The new Kickstarter project Travailiant Rising, which will turn a mech short story into a comic book series, is about something a little different: PTSD and anger management. (And, of course, awesome giant robots smashing a post-apocalyptic urban landscape.)
Accomplished sci-fi/fantasy author Kevin J. Anderson is known for many properties, including Dune and Star Wars novels as well as his own titles, such as the steampunk Clockwork Angels and the comedy-noir Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. series). He was approached some years back to participate in a giant-robot anthology called Mech: Age of Steel.
“I get asked to write stories for anthologies all the time,” Anderson says. “I want to do them all, because I’m still a fanboy and I get all excited, but realistically, I don’t have a lot of time on my schedule to fit new things in. So I’ll often take on a co-pilot on a project I really want to do. Some things are too cool to pass up.”
Enter editor and author in his own right, David Boop (Straight Outta Tombstone and his most recent novel, The Drowned Horse Chronicle), whom Anderson tapped to co-write a story. That’s when the idea for Travailiant Rising was born. It's not just a mech story, but the story that happens after the cityscape-altering battles take place. The clean-up is both literal and emotional. Damaged buildings need to be demolished, and disaffected veterans of previous conflicts need a way to work through some of their issues, letting the mechs do the labor while their pilots get some much-needed therapy. It's a rage room on a titanic scale.
“City-smashing robots — what could be cooler than that?" grins Anderson. “But the idea of giant mechs as anger management? We wanted to run with that idea, do more with it.”
The first book became a bit hit in the genre when it hit shelves in 2017, and that might have been where the story ended. But Boop wanted to keep it going. “I’d been looking for a project to break into comics for some time,” Boop says. “The idea of taking that story and expanding on it — it’s a very visual story. I thought it would be perfect for comics.”
Anderson agrees, pointing out that many of the most exciting set pieces in the movies — elements such as car chases, aerial dogfighting — don’t translate well to the page. “It’s really hard to write a good car chase. It sucks,“ Anderson laughs. “They are fundamentally visual. And so is this idea. Honestly, I think the comic book version of Travailiant Rising is a better version than the original short story.”
And that’s exactly what the first issue of the comic book encompasses: a paneled-out version of the short story. But the plan is to expand the narrative world out from there. “There are four main forms of PTSD,” Boop explains, “and in subsequent issues, we’re planning to explore the different mechs that correspond with each of those forms.
“And, of course, there’s a twist,” he teases.
Colorado authors David Boop (left) and Kevin J. Anderson (right).
David Boop
The Kickstarter campaign is about a quarter funded, with a little more than a week left to go, but Anderson and Boop are excited to see it cross the finish line. To that end, they’ve offered a number of incentives beyond the book itself, ranging from a variant cover by legendary artist Bob Eggleton to a manuscript review by both Anderson and Boop. Perhaps the most intriguing offer is at the $100 level: Not only do donors get the book itself, but also signed recipe cards for Anderson’s secret lasagna and Boop’s pumpkin chai cheesecake. “It’s dinner and dessert and something to read, too,” jokes Boop.
The book's message, however, is what Boop and Anderson want to relay the most. “It’s a very important topic,” Boop says, “especially post-COVID. There’s a lot of people still silently suffering out there. This is a great way to explore how after a global tragedy — which the kaiju [a Japanese term referring to giant monsters] represent — that there are people out in the world listening to everyone’s stories, trying to offer help.”
It’s not a coincidence that veterans make up a lot of the mech fans, along with gamers and sci-fi fans. In fact, many fans of the genre are smack in the cross-section of that Venn diagram. “So there’s a serious aspect to what might look like a bunch of city-smashing robots,” says Anderson. “We’re looking forward to the fans joining us on the journey.”
Fans have until Wednesday, September 6, to become a part of the Travailiant Rising Kickstarter. For more information, or to pledge, see the Kickstarter campaign page.
