Intergalactic Nemesis, a live multimedia show that combines radio play, live music and a graphic novel, is set to bring its story of space battle and alien monsters to Rudder Auditorium at 7 p.m. Thursday. The Battalion life & arts reporter Jack Riewe spoke with creator Jason Neulander to discuss the live action graphic novel.
THE BATTALION: Can you describe the plot of Intergalactic Nemesis?
Neulander: Intergalactic Nemesis is a pulp-inspired sci-fi story set in the 1930s and it features Pulitzer Prize winner Molly Sloan and her assistant Timmy Mendez, and also there’s this mysterious librarian. They’re up against this evil mage magician named Mysterion the Magnificent who seems to be on the bad start to a descending invasion from the planet Zygon.
THE BATTALION: It has been nearly 20 years since Intergalactic Nemesis got started. Can you take us back to the beginning of how this idea came to be?
Neulander: It all kind of started as a radio play. We just got some friends together in a coffee house in downtown Austin. At the time I was just running a computer company when we released the play, and it got so popular every few years we would come back to it just for fun. But in 2010, I decided to leave the computer company I founded and focus specifically on Intergalactic. It just turned into something that got to be ongoing. I got invited to bring the original versions of the project to our performing arts center in Austin, The Long Center for Performing Arts. Getting that invitation is just a huge, huge 2,400 audience. I just felt like that was too big of a cinematic experience to watch a radiolab being performed. So, just in a flash of amnesia, I thought of putting projecting comic book artwork on a screen to be enlarged so I could fill up a room that big. By sheer coincidence my friend had just bought a projection system and they were nice enough to let me use it. It was kind of a wonderful serendipitous meaning in the summer of 2009. It took about 15 months to get the artwork made, there are over 1,250 individual comic book images we constructed before the show and in September 2010 we started and that was that.
THE BATTALION: So this started out as a radio play, then morphed into what it is today. To those who don’t really know what a radio play is, can you describe it in your own words?
Neulander: Think of it as in a movie state of mind. You’ve got actors doing voiceovers for the characters, you’ve got sound effects creating this kind of sound scape ambience that specific noises like punches, or footsteps or whatever. Then you’ve got this cinematic score that goes along with that kind of elevates the kind of emotions of the whole thing. Then there’s the narrator who helps provide the visual description. So in the graphic novel we get rid of the narrator — we get rid of the whole verbal stuff and we replace that with the actual things and situations performed by the comic book panel.
THE BATTALION: And you are planning a sequel?
Neulander: We have two sequels already, but those are altered. The first one is called Robot Planets Rising, and the second one is called Twin Infinity. Twin Infinity just premiered in September and the way we do it is we go to a venue with the first one and if that goes well we go back with the second one and if that goes well we go back for the third one. We return to probably about half the venues.
THE BATTALION: Is it true that you have a sound effect for everything? And you use household items?
Neulander: There are hundreds of sound effects for the shows and a lot of them are made with household items. One of my favorites is the sound of a train. We use a train whistle and a box of macaroni and cheese to get shaking in a certain way and I swear it sounds just like a train running down the tracks.
