BATTLEROCK COMICS
For Immediate Release
“Guardians of the Dawn” To Return In Two New Series
GEORGIA – (June 9, 2014) – The superhero team known as the “Guardians of the Dawn” is set to return in two new comic series published by Battlerock Comics. This will be the first appearances of the team set in the world of the City of Heroes MMO since the game’s shutdown in November of 2012.
Writer/Creator David 2 says that he has been eager to resume work with the Guardians since the shutdown.
“It was really difficult for me to say goodbye to the characters,” he said. “There was so much being worked on at the time. The characters were developing and progressing, I was introducing readers to new places like Praetoria, and I had several storylines that I wanted to focus on, including a few tie-ins with other comic creators. I was able to bring some of those storylines in before the shutdown, but there were so many that were left untold.”
The team was featured in two regualr comic series, “Guardians of the Dawn Spotlight” and “The Guardian Powers”, and two one-shot specials, “Guardians of the Dawn AFTERMATH” and “Guardians of the Dawn 2012 Special”. There was also a special feature in the fifth “City of Comics Creators Compendium” issue which introduced a new character and had a cameo appearance by President Barack Obama. The series also had two spin-off comics, “The Lost Adventures of Galatea Future” and “Future’s Guardian”, both of which are set in the world of Champions Online MMO and featured an alternate version of Galatea Powers, one of the more popular characters of the series.
But while the Champions-based comic series were done out of necessity for David 2, he always favored the City of Heroes MMO.
The writer/creator explained “I have nothing against Champions Online. It was made by the same people that originally developed City of Heroes. But there are some clear differences as to what each game brings to the characters and what I could do with them. City of Heroes really focused a lot on quality-of-life aspects like costume changes and emotions and interactions that Champions really haven’t bothered to look into. For a comic creator like myself, or just for someone into online role-playing, those little details mean a lot.”
David 2 is quick to point out, however, that the return of the Guardians in a new comic series will not mean the return of City of Heroes MMO.
“City of Heroes is dead,” he explains. “The MMO was shut down by NCSoft and there’s nothing we can do to change that. We’re able to get new content thanks to a program called Titan Icon, which allows me to access a beta version of the game program, but it’s still just the program on the computer. There is no server for the usual MMO interaction.
“The other method that will be used is called demorecording, and that’s a digital recording of content of the game that can be saved, played back, and even edited. Several of the players managed to spend the last few months doing nothing but demorecordings so they could get as much content as possible before the shutdown. It is with their help that we can bring the Guardians back for some new adventures, and even show some things that we couldn’t previously see when the MMO was live.”
The return of the Guardians will begin with a mini-series called “Guardians of the Dawn GRADUATION”, which will recap some of the events during the “lost time” since the “2012 Special”.
“When we ended ‘Guardian Powers’, the Guardians of the Dawn were just officially vindicated and reactivated,” David 2 says. “We saw the two newest members in the ‘2012 Special’, namely Furia Powers and Elite Ice Queen, and we got a quick tour of the Guardian base, which we never got a chance to fully explore before. But we didn’t really see what happened to the rest of the Guardians. Who came back? Who stayed on? How did the events seen in AFTERMATH and the ‘Guardian Powers’ affect the heroes?”
David 2 says that not all of the heroes will return for the new series.
“Unfortunately the means that I have to bring the characters back and into new content couldn’t be extended to all of the characters. The disappearance of some of those characters will be explained in GRADUATION, and others we’ll get into with the new series.”
Following the conclusion of “Guardians of the Dawn GRADUATION”, Battlerock Comics will be working on the new regular series called “Furia and the Guardians”. The new series will focus primarily on Furia Powers, who was first introduced in the pages of “The Guardian Powers”; but David 2 says the series also will occasionally highlight other Guardian members.
David 2 hopes that readers will get behind Furia Powers as they once did with her “adopted sister”, Galatea Powers.
“Furia will be a complex character,” David 2 explains. “First, she’s from a universe where the heroes that we know in the main universe are ruthless and sadistic tyrants. So there will always be some question about her overall morality. Second, she is the counterpart of a British hero that was killed in the 2002 Rikti Invasion, so now Furia is here, looking a lot like this person and having the same powers as this person. It’s only a matter of time before other members of the Powers family will show up wanting to know who this ‘usurper’ is. Plus, as was shown in ‘Guardian Powers’, she comes with her own emotional baggage. In her world, she was the only surviving member of the Powers family. She saw her sister killed right in front of her. Now she’s here in a world where all of the family members are alive and ‘she’ is considered dead.”
In addition to his work with the two comic series, David 2 is also working with fellow comic creator Joseph Cohen on another comic issue that will feature the first three characters from the original “Guardians of the Dawn Spotlight” series.
“The issue wedges itself in-between the events in the text-only ‘Issue #0’,” he explained. “There’s the Issue #0 story of how three strangers from another universe arrive in the beginning, and then it fast-forwards to two years later when they finally find out who they really are and where they came from. This issue will try to answer some of what happened during the time in between that. It will also tie into the events seen in Joseph’s ‘Justice-Knights’ series and be connected to another project that he’s working on.”
The two creators previously worked on several of the “City of Comic Creators Compendium” series, but this would mark the first time that David 2 and Cohen worked together on the same project from start-to-finish.
The first issue of “Guardians of the Dawn GRADUATION” is expected to be online in the start of July. “Furia and the Guardians” is expected to begin in the fall. No release date has been set yet on the collaborative comic special.
For more information about these and other comics published by Battlerock Comics, please visit the official website athttps://battlerockcomics.wordpress.com
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