Author notes

Chapter 1 Page 12

Abt_Nihil

on Aug. 8, 2010

Okay, DAJB hit the jackpot with his comment on the previous page: The movie I was previously referring to, which might have influenced HOLON was…

SOLARIS.

Not the book (which I haven't read - yet), and not the Soderbergh movie (which I did watch a few years ago, but can't remember for the life of me), but Andrei Tarkovsky's hauntingly beautiful movie.

Shortly before starting to draw Holon, I realized that the concept I had developed would fit a reinterpretation of Solaris, and for a short time I actually considered making it an "official reinterpretation". But I eventually decided against it - not only would I have had to live up to a masterpiece of science-fiction, which is a pressure you shouldn't willingly subject yourself to, but I would also be more restricted in telling my story. So, now I regard Holon as "being inspired by Solaris" just like Hayao Miyazaki's "Gake no Ue no Ponyo" is inspired by H. C. Andersen's "Little Mermaid" - the similarities are there, but for the most part, you'd have to consciously look for them.

In any case, Holon is unlike anything I've ever done before. For better or worse. (Most notably, while many of my comics have been somewhat sci-fi, I've never done an all-out vintage sci-fi genre piece.)

Thanks for reading and commenting!


REPLIES:

sux: Then you'll need to learn the secret code for green curry! :P

Genejoke: Well, you don't have to be a great writer to write stories - being a decent writer will suffice. Look at me :-) (But thanks!) And I think you're probably right… maybe that's a contributing factor to why I just can't remember anything about the movie.

DAJB: I should hand out bags with this comic! :O But thanks!

Fitz: Yeah, I love that - transfiguring the commonplace. Especially by using everyday locations as sci-fi back-drops. The old Solaris movie actually did something similar with Tokyo, which offers some retro-futuristic scenery. Much the same applies for Alphaville (minus Tokyo). And yeah, the methane problem needs to be solved :/

Lem: I only found out about that connection after I had already seen the movie once, but I did make sense to me, retrospectively. But I certainly wouldn't have seen the connection BY seeing the movie. And no, that's not a hand, at least I didn't intend it to be. I did intend it to be a sort of memory storage unit, but of course you can make up your own description!

alejkhan: Heh, exactly! I'm trying to keep the actual rooms somewhat small and claustrophobic, but I still want the entire station to be insanely huge. So there'd be these huge corridor-things connecting the small, claustrophobic rooms. Also, spaces would generally get larger the deeper we go into the station… that's something I'll explore further down the road. There'd be lots of WIDE OPEN SPACE. Yes. ^_^

Peipei, Jules, man in black, skreem, Zephyrion, Jabali, mmm bacon0: Thanks!