As anyone who’s known me for more than five minutes can likely attest, I love comic books and I’ve always loved them. Comics more or less taught me how to read and my desire to become a writer first stemmed from my desire to work in comics.
But producing comics is a lot more difficult than producing novels, so I focused my efforts on my prose career and comics remained something that I’d love to do if I had the opportunity. And though I have worked on comics in a variety of capacities, these were mostly short stories or lettering jobs.
Now though, I’m happy to announce that my own full-length comic book is available!
This comic began as a simple exercise in the Public Domain Heroes group on Facebook. Someone posted the challenge of recreating Zack Snyder’s Justice League with public domain characters. I came up with a list and then thought that would be it.
But the idea stuck with me and soon I was cobbling together designs in my sketchbook and making notes about how I would reinvent these characters. Around the same time, I’d been talking with my friend Thomas Deja about working on something together. I sent him what I had and he came back with even more notes and ideas. It quickly became obvious we had the makings of something really cool on our hands.
There was one big problem, though. Although I’d come a long way as an artist, I haven’t yet developed the skill to do this concept justice. That’s when we reached out to another friend of mine, Eric Johns. Eric has done comic work in the past and has a really cool style. We sent him the script and he jumped at the chance, coming back with designs that blew mine out of the water.
We tried to crowdfund the comic through Crowdfundr and then Kickstarter. While those campaigns didn’t succeed, we did manage to complete the first issue and it’s available now in digital formats on Amazon, GlobalComix, and DriveThru Comics (print versions will shortly be available through IndyPlanet).
The Special Edition contains a lot of special features, like character bios and a behind-the-scenes look at our design process.
As of now, this comic might just be this one issue. But if we’re able to generate enough interest through sales, we might have the potential to do more with these characters in the future. Check it out and let me know your thoughts.