The Honor Brigade

 From Spinner Rack Comics comes The Honor Brigade.  I met Tom Stillwell at Wizard World in his home town of Chicago and picked up three issues from him, the first issue of his new Honor Brigade series, as well as two Toy Boy specials.

I have seen Tom's work advertised around the web and on Digital Webbing, so I was not entirely unfamiliar with the books, but I had not read any of them.  I was particularly interested in these three issues because they were drawn by Jethro Morales, who is a fantastic artist.  Jethro drew a couple chapters of our own, The Celestial, and will have a few pages in my upcoming Zero's Heroes book.  So, needless to say, I'm a fan of his work.  And it's clear to see why in these issues because he knocks it out of the park.

The Honor Brigade is an all ages superhero comic that plays to all the genre tropes and styles very clearly.  These are really good looking comics, extremely well paced and dialoged.  When you read these books, you know exactly what you are getting.  They feel like classic comics, which I would say simultaneously works for and against the book.  This is the kind of comic that could slip under the radar of the average superhero comic fan who's more interested in whatever wacky idea Brian Bendis or Grant Morrison are going to come up with next.  This is unfortunate because these books have  lots of action, adventure, and fun characters. 

I liked the two Toy Boy specials, partially because of my preference for single issue stories, which Stillwell and Morales handled deftly.  It's clear that Toy Boy is the most interesting character on the Honor Brigade team.  He's a funny, wise cracking, former thief.  The character is slightly more wacky than Spider-man but not as dark as Deadpool.  He falls comfortably between the two classic Marvel characters and it works nicely.

Stillwell is currently publishing The Honor Brigade: Space Fight, which you can purchase from Indy Planet (along with his other books).


You can also read old issues of The Honor Brigade at http://www.honorbrigadecomic.com/

The Carriers

I had the pleasure of swinging by Wizard World Chicago last weekend.  While I didn't have time to soak up the majority of events the con has to offer, I did get to root around Artist Alley and fill my bag with comics aplenty.  I'm going to spend the next few weeks talking about some of the self published comics I picked up.

One of the things I was looking forward to the most was meeting a certain Mr. Kevin D. Bandt, whom you'll recognized from my previous post as an artist who drew a two page story set to appear in the upcoming Zero's Heroes archive book.  I picked up the four issues of his book, The Carriers, and here's what I thought of them.

I'm a big fan of Kevin's art, which I make no secret of, and it is on full display in these books.  He's been working on this book for many years now, and as you read through the book you can see his art evolve and grow.  The first issue is a little rough around the edges, but there's still a strong sense of style.  By the fourth issue, Kevin's art is sleek and flashy with strong, bold lines and bright, vivid colors.

So, what is The Carriers about?  Here's a striking page from the fourth issue.

The Carriers is a kind of surreal, punk rock, fantasy epic.  It's a pretty light read, but there's a lot to look at.  The book tells to tale of a group of people called "Carriers" who, for lack of a longer explanation, have magical abilities.  There's an evil queen sucking the life force of her victims, a rebellion trying to overthrow her, and of course, giant monsters and stuff.  The story is ongoing and clearly not finished, so I'm eagerly waiting for the next issue.

The Carriers is for sale at Cuddlefish Comics' store, http://cuddlefish.storenvy.com/

Zero's Heroes Volume One

We've nearly got the first Zero's Heroes book ready to go.  Check out the amazing cover art drawn and colored by regular Zero's Heroes artists Chris McJunkin and Sara Rude.

This book is going to be 180 pages and will contain the first seven chapters of Zero's Heroes.  But we're not stopping there.  There will also be seven exclusive two page stories, each one featuring one of the Zero's Heroes characters, as well as some design and original sketch work by Sergio Apodaca (the artist for the first seven chapters of Zero's Heroes).  These bonus comics are drawn by different artists, some of them I've worked with before and others are new to the book.  Here are a few examples of the pages.  This first page is about the titular character Zero, and is drawn and colored by the amazing Kevin Bandt.  This page blew my socks off when he sent it to me.  I can't wait to see it in print.

This next page is drawn by the ever stalwart Joie Simmons.  Joie drew the majority of Chapter 08 of Zero's Heroes and I try to work with him whenever I get the chance.  Here we see Quickspeed having a casual conversation with his gender reversed doppelganger last seen in Chapter 05.

It's been a long time coming, but we finally have all the art finished for the book.  So, what's next?  Well, we're going to try and go down the Kickstarter route to pay for the printing costs.  We're going to take a few weeks to put together a solid bundle of goodies to give away including T-shirts, prints, stickers, buttons, and quite possibly some original art.

I'll be making updates to this blog about future Zero's Heroes books, as well as anything else we're doing over at New Haven Comics.