Lots of spoilers below, so skip this section if you haven't read the book yet.What did you think? Drop a line at INTERMAIL!

Mr. Parker -
Hey, just wanted to send my congrats on putting out such a great comic. I
read it cover to cover and really enjoyed it. Some of my favorite parts were
the sequence with the Fox, his attitude and the sword fight (nice layout in
that sequence and the martial arts sequence with South, by the way), Van's
second round with the Compass, and his meeting with Sirraman's ex-wife.
Still unclear on why Outcault (great name) was so helpful to Van the whole
time, but I guess my suspicions will have to wait to be confirmed or
unconfirmed in the next volume. Definitely going to be passing this along to
some non-comic reading friends. You and people like Alex Robinson, Darwyn
Cooke and Lawrence Marvit are making me want to get into the field myself
and take a crack at it all. Thanks and I look forward to whatever comes next
-
-Wil Moss

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... just finished Interman and I loved every minute!
Great story, great job. What works so well is that you manage to flesh out
a breathing creature with his perceptions and thoughts and own sense of who
he is, all in what was really a short and fast-paced adventure. The pace
was well maintained, even while slowing down to cover some back story on
interman's genesis. Favorite character was Keele (after AKA Montag of
course, wasn't there a character named Guy Montag in Ordinary People, Pat
Conroy?). I've seen all of the comments about how the genre is overlooked
and the action hero has destroyed the humanity of the type, but I don't want
to make a statement about the broader implications of your work on the comic
scene. I genuinely feel that your work has substance, credibility, that it
was heartfelt and had the energy of someone who would very much love to be
interman himself.

-Jeremy

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Interman is wonderful. I'm months behind on saying so, but it is
a terrifically satisfying book. Agh, this is why I didn't write a fan
letter months ago, I stop to refer to the book to pick out good things
and get lost in the book again...
It's the little things: the background detail of the cat, which turns
out to have an important story point to make; the convincing elegance of
the sword-fight in the Tower; the relief when one member of the Compass
resigns out of pride and crafts(wo)manship; the gradual revelation
through demonstration of Meach's ablities, rather than a bang-pow
exposition; the mystery of May, and her powers; the clue of steaming
breath in cold air--ah see this is where I've stopped to look up
reference and re-discovered the blue skin thing after Meach survives the
avalanche...see this is why I haven't written this letter yet.

Denise Ozker

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Mr. Parker,
Just finished the novel, I padded it out several nights. Once I saw what a fantastic story it was, you
don't read it all at once, you have to save it for a treat! Welp, you told me to write you after I read it (I got a copy at Megacon) & all I can say is this book reminded me of the best of my childhood adventure books, shows & movies, Man From UNCLE, Johnny Quest, Modesty Blaise & early James Bond. I couldn't help noticing you captured the look of the time, even to the logo of "The Interman". Thanks for the great book & for the sketches & autograph onit, it's going up on the "signed books special shelf". And I hope there will be new adventures of Van to look forward in the coming years.
Thanks again,

Carl Booth

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This next one is long, but very entertaining.

Man, I'm in a pickle. I want to start by mentioning the "bad", such as it is. Nothing big, but since I don't want to sound like a 12-year-old girl "reviewing" N-Stink or something... Anyway, the only "glitches" in the book, to me, were in some of the beginning 20 pages. I found it a bit confusing and a bit of a detriment to the general flow of the storytelling when the "narrator" kept switching from third-person, to Van, to the accountant, and "Pegleg" back and forth. Don't get me wrong, I never got lost, and one can always figure out who is talking, but I thought that was a small detriment. I know what you're thinking "Ok smartass, so how should the explanation to everything been given then?". I don't know. It's fine as it is, I just thought that confused things a bit. The other (very slight) complaint is that a few of the early pages are very crowded with small panels that all have lots of text and positively scream for attention, which sort of made a few of the pages a bit hard to read. Again, not a big deal, there was a lot to explain in the early pages. Still, I thought things might have gone more smoothly if say, pages 10-13 were spread out on twice as many pages. I guess looking at them again, they don't even have that many panels compared to some of the other pages, it's just that they contain so much, it's like a sudden bottleneck in the story. Anyway, that's just my opinion, and again, it's not a huge deal.

Phew! Ok, now that I'm done with the "I'm so cool I just have to complain about something" part, time to move on to what I liked, which is a lot! In no particular order what I liked most is;

The nostalgia for the "good ol' days" of the cold war that some of the older characters were displaying. That was a very genuine and plausible thing for characters like those (the older "messengers") to feel, I think. And they're not the only ones. There's plenty of people in various "liberated" countries that now live in poverty and chaos wishing things would go back to "normal". What's a little oppression when you get to eat regularly? Anyway, the cold war streak was depicted very well, I thought.

Poor Van not being able to get laid (or at least not without an attempt to kill him right afterwards). It figures, even with "superpowers", one has trouble with women. That sounds about right.

Well, there were many more individual moments, things and lines I liked, so I won't go through them now. Just to mention some other things I liked about the book. Clever dialogue, but not "too" clever, if you know what I mean. I think it worked out very well. You always get the impression the characters are smart, and some of them funny, but there's never that bane of many books (the old fashioned, no-picture kind), where characters will constantly break out into yakking about quantum physics, or obscure mathematics, or all those kinds of things no one casually mentions unless there's a good reason. Good job on that. Also, I liked that there were almost no next-to-magical gadgets everyone has that normally constantly fill huge gaps in stories on TV and in movies. Not to mention the plague of deus ex machina those things constantly cause. Anyway, I definitely think the lack of magical toys made the story more down-to-earth in a very good way. Kudos on that too.

I could go on some more, but that would only make you waste more time reading me going on and on and on and on... Anyhow, great job, I enjoyed it very much. There isn't very much I can say about the art that others haven't said, but I guess I can say one or two words. One is that I appreciate that you bother drawing backgrounds into your panels. It's funny that this kind of thing even needs to be mentioned, but these days so many comics don't bother doing more that sticking in a lame two-color gradient in all the panels instead of, say, some damned building, that it's actually a standout when someone does bother. Sad, isn't it? But its good that you did do that, and it's appreciated. The coloring worked out well. Normally I like more subtle coloring (Laura DePuy is my hero!), but the colors worked great with the line work style. The other thing is, one can really tell you have experience with doing storyboards, looking at the action panels in the book. It really does help when comic book artists have that combined experience.

If I had to condense it all in one line, I now have no doubt someday not too far from now I'll be able to brag to people I knew about Jeff Parker long before he was so big he had Alex Ross as his pool boy. All right, kidding aside, you do great work and you're not a dick. Two fine points hugely in your favor. I'm looking forward to seeing people give you lots of money, and the rest of us getting a big kick out of seeing lots more of your work published. That's right, punk new fans! Take that!

Emil Petrinic

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Mr. Parker--- I just want you to know that I am a huge Mike Allred fan.
So when I went into my local comics store planning--planning--on plopping down $25 for a MADMAN hardcover and walked out with THE INTERMAN instead, then stayed up way too late tonight so I could finish it all in one sitting, then started compiling a mental list of people I could recommend it to, and even then pausing to write a big, fannish e-mail (my first!) before finally going to bed--well, that's just really something.
It blows me away that you self-published this thing--it's gorgeous. The writing is extremely clever, the art is energetic and exciting, and the coloring is positively striking. It was one of the most fun and satisfying books I've read in a long time--I hope you're just proud as hell of this book.
Anyway, thanks for the great read--it was the first of your work that I've read, but certainly not the last.
Oh, and thanks for saving me five bucks.

Brandon

Thanks Brandon-- but don't forget to go back and get that Madman!

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Jeff--
My retailer FINALLY got a copy of The Interman in last week (after weeks of
my pestering). After devouring it like Elvis would a
fried-peanut-butter-and-vicodin sandwich, I wanted to drop you a quick line
and thank you for putting out such a great book!
Where to begin? The story is a wonderful globetrotting thrill ride, where
every locale is lovingly rendered (I see why you opted to do the book in
full color). The characters are written as three-dimensional beings, all
with their own individual motivations.
And what a great thriller of a storyline: Ludlum writing Doug Wildey's
"James Bond: The Animated Series" for HBO!
Except it's better than that. Trying to categorize this story only lessens
the impact. The Interman affectionately nods to it's inspirations, but is
more than the sum of it's parts.
And the art! Wow! This would have made a beautiful b/w book, but in color
it's stunning! In an era of cardboard cut-out heroes and by-the-numbers bad
guys, you've crafted an excellent cast, each with their own unique look.
I'm totally psyched to see where you and Van Meach take us with book two.

Again, thanks for The Interman; you've rekindled my belief that adventure
comics can survive and thrive in today's spandex-dominated market!
--Steve Bryant

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Now here's one I deserve for using an outdated text when researching biology-- I might as well have mentioned Piltdown man as the ancestor of humanity. That this recapitulation theory was discredited doesn't invalidate evolution for me, but I appreciate Adam's input nonetheless.

Adam W.

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Just thought I'd let you know-- your GN is really quite good. Nicely adopts
traditional newspaper adventure strips 'feel', illustrated in a very simple,
yet elegant style VAGUELY reminiscent of some odd combination of Hergé and
Alex Toth, for godsakes!
Nice stuff!

Chris Juricich

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Hi, Jeff,
I'm the guy who didn't buy your book at Megacon because I had already
ordered it. Well, I have it and I've finished it, and you wanted to know
what I thought, so...
You lived up to the hype. Great art, crisp dialog, cool characters. Heaps of
STUFF going on, but still fast-paced and breezy. Loved it. My favourite bit
was the look of delight on Tothe's face when Meach grabs the sword in the
Tower of London--those little moments are what really made it for me. The
character moments and... well, and Outcalt. I'm sure you've been hearing a
lot of that, though.
Anyway, it was a pleasure to meet you and a pleasure to read your book.
Looking forward to the next volume.
Cheers,

Jason Franks

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