Tag: Matt Kindt

Slugfest | Spawny returns to kill off … Spawn?

Plus: News and announcements on ‘Uncanny X-Men,’ ‘Gilt Frame,’ Godzilla, Blacksad, ThunderCats and more.

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you that we haven’t otherwise covered. Hit the links for more information.

McFarlane Productions has been on a roll introducing Spawn into various genres, and this summer they’ll return to the world of humor and satire with Spawn Kills Every Spawn. Like the previous Spawn Kills Everyone and Spawn Kills Everyone Too, this comic features the tiniest Spawn, Spawny, deciding to kill another set of comic characters — the Spawn universe.

Written by John Layman and illustrated by Rob “Sketchcraft” Duenas and colorist Robert Nugent, the five-issue miniseries sees Spawny arrive at a Spawn convention filled with Spawns from around the multiverse, all of whom are more popular than him. So he decides to become the most popular by eliminating the competition.

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Kindt + McDaid go dimension-hopping in the ‘scuzzy cosmic sci-fi’ story ‘If You Find This, I’m Already Dead’

The miniseries from Flux House/Dark Horse Comics arrives next year.

Matt Kindt and Dan McDaid will go multi-dimensional next year in If You Find This, I’m Already Dead, a new miniseries about a reporter whose job takes her on a cosmic odyssey.

“If Moebius, Richard Corben and Jack Kirby had a baby…well…they actually did. And it’s us,” Kindt said. “We wanted to capture the great tradition of such great sci-fi magazines as Heavy Metal, Epic Magazine and 1984 with a big scuzzy cosmic sci-fi story and format.”

Kindt and McDaid will be joined by colorist Bill Crabtree and letterer Jim Campbell on the project, which will be released through Kindt’s Flux House imprint at Dark Horse Comics.

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Kickstarter’s comics projects have increased by 14% this year

The crowdfunding platform shares some of their data for the first half of 2023, as comics projects continue to flourish on the site.

Crowdfunding continues to serve as a viable method for creators to fund their creative endeavors, as comic-related projects flourish on sites like Kickstarter. Even with the rough economic environment we’ve seen over the last six months, with rate hikes, inflation and layoffs, comics-related projects on Kickstarter have remained resilient — and have even grown compared to last year.

With Comic-Con on the horizon and the first half of the year complete, Kickstarter shared some of their recent data with us.

In the first half of the year:

  • Comic projects on the platform grew by 14% when compared to the first half of 2022. Comic projects in the first half of 2022 numbered 1,457 and increased to 1,666 in the first half of 2023.
  • Dollars pledged to comics campaigns also increased, from $14.4 million in 2022 to $17.6 million in 2023.
  • While the number of overall projects increased, so did the number of successful projects. 1,171 comics projects, or 78.1%, successfully met their funding goal this year. This is a 13.5% increase compared to the same time last year. 
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Slugfest | Mary Jane officially becomes a superhero in ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ #31

Plus: News on the Witcher’s next comic series, White Widow, ‘Coda’ returns, Ram V and Filipe Andrade reunite, ‘Killer Queens’ is back, and more.

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you. Hit the links for more information.

Marvel has been teasing Mary Jane Watson’s new power set, most notably in the recent Mary Jane & Black Cat miniseries, but the longtime supporting character will put on a costume and go full superhero in Amazing Spider-Man #31.

The oversized issue will not only feature a story by the regular creative team of Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr., but also will include a story by Celeste Bronfman and Alba Glez that features Mary Jane suiting up to become Jackpot.

Here’s a look at her costume, designed by Humberto Ramos:

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Smash Pages Q&A | Matt Kindt on ‘Hairball,’ Flux House, ‘BRZRKR’ and more

The award-winning creator discusses several of his recent projects, the success of his collaboration with Keanu Reeves, working with Jean-Denis Pendanx and more.

Over the years he’s been working in comics, Matt Kindt has proven not only to be highly prolific, but also one of comic’s most creative minds, particularly when it comes to things like story structure and design. From his early work on Pistolwhip and Super Spy to more recent projects like MIND MGMT, Kindt has always been one to push the boundaries on comics, their format and how to make them more interesting.

Over the last year or so, Kindt has been involved in two high-profile projects — BRZRKR, a best-selling project at BOOM! Studios spearheaded by actor Keanu Reeves, and the launch of Flux House, Kindt’s own imprint at Dark Horse Comics. While the former has brought him possibility more attention than just about anything else he’s worked on, the latter has given him the opportunity to be even more creative in areas outside his typical domain.

I caught up with Kindt to discuss his recent projects, including Hairball, which kicks off this week, as well as his approach to running his own imprint and how the design of a book or comic impacts the experience of reading it.

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Kindt + Jenkins cough up a ‘Hairball’ at Dark Horse

Apologies for the headline; it had to be done.

Writer Matt Kindt will team again with artist Tyler Jenkins and colorist Hilary Jenkins for Hairball, a new horror drama centered on a family’s cat, Bestie.

The new miniseries will fall under Kindt’s Flux House imprint, which was announced earlier this year.

“I’ve written stories of international intrigue and locked room murder mysteries, but in 20 years of making comics, I’ve rarely been compelled to create a horror story,” Kindt said. “And for good reason. I was actually sick to my stomach when I finished writing the end of issue 1. I grossed myself out. I knew that I’d need someone fearless to draw it. (There was no way I was going to.) I knew that Tyler was the perfect artist and co-creator for the story. And when Tyler and Hilary started sending his pages in, it was just as horrible as I’d imagined —in the very best way.”

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Matt Kindt’s Flux House will publish ‘Spy Superb’

Kindt and his wife Sharlene will team up once again for the story of a spy who doesn’t know he’s a spy.

Super Spy creator Matt Kindt will go undercover once again in Spy Superb, which stars a different sort of secret agent — one who doesn’t even know they’re a spy.

Kindt will team with his wife, Sharlene Kindt, who he worked with on Dept H. It’ll come out from Flux House, Kindt’s new imprint at Dark Horse.

“In Spy Superb I wanted to explore a character, the idea of a very average person who is under the belief that he is utterly exceptional,” said Kindt. “There is a scientific term for this–The Dunning-Kruger effect–a person who insists they possess knowledge and skills that they obviously do not. What if a super spy was suffering from this? Well…they would of course be a…SPY SUPERB. It was actually really hard for me to keep this character alive past issue #1… there are hit men after him…a super assassin who kills only with rock, paper, and scissors… and a real super spy working in the shadows of our “hero” who may actually be the real spy superb. It feels really great to be drawing a new book–and I’m beyond happy that Sharlene Kindt is painting it. It’s definitely the most ambitious collaboration we’ve ever had.”

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Matt Kindt + Dark Horse team for new Flux House imprint

New imprint will kick off with a new Mind MGMT comic and will be the exclusive home of Kindt’s creator-owned comics.

Matt Kindt will team with his longtime publisher Dark Horse on a new imprint, Flux House, that will become the exclusive home of his creator-owned comics.

“Flux House is inspired by Fluxus – an avant-garde art movement from the 1950s that was an extension of Surrealists and Dadaists,” Kindt said in the press release. “The Fluxus movement focused on the creative process and experimental art forms. Their trademarks include accessibility, absurdism, and a sense of humor. If you’ve seen me burn or cut one of my books apart at a signing, you already have a sense of where I’m going with this. Flux House aims to embody all of these elements. It won’t be limited by traditional forms of books and print. And the story format will, as the name implies, always be in flux.”

The first title to be published by the new imprint will be Mind MGMT: Bootleg, which is set in the same universe as the previous Mind MGMT series. Written by Kindt, he’ll be joined by artists Farel Dalrymple, Jill Thompson, David Rubín and Matt Lesniewski for the four-issue series.

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Kindt + Jenkins deliver the chills in ‘Apache Delivery Service’

The horror miniseries begins in January.

Matt Kindt, Tyler Jenkins and Hilary Jenkins, who created Dark Horse’s history-spanning Fear Case, will venture into the jungles of Vietnam for their next miniseries from the publisher, Apache Delivery Service.

The horror story involves the search for Nazi gold during the Vietnam War — which, rumor has it, is guarded by witches. Kindt said the story is “easily the most unsettling story I’ve written and for-sure the creepiest art I’ve seen Tyler and Hilary come up with.”

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Sunday Comics | John Allison kicks off ‘Author Unknown’

Check out other recent online comics from Matt Kindt, Frankee White and Kat Baumann, Jason Loo and Dan Schkade.

Here’s a round up of some of the best comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

John Allison has created several webcomics and comics over the years, from Bad Machinery to Scary-Go-Round to Wicked Things and Steeple. Last week he kicked off a brand-new story on the Steeple site, called Author Unknown. The 44-page comic has been in the works since November of 2019 and will feature Charlotte Grote, his character from Bad Machinery.

“… it’s been through a lot of revisions to make sure it meant something even taken in isolation,” Allison said. “It needed me to make all the comics I did over the last year to give it a bit of weight. There is something for both long-term and newer readers, to the exclusion of no-one.”

You can start reading the new story by going here, or, if you don’t want to wait, you can read the entire story by becoming a supporter of Allison’s on Patreon.

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Matt Kindt jumps into the controversial world of NFTs with a new ‘Mind MGMT’ story

The one-of-a-kind story will go to the highest bidder of an NFT auction.

Creator Matt Kindt is exploring the world of non-fungible tokens with Mind MGMT: The Artifact, a full-length comic that’s currently up for auction on the NFT auction website OpenSea.

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have been making headlines recently; they’re a type of code that acts sort of as a unique certificate of authenticity for a digital piece of art, tied to bitcoin and block chain technologies. The Verge, Bankrate and NPR have Q&A’s up on what NFTs are and how they’re being used right now in the art world.

“I wanted to create an original Mind MGMT comic book narrative that would explore the nature of belief and the value of ideas and their intangible nature as a way of exploring the idea of NFTs,” said Kindt. “The best way to explore this idea was for the actual story – the Mind MGMT narrative – to become what it is about. This story is written as a Mind MGMT espionage narrative – an agent sent on a mission to retrieve a priceless artifact. There are secret codes, monk-ninjas. LOTS of monk-ninjas and a teenage immortal intent on stealing this priceless artifact. It is both a real apple…and a drawing of an apple.”

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Kindt + Lesniewski tackle folk tales + conspiracies in ‘Crimson Flower’

The four-issue miniseries starts in January.

Dark Horse Comics has announced a new series, Crimson Flower, coming from Matt Kindt, Matt Lesniewski and Bill Crabtree.

The four-issue miniseries will follow a woman who uses folk tales to cope with the loss of her family during a home invasion. But as she plots her revenge, she discovers a government plot to use folk tales to turn children into super assassins.

“‘Cold blooded Russian assassins?’ We’ve seen that before. But assassins trained using Slavic folktales as a brainwashing device? That’s something new that really needed a unique visual style,” Kindt said. “When I saw Matt Lesniewski’s book The Freak (nominated for an Eisner) I knew he was going to do something like we’ve never seen before. Our collaboration was alchemy – turning this book into a brutal, heartbreaking, psychedelic journey of a woman intent on revenge-killing every assassin that ruined her life.”

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