Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be previewing my new Rusty Gulch comic book project on these pages. Each week, I’ll show off a few different bits and pieces of the story, the world, and the folks who live there.

Let’s start off this week with a quick survey of the Rusty Gulch project, just to get the lay of the land.

Rusty Gulch: An Overview
Rusty Gulch is a "post-apocalyptic sci-fi western." Think of it as Mad Max meets Gunsmoke.

In the aftermath of the Robot Wars, folks moved out to the frontier in search of a better life in the form of farming, ranching, and mining. It’s a hard life – especially since the Wars took out most of the post-1900 technology – but it sure beats fighting off mutants and warbots in the ruins of the cities.

The world is firmly set in the western genre, but with high-tech trappings replacing much of the iconic western imagery. Energy blasters replace six-shooters, enormous armored transports replace steam trains, hoverbikes replace horses, mutant bovines replace traditional longhorn cattle, and the energy source Torsten's ore replaces the gold or silver that drives most western mining.

The town of Rusty Gulch is full of prospectors, cattle-wranglers, drifters, and others looking to start over on the frontier. Many of these folks are robots. Since the war, robots aren’t too popular in most human settlements. Faced with spending their existence either alone or in the robot camps, many robots decide to take their chances on the frontier, and end up in Rusty Gulch – where a robots and humans mostly get along.

Rusty Gulch: The Comic
The Rusty Gulch comic is a full-color, four-issue miniseries scheduled to be released in 2007 by Angel Gate Press. My good friend Lou Frank handled the line art, the prolific V Shane did the colors, and the multi-talented Coleen Allen not only wrangled the lettering, but helped out with the coloring a bit as well. The writing, of course, is compliments of your humble host, Darrell Hardy.

Next Week: In another seven days, we’ll take a sneak peak at the heroes of Rusty Gulch. Here’s your chance to meet Sheriff Abbey Glasser, her deputy, and her friends.

Next - The Good