It's Getting Toxic!

A preview of my new Toxic Avenger comic and panel details for San Diego Comic-Con

Art by Fred Harper

Last year at San Diego Comic-Con I approached Lloyd Kaufman, the co-founder of Troma, about an idea I had to revive The Toxic Avenger as a comic. This year at Comic-Con we’re on a panel together to talk about the new series.

It all came together surprisingly quickly due to the people at Ahoy and Troma both being so easy to work with and allowing me some creative runway to launch a new take on the character, incorporating elements from the movies with the 1991 Toxic Crusaders cartoon along with some updates from our… modern world.

It was a nice turn of events after a few failed pitches for different properties that seemed to drag on, bit there’s a little more backstory to Toxie.

I had been working in a small capacity for a comics app for some time—editing, bringing in creators, and trying to experiment with different formats and genres. One of my ideas was to license some characters that we haven’t seen in comics for a while and Toxic Avenger was at the top of this list. Given that I was running The Nib close to full time, I figured I’d only edit, hiring a writer and artist team to bring it alive. As time went on I could never get the green light to look into the rights, but a story started taking form in the back of my head along with the idea that maybe I should just write this myself.

Then last summer I found myself at San Diego to attend the Eisners, where The Nib was nominated for (and won) Best Anthology. Roaming the expansive floor I noticed a Troma booth and Lloyd Kaufman decked out in a bright track suit with a huge portrait of Tupac on the front. That’s a normal and approachable looking guy at Comic Con! I was up for an award in a few hours—that’s shot shooting time. Lloyd loved the idea and we kept the conversation going after we all returned home from Comic-Con.

Then a funny thing happened. A few weeks after the Eisners The Nib was set to close down, an emotional time capping our ten year run, and one of those nice flattering articles about all the work we did came out in time for our last day. Which, I stress, doubled as my last day with a full time job. Some more Justice Warriors was lined up, but that was it. Good thing I had the comics app work to at least float me a ways. But when the quotes I gave for the article failed to include a PR hit for the app (something out of my control) I was upbraided and abruptly let go within minutes of the article going live. Toxic behavior!

Their loss. I scrapped plans for a post-shutdown week off and took the next few days to write up a full outline for the series, draw some character (re)designs, then brought Troma and Ahoy to the table together to lay out a plan for a multi-volume saga of pollution, gore, and satire that was to launch the following year.

The Toxic Avenger #1 comes out October 10 in comic shops everywhere. Call you local store and pre-order to guarantee there’s a copy on hand for you.

You can read the first five pages of issue 1 over at The Wrap—where we drop you right into the story of an unfolding disaster with this lovely splash page.

See details about our San Diego panel here along with all the other Ahoy creators who will join us to talk about their projects. If you’re attending, please come by!

Finally, here is my variant cover for issue 1, paying homage to Apocalypse Now (1979) of course. The main cover by Fred Harper and a third variant by Tim Seeley are over here.

Getting Ready to Vote Harder

We are getting closer to the election and things are heating up. Debate disasters, assassination attempts, rising action. And after half a year of work, it's a wrap on Justice Warriors: Vote Harder, which went off to press this week. You are not going to believe Ben Clarkson and I wrote it earlier this year.

This is our political thriller—The Manchurian Candidate and Day of the Jackal cross-bred with Robocop gets you halfway there. Our story is not about this election in our world—not directly—but the froth of conspiracy theories and threat of civil unrest may feel familiar. I can’t wait for you to read this and see the candidates we have lined up vying for the mayoral race in Bubble City. There’s also an important new character, Fen, a hopeful mutant activist who gets in over her head. I think everyone is going to love Fen.

Below is a Swamp Cop I drew for an interstitial page. As with the first volume, I’ve drawn backup strips and interstitial material for each chapter. I really had some fun on this one, drawing in-world editorial cartoons for the Bubble City election. In some styles you may recognize!

Next week I will share something very special we made to promote Vote Harder.