the Apes. He’s going to be contributing to the Conspiracy illustrated novel. If you look to the left you’ll see an angry Ursus daring you to click on him, that’s one of Ken’s pieces.

He’s also been a friend to the crew at BLAM! Ventures since we were booth neighbors at a Big Apple Con a few years back, so we’re kind of fond of him here. While we’ll be doing a profile on him here at some point in the future, I just wanted to point you in the direction of something that showed up in my Google Reader tonight.

(Sorry, no apes in these pictures, so you get a couple of giant crabs)

Ken’s Robert E. Howard series of painting has been featured on the Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog. It’s a gorgeous collection of paintings from the late ‘70s through to 1980. For those of you not familiar with Ken’s work (and you really should be, or we’ll have to send Ursus to “help” you get familiar with them) go check it out!

SDCC ’09 wrap (finally!)

Well, at least from me—others in the BLAM! clan may have final thoughts to post yet. It’s past time I finished the tale of my SDCC odyssey, however.

But first, pictures! That have nothing to do with Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes! But do have a Star Wars theme!

Apparently Darth Vader and a squad of Stormtroopers
ventured through a Stargate, held a blonde woman captive
while a bunch of soldiers tried to shoot her. Or something.

And… The Littlest Stormtrooper in Pigtails.

Really, there’s not much left to talk about after the above, other than to say I had a really good time at this con. The best I’ve had in years, actually. I got burned out on them and had put a moratorium on attending for the past year or so, but I’m glad I finally made it to Comic Con. My only regret—and this is common to cons I attend away from home—is that I really don’t get to see too much of the host city. If it weren’t for the ever present Day Job and the tiny amount of vacation days I am allotted, I would love to take a few extra days to enjoy the sights, sounds, tastes and whatnot.

Enough of my lament, time to leave San Diego Comic Con 2009 to the history books.

Later, Conspirators.

Not quite the SDCC wrap up

Yeah, one more day, then I will post it. Really. Truly. In the meantime, I'm going to do a little cross-blog promotion.

My blog, The Manakalita Manifesto, is now not only a place for my personal blatherings and stories, but is also home to the first in what I hope to be a series of interviews with creators I admire.

For the inaugural edition, I asked a writer familiar to The Conspiracy Apes blog: Chris Roberson. If you recall, Chris was the first--as far as I can tell--person outside of the fan clubs to write about the Conspiracy novel. His entry on us got noticed by a few others and the story is making its way onto the web in part because of that post.

I had originally asked him to do an interview earlier in the year for a book he had released in late 2008, but that didn't work out. Fortunately, Chris is a pretty prolific guy, and his latest novel is out now in the UK, and here in October. That made it the perfect time to have a chat with him about the new book, and a few other things he's got going on.

Please check out my interview with Chris, and I promise not to shill for my blog here anymore (than necessary).

Good Neighbors

I spent most of last week down with the flu, but am feeling much better now. Just wanted to take a moment to say thanks to out neighbors at Comic Con this year, a bunch nicer people you couldn’t have asked to be next to.


The people at Haunted Memories make creepy changing portraits–lenticular pictures that transform rather nice looking folks in antique photos into all sorts of undead, invisible, anthropomorphic and other assorted wonders.

I picked up a trio of pictures while there, one for myself and the other two as gifts (well received gifts). They do custom jobs as well.



On the other side were the folks at BOOM! Studios (oh the irony, BLAM! Ventures and BOOM! Studios next to each other, now if there were only a POW! Press to complete us). They get cool points for making sure our booth stayed open to traffic when their singing lines got long.

I wanted to get a chance to peruse their fare, but unfortunately my other duties called. Someday I will pick up their Farscape comics, as I miss that show and am keen to see where they took it.

(Hey - if you look below their banner, you'll see the banner for Archaia, the publisher that is putting out our creator owned comic Critical Millennium next spring - a busy time for us)

* * *

Getting late and sleep calls, I will do a final wrap tomorrow with a couple of amusing pictures I took on my limited journeys around the main floor.

Sleep well, conspirators.