The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/2/09 Section: Out & About

Media Credit: Courtesy of Robert Venditti The cover to THE SURROGATES [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: Courtesy of Robert Venditti A group of anti-surrogate soldiers, known in the story as "Dreads." [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: Courtesy of Robert Venditti The Prophet, who in the books is the leader of the anti-surrogate movement. [Click to enlarge]

At the dawn of the new millennium in a city with no comics convention to call its own, salvation arrived in the form of FLUKE.

"No one knows who first made [the name] up; no one knows what it means," said Robert Newsome, one of convention's organizers and an attendee of the first FLUKE event. "I don't think anybody likes it, but it's the least offensive and disgusting name that we could think of."

Held annually at Tasty World since 2001, FLUKE is a small-scale comics convention dedicated to supporting independent presses and basically anybody with original work to share.

"We don't want to discourage against any type of comics … You could go to Kinko's and just get stuff Xeroxed," said Patrick Dean, the other half of FLUKE's organization and a local illustrator.

Functioning as a marketplace of comics, anybody who pays the $5 admission fee is welcome to hawk their work.

Although the event features some established presses from the surrounding region, such as

Marietta's Top Shelf Productions and South Carolina's Wide Awake Press, Dean estimates that 90 percent of the work available will be the "2 a.m. at Kinko's" kind.

"In comics there is a DIY spirit, where you can just go and make photocopies of your own work and it almost turns into an art object in and of itself," said Robert Venditti, an employee of Top Shelf.

"It's events like FLUKE where there's not a lot of overhead that you can get your stuff out there for people to see."

Vendetti, who will be at FLUKE, also pens a graphic novel series called "The Surrogates," which has been picked up by Disney's Touchstone Pictures. Set to release in September, a film covering the first volume will star Bruce Willis.

The series is a science-fiction detective story set in a futuristic Atlanta where people live their lives through robotic representations of themselves.

"They go out in the world and do all the work for you," Vendetti said. "It's a cyber-punk story. When I was in college, I read a book about people who were addicted to Internet … I later thought 'What if there was a way you could create a persona for yourself in real life?'"

Vendetti will be selling copies of "The Surrogates" at FLUKE. Though he now ranks among the more prominent personalities attending the event, he encourages any aspiring comic book writers and artists to bump shoulders with him.


"Honestly, keep writing and drawing and go to events like FLUKE," he said. "There aren't a lot of writer's and painter's conventions where you meet people. But you can go to comics conventions and walk up and talk to people [working in the industry.]"

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