Sliders: Blood & Splendor, 18 Years Gone

It’s real. And it’s SPECTACULAR.

SO, where were you in 1996? I was living in Jersey City, and a few years away from publishing my first novel. My friend and former room-mate Jeof Vita was also in Jersey City, working at Acclaim Comics. It was a primitive time, offering dial-up Internet connections and no such thing as Netflix or HBO GO, and you had to take the science fiction TV series that you got. What we got was Sliders, a show about alternate earth’s and the madcap group of misfits who got trapped into ‘sliding’ between them and having adventures as they struggled to find Earth Prime.

Acclaim Comics had the comic license for the series and was publishing “lost episode” comics, which were supposedly scripts from the show that were too ambitious or expensive to produce. They came up one short, so Jeof suggested we gin up a concept and sell it. And we did! So we wrote the script for what became Sliders: Blood & Splendor which published in January 1997. I got $1600 for it. I spent it all almost immediately on liquor and colourful outfits.

The other day I was thinking about this experience and I imagined an alternate world where Jeof and I became famous because of this comic book. An alternate world where I didn’t have to spend the next decades dancing in clubs for sweaty dollar bills, where Jeof didn’t have to scratch out a living as a rodeo clown. A world that saw our genius and celebrated Blood & Splendor as the work of genius it … well, wasn’t, but could have been if Jeof and I had spent more than a few hours writing it in-between playing video games and ordering take out.

So, I did what anyone would have: I made a documentary about an alternate earth where Sliders: Blood and Splendor was a sort of pop cultural event on par with Thriller. And I got a bunch of people to help me with it, including Jeof Vita himself. And it is hilarious. And you should watch it immediately.