There are only a handful of creators in the history of comics whose names immediately call up not only a body of important work, but also conjure a singular, palpable mystique. Unlike most artists who have come through the industry, those who labored in relative obscurity for years before gaining notoriety, Jim Steranko hit comics like a missile, his first works placing him in the creative pantheon almost overnight. Steranko produced but a relative handful of titles before shouldering his way past the insular, timid limitations of comics publishing of the day and moving on to new artistic challenges, but that small body of work changed forever the manner in which comics stories would be told. The seeds Steranko planted--dense chiaroscuro lighting effects, cinematic visual techniques, contemporary graphic-design sensibilities--bore fruit that can be seen in virtually every comic book produced today. That is, every comic book done well.
Steranko substantially left comics behind without looking back--moving on to highly successful careers in illustration, film design, and magazine publishing--but he did undertake one monumental task before dimming the lights on his comics career: creating an entirely new medium, the visual novel.
The term graphic novel is largely meaningless, a marketing term to describe a lengthy comic book in a pretty package. An illustrated novel is simply a work of prose fiction into which illustrations are shoehorned after the fact. But Red Tide is a true visual novel: a sophisticated, intertwined narrative of prose fiction and sequential illustration, neither track repeating the other, neither able to properly function alone, both kicking ass. The words powerfully express what the pictures can't, the pictures reveal that which renders words inarticulate and superfluous. Everyone knew Steranko could draw up a hurricane. Nobody knew the guy could write, too. It just wasn't fair. Red Tide was so far ahead of its time that . . . well, it's still ahead of its time!
And its time has come again. Steranko is re-creating his noir masterpiece for today's readers, utilizing state-of-the-art digital color and featuring new text and images. As hard as Chandler kicked ass, Red Tide kicks it even harder. Coming this Winter under the Dark Horse Maverick banner, Red Tide heralds the return of Steranko to comics, a medium that has at long last caught up with him.
Well, almost.
-- Chris Warner
Editor-in-Chief