The People’s Publisher

So things are humming along nicely with the Hero High  comic this week. Diego Simone is doing all of the art work on this comic, and doing a fine job on all fronts. The pinup page is completed and shows the three main characters in their regular clothes as well as their secret superhero identities. Page X has also been completed, with some minor changes still to be made to the final lettering, which will be provided by Vancouver’s own Ed Brisson. Diego has also begun pencilling pages 1 and 2.

Once the vision document was complete, we had a good idea of the direction the artwork would be taken in, and Diego was able to capture the look of the characters very quickly. Working with Dylan Edwards, who created Hero High has been really easy, as he has a very clear idea of how he wants the comic to look, but has left enough flexibility for Diego to create interesting and fun looks for each of the characters in the story.

Here are some of the character designs which Diego came up with when we were first designing the look that the story should have. These roughs allowed Dylan and myself to see how the characters in the story would look, before doing a more finished rendering on the pinup page. As you can see, there is a very strong animation influence to the character design, which is perfect for this story.

    Most of us remember hearing the line ”Enjoy it, it’s the greatest time of your life.” delivered sanctimoniously by some adult at the time that we were attending high school. Some can recall a mix of disbelief and horror at these words. This is as good as it gets? Bored out of my mind half the time, totally disconnected from peers, parents and society,and stuck in some tiny town where everybody’s greatest aspiration is to be as normal as humanly possible? Those of us who weren’t Homecoming queen or captain of the basketball team might have shared the thought that there must be something more to life than high school. Perhaps we imagined somewhere very different from the world which surrounded us and plotted our escape.
In Dylan Edwards’ story Hero High, Farley Flynn has just moved from the big city of Dominion (an exciting place full of superheroes) to the small town of Meekton (a boring place full of normal people). Farley has a secret identity ? he has trained and equipped himself to become a teenage crimefighter by the name of Moondog, and his intuition is telling him that something strange is going on at his school.
As it turns out, this town has been selected as the location for E.S.P. (Education and Socialization Project) who have the responsibility to properly educate the children of the world’s greatest superheroes (and supervillains). The main concern is that these children grow up with an appreciation of what it is to be ‘normal’, so that when they become adults, they will be able to make appropriate choices about what to do with their powers.
The comic will be the first installment in a serialized story that is aimed toward a younger audience, specifically the 9 - 14 age bracket, but will be enjoyed by adults as well, especially if they enjoy fun and relatively innocent fare.
The artwork for Hero High will be provided by Diego Simone, artist extraordinaire. This renaissance man will be pencilling inking and coloring the whole book, so we are sure to see some super consistent and always fabulous comic pages to accompany the story. Toon in (sorry) next week for some of the roughs character designs that Diego has created for this story