Smash Pages Q&A | ‘The Omega Eleven’ creators James Aquilone + Zac Atkinson

The duo are crowdfunding their latest collaboration, a comic about history’s greatest thieves attempting to steal the Philosopher’s Stone from Merlin.

What do you do when you need to steal a powerful artifact from history’s greatest wizard? Assemble a team of history’s greatest thieves, of course. That’s the premise behind The Omega Eleven, a five-issue series by Bram Stoker Award-winning writer James Aquilone and Young Justice and Teen Titans artist Zac Atkinson.

The story follows time traveler Doctor Omega and his companion Jack Dawkins, aka The Artful Dodger, as they recruit a team to travel to Camelot to steal the Philosopher’s Stone from Merlin. 

The campaign to fund the first issue of The Omega Eleven is live on Kickstarter, where it has already met its funding goal. This isn’t Aquilone’s first crowdfunding rodeo — through his publishing company Monstrous Books, he’s funded projects like the Kolchak: The Night Stalker 50th anniversary graphic novel, the prose collection Dead Detectives Society and the first issue of the pulp/horror-themed Monstrous Magazine. A new, second issue of Monstrous is a reward in this current campaign.

Aquilone was kind enough to answer my questions, and even pulled in Atkinson on some of them as well.

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Exclusive Preview | ‘Dead Jack and Oswald Meet Frankenstein’

Check out some preview pages from Monstrous Magazine, which is currently up on Kickstarter.

Kevin J. Anderson, David Avallone, Nancy A. Collins, John Jennings, Joe and Kasey Lansdale, Rena Mason, Steve Niles and more have united for Dead Detectives Society, a prose anthology that lives at the intersection of crime and horror. Accompanying it is the launch of Monstrous Magazine, a digest-sized magazine featuring prose, comics and articles.

Currently up on Kickstarter, the project has blown past its goal, raising almost $20,000 to date. It brings together several fictional detectives with supernatural origins, including Dan Shamble, Cal McDonald, Sonja Blue, Matt Richter, Dead Jack, Johnny Fade and more.

Dead Detectives Society is my pulpy passion project,” said editor James Aquilone. “With this annual anthology series I hope to expand the weird detective subgenre and have a blast while doing it.”

Courtesy of Monstrous Books, we’re pleased to present some preview pages from “Dead Jack and Oswald Meet Frankenstein,” written by Aquilone and illustrated by J.K. Woodward (Star Trek, Fallen Angel). Check them out below, along with the anthology’s cover by John Jennings and the cover for Monstrous Magazine by Colton Worley.

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