Academy Award-winning clay animation guru Will Vinton has teamed with Dark Horse Publishing to produce Jack Hightower, a 150-page graphic novel about a very unique secret agent. Co-created by Vinton’s writing partner, Andrew Wiese, the action-adventure-comedy tale features art by Fabio Laguna and is now available at comic retailers and bookstores for the suggested price of $14.95.
Jack Hightower follows the adventures of a tall, daring and handsome secret agent who had it all but was never able to capture of his arch nemesis, Dr. Flagitious Savant. When the mad Doctor lures Jack into the beam of a shrink ray, our hero must work to put his miniaturized life back together, hunt down Dr. Savant and reverse the process that made him into the world’s first living action figure.
“I’ve always liked graphic novels, so when Mike Richardson suggested writing a graphic novel story about Jack, Andrew Wiese, my writing partner and I jumped at it,’ says Vinton. “In some ways creating this character was very similar to creating a character for animation’it’s like storyboarding a film. But with a graphic novel you have to whittle it down to the essence of character and story’you have to be more spare and make everything count’then make that really vivid.”
After winning an Oscar for his short film Closed Mondays, Vinton founded Will Vinton Studios and coined the term ‘claymation’ to define the process employed to create such memorable works as the California Raisins ad campaign and the Fox Television primetime series The PJs.
Vinton and Wiese will sign books at the Things From Another World store at Universal Citiwalk in Los Angeles on Feb. 10 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. More information Jack Hightower can be found at www.darkhorse.com/profile/profile.php?sku=10-521 and www.jackhightower.com. For more on Will Vinton, go to www.willvinton.net.
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