(Excerpted from a personal statement of direction/purpose)
As background, I wrote a few small press comic book stories back in the 1980’s. I have 4 characters where I have clear creative rights:
- Patriot (Patriot 1, c. 1987) — A fascist Captain America of sorts with a young sidekick. Lots of Red Scare spy stuff.
- The Light (The Light, 3 issues, c. 1987-88) — A Batman-style vigilante minus the money but with a sweet bike.
- Accelerator (Heroic #7, c. 1988) — A riff on Dr. Manhattan’s origin turns a girl into a speedster like the Flash.
- Hologram (Ka-Blam #1, c. 1988?) — Accident turns a scientist into a ghost-like figure who shoots energy beams.
- Laser-Disc (Heroic #6, c. 1988) — Former Mr. Liberty gets bracelets that makes “discs of solid laser matter” and boots that allow for flight.
The intent of Heroes Now stories is to bring those heroes of the mid-1980’s into the 2020’s. I’d like to do it roughly in real time — a 20 year old in 1985 is now 56 years old. That means we have a TON of unwritten now-backstory to cover. For some of the heroes, it’ll be adventure stories. For others it’ll be anything but. Some might not be alive…will others?
In most all cases, I’m looking to use the stories as a critical review of the stuff I wrote as a teen. I’m now 50 years old, and obviously time and experience have made me laugh, cry and cringe over what I wrote then.
My plan is first to reprint the original stories in a single book, perhaps with an original cover, and then do periodic (annual?) installments of individual characters in a larger format than the 8-page digest books. I’m currently thinking 20-30 page, full-size comics but think that the artistic demand will determine format. Likely each Heroes Now book would focus on a single character, but it’s possible that we could have backup stories.
I have rough ideas for where each character’s arc will take them, but it’s REAL rough so I will keep that closer to the vest for the time being.
A Patriot script draft is finished and currently is getting polished up. Hologram has a reasonably well fleshed-out concept paper that should lead to easy scripts when the time is right. But, as I’ve made clear since 1986, I’m no artist. Interested artists should contact me at the link above. I don’t plan on mass producing the books – nor charging for them – but will print enough to satisfy immediate needs and give artists a few to distribute. While I’m no Alan Moore, I’d like to think that the books will be of sufficient quality that both hobbyist artists and amateurs with professional ambitions would be interested in taking a shot.
Once we get the core characters covered, we will figure out where to go from there. But we’re talking about months, maybe years, as there’s no way I can be as productive as I was when I was a teen.
Phoenix Productions 