About Me.

Name: Michael Burness

About Me: In 2005 I co-founded a Small Press Comic organisation called Unico Comics. Its purpose was to bring together amateur comic book writers and artists from the North East together to have their dreams realised and a chance to get comics made and for sale in places like Travelling-Man, Small Zone Comics and Conventions. I’ve been writing comics since 2005 and have a large selection of multiple issue arcs or one shots covering many genres and all completely original. I’d describe my style as aimed at the late teen market and with a strong British sensibility and I don’t really write in an “ Americana ” style as I believe that there is enough of that style on the market already and I really want to take British comics into a new golden age.

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Published Work: Self Published.

Project: Last Man

This is a high concept sci-fi novel that I created and co wrote. It’s presented in a format that looks like a copied American military file about a Russian experiment from the 60’s that used ‘Phased Energy’ on a Russian citizen that put him out of phase with the rest of the world. The story is told through transcriptions of tape recordings the citizen made.

Mr Meowinkins

This is a children’s book aimed at the 3-5 year old market. It’s a 12 page picture book about a cat from Brazil who flies around the world replacing kittens ‘training tails’ with real ones.

Console Wars

CW is an online comedy comic about games consoles from the last 20 years who are all alive in the same universe. This has been bought by PSX Games and can be seen weekly on their Website. I’m responsible for writing most of the scripts.

Love Sucks

Love Sucks is another online webcomic that was written and made by me. It can be viewed on Facebook and also be bought in hardcopy format (using Lulu Publishing) from the small press section in Travelling-Man in Newcastle upon Tyne.

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My work to be released: 2008

The Legend Known as

Issue one will be released through Unico Comics in 2008. It’s a full colour comic set in New England (USA) 70 years in the future after an environmental disaster floods 1 third of the worlds landmass has gone under water. The story is about a small boy and his sister who loses his mother to gang warfare in a refugee camp outside one of the last cities. Himself and the innocent people around him face destruction at the hands of the corrupt few who make their lives a nightmare, until a mysterious man steps up to teach them to defend themselves.

Unico Collections

An idea I came up with in late 2007 was to advertise for guest artists around the UK using advertising on our sister company –The Amateur Comics Guild- who would like to join Unico Comics for the collections project. The idea was that the 3 main writers on Unico would do a number of mini scripts for the 8 artists to pick from. They would work for free and Unico would pay for advertising and printing and it would be a way for them to get there work out onto the market. This annual will feature 13 short stories and will be released mid 2008.

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My Scripts ready to be made:

Our Heroes Fall

This 6 issue arc (16 pages per issue) has a non typical female heroine in it. Her father was a masked vigilantly called Shadow-Owl who is murdered by his ex partner at the request of a corrupt British government. Sarah takes it upon herself to follow the clues to find out what happened and take revenge. The story doesn’t follow the normal setting of superhero genre and is more of a mystery drama similar in tone as “All the Presidents men.”

Hellion

This is a 70 page one shot is set in Newcastle upon Tyne and Manchester. The genre is Supernatural/Action and follows a nurse called Amy Milne who gets caught up in a 2000 year old war between dead aliens and dead humans who posses living human soles. One wants the destruction of the human race and the other are trying to save it and Amy holds a small key to bring that about.

Faith

In its intended format its 3 volumes between 45 and 60 pages or it can be turned into 8+ issues. It’s set in an alternative universe Britain where after WW1 angels descended from Heaven to rule over us. The story begins 80 years after that happened and the main character is a Reaper called Joseph Burnett (a reaper is an armed federal official for the English chapter of the Angels Church whose job is to hunt down demons that have leaked through from Hell) who’s lost his faith in the Angels after he had his own brother crucified. Joseph becomes a target after uncovering a conspiracy by the angels who have in fact been growing the demons to scare the public into following them. Faith has a tech-noir feel to it and shares a lot in common with 1950 detective stories.

Spring heeled Jack

A ‘steampunk’ hero story that tells the origin story of Britain’s first costumed hero. Bramble Charlton lost his legs from the knees down when he’s younger decides to in secret build himself a set of spring mounted legs extensions to impress his engineer father as he’s scared he thinks he’s a failure as he has no legs. When this fails Bramble decides to up the stakes and goes in search to find Jack the Ripper to bring him in thinking this would be a definite way to impress his father. This comic takes the legends of the 18th and 19th century myths of Spring Heeled Jack, Jack the Ripper and the fictional character Jekyll & Hyde.

Fracture

One off pilot. This is a very dark script about a character called Karlo who tells us his story as he sits in a pool of blood on his bed in the psychiatric hospital he’s being held. You find out how he’s been shit on all his life be it the mother who sexually abused him or the people who made his life a living hell. Karlo is a weak character who’s at the edge of killing himself. What has made matters worse for him in his life is that since an early age he’s suffered black outs and when he awakes from them he’s realises he’s committed horrible, violent crimes. As we return to him in the bed we find out the blood is not his own and he’s killed yet again. He blacks out again and awakes to find himself stood on top of Big Ben in a thunder storm. He’s faced by an image of himself. The character is known as Alto and he says he’s a part of Karlo’s brain trying to help him channel the dark side to his existence.