Welcome to the F.A.R.M. System, where award-winning graphic novelist Rich Koslowski merges sports and superheroes to satirize both. If you want to make it to the big leagues as a superhero, with all the glory and endorsement deals that entails, you have to start somewhere. And superpower talent manager Alexander Ellison wants to provide that start.
Coming from Top Shelf Productions in November, F.A.R.M. Systemuncovers the seedy underside of what it takes to make it in a superpowered world. If it sounds a little like The Boys — or at least the adaptation on Prime Video — that’s fair. However, if you’re familiar with Koslowski’s work, you know it’s going to be something different. If I dare say it, something more. Welcome to the F.A.R.M. system indeed.
Top Shelf always does offer something more, a boutique imprint for comics that prove their place as literature. And so far from the preview pages I’ve read, it’s no accident that we see allusions to classic X-Men characters, though it goes deeper. I think this is going to be one to savor, and watch out for come Eisner Awards time.
From Top Shelf Productions:
In the Farm System, having an incredible and unique power is only the first step. Guided by an army of agents, managers, and experts, recruits must undergo rigorous psychological evaluations, harassment and sensitivity seminars, marketing, and endorsement workshops, and costume design meetings, all to boost their chances of recruitment into an A-list superhero team.
Some recruits make “the Bigs”. Some have fleeting moments of glory, then lose it all. Some take “Blue Cowl” gigs as superpowered bodyguards for famous actors or powerful CEOs.
Some flounder in the System for years, never getting “the call”. And some find success by joining teams of a… less reputable ilk.
Following the profound pop-culture satire of Three Fingers, The King, and BB Wolf and The Three LPs, award-winning graphic novelist Rich Koslowski examines the hopes, disappointments, perseverance, and triumphs of the super-gifted… and the sometimes drastic lengths they will go to achieve fortune and fame.
ABOUT RICH KOSLOWSKI:
Rich Koslowski is best known for his fan-friendly comic book series The 3 Geeks (later Geeksville), as the recipient of three Eisner Award nominations, and for the much-lauded graphic novel Three Fingers in 2002 (published by Top Shelf Productions), which won the coveted Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel and was named as one of the 500 Essential Graphic Novels by Harper Collins in 2008. In 2005, his second graphic novel with Top Shelf, The King, was released and has been published in multiple foreign languages. In 2007, he wrote his first novel, a Christmas thriller entitled The List. 2008 brought Koslowski his first writing assignment for Marvel Comics, rebooting their popular Guardian character, now named Weapon Omega. Koslowski’s writing of Weapon Omega was recognized with a Prism Award. In 2010, his third graphic novel with Top Shelf, BB Wolf and the Three LPs, was released and Koslowski won the Glyph Award for Best Artist.
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In addition to running Fanboy Planet, Derek has contributed stories to Arcana Comics (The Greatest American Hero) and Monsterverse Comics (Bela Lugosi's Tales from the Grave). He has performed with ComedySportz, City Lights Theater Company and Silicon Valley Shakespeare, though relocated to Hollywood to... work in an office? If you ever played Eric's Ultimate Solitaire on the Macintosh, it was Derek's voice as The Weasel that urged you to play longer. You can buy his book "I Was Flesh Gordon" on the Amazon link at the right. Email him at [email protected].
