Permit a personal aside…
In the wake of receiving Heroic: Heroes Past from the printer, I’ve found myself being emotional in thinking about the friendships and camaraderie reborn by the project.
Putting it lightly, I was lax in maintaining my relationships with the small press creative community since dropping out in my senior year in high school over 30 years ago. So the first part of this project was to hunt everyone down and simply make contact with them! Sure, I have a claim to every story in the book, but the artists have an equal claim to their work and deserved to know that I was hoping to create this collection of our old creations.
It took a lot of time to get this done, but internet searching rewards the persistent. In fact, one artist was so hard to find that I only made contact the day after I gave the go-ahead to print. Fortunately, I was able to get the printer to pull the book from the production schedule and add another piece of new art!
Regardless of when, every artist (and, in the late Tim Corrigan’s case, his loving wife) gladly agreed to let me reproduce the stories. Many offered new pieces for the volume. (And Matt Kanaracus — Holy cow, his contributions from his old files are priceless. Original scripts, an unfinished/unpublished story…amazing! I thought everything was lost to the ages.) And, to a person, everyone was unconditionally supportive!
I found my way back to small press publishing in large part as a way to preserve my mental health in a world of pandemics, quarantines and general malaise caused by our world. It was through creativity, through reaching out and through the hands of friendship that the book came to be.
At risk of overstating, Heroic: Heroes Past is – at least to me – a symbol of how a little community of creative friends came back together to make something pretty darned cool. But that everyone under stress could have something so positive, so tangible.
I tell you, this project was exactly what this COVID-weary dad needed to raise spirits about the human condition.
Phoenix Productions 
Hello pals.Im James.Phoenix still produces artists?If so,Im a cartoonist.I made. and possess an inmense strip of comics.Named James.Its about a cartoonist fightin to keep in society afgainst bvampires and ecvil mind. fgames.Hes a telepath.Wanrs to set. Forth publishin houses?Lets talk.We may deal.
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Hi, James – Drop me a line through the “Contact” link above and we can discuss directly. Make sure to leave your email address or some other direct contact method. Thank you!
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