May all the Battlerock Comics fans enjoy this holiday season!
And don’t forget, the “Icarus” storyline concludes in “Furia and the Guardians” #20, going online on December 30th.
Comic Series
When you have a cosmic crisis that threatens Earth, and you actually do somehow pull it off, sometimes you forget the little things that go on because of it.
As you’ll see in “Furia and the Guardians” #19, Earth is spared the devastation of a coronal mass ejection, but not without some consequences. The power is out in certain places, and some of those outages are not because of the CME.
Thankfully the Guardians of the Dawn have it under control…
Of course that’s not all that happens in the issue. There is also that rescue effort to save the Kheldian hybrids that saved the Earth, but thankfully the Guardians have their most powerful hero in charge of that, with a little help from a certain D-List superhero group from JK Comics.
Why them? Well if you’re readers of JK Comics, you’d know why. But even if you’re not, it will become pretty evident in this issue.
“Furia and the Guardians” #19 will be released on November 25th, otherwise known in America as “Black Friday”.
The “Icarus” storyline begins here!
(Please click on the cover or this link to download the PDF file from MMO Comic Index.)
The problems facing the heroes of Paragon City take a backseat as something truly cosmic in nature is about to happen. Something so powerful that it can destroy the whole world. What is this threat? And how can a group of hybrid aliens be the only ones that can save the planet?
Special guest appearances by Qualina and the President of the United States, Barack Obama.
As has been previously reported, the Earth will soon face a catastrophic threat in the pages of “Furia and the Guardians” that will make the troubles of Paragon City seem trivial. Even the threat of invasion from other universes pale in comparison to this overwhelming threat.
But when you’re talking about Paragon City, you’re talking about the only city where the hero-to-citizen ratio is almost one-to-one. So how can Earth fight off a cosmic threat? You call in the most powerful cosmic forces the Earth could ever have on their side… the Kheldians.
For those who did not play the now-defunct “City of Heroes” MMORPG, Kheldians are energy-based aliens. They are experienced star-travelers who merge with living hosts to create something far more powerful than the individual halves could ever be.
Battlerock Comics readers will recognize Daybright among the group of Kheldians. Daybright’s story is unique in that she is not just a “Peacebringer” hybrid, but also a “Peacebringer Redeemer”; a very rare kind of hybrid. That gives her a special position of importance within the Kheldian community. However, as you’ll see in the issue, not all Kheldians are impressed by her credentials.
But even with the all of the assembled Kheldians, will it be enough to stop the threat approaching Earth?
Find out when “Furia and the Guardians” #18 goes online on September 30th!
(Please click on the cover or this link to download the PDF file from MMO Comic Index.)
For several years, Galatea Powers has kept knowledge of her growing hyper-intelligence a secret. But now some people have figured it out, including the man she loves. And now she has some explaining to do about what she’s been doing since the Guardians of the Dawn were reinstated in 2012, including how the group got their hands on some very powerful artifacts.
Plus, Jason Knight returns to his armor to see if he’s worthy to be MidKnight again, and the Paragon City Police introduce a new weapon in their attempt to retire the need for heroes.
And all the while… something is about to happen.
BATTLEROCK COMICS
For Immediate Release
President Obama and Justice-Knights to Appear in Multi-Part Space Crisis
GEORGIA – (08/19/2016) – When people think disasters, they usually think hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes.
But what happens when the threat is from outside the planet, and is so large it could incinerate the whole world in one swoop?
In a city full of superheroes, can any of them be able to stop this threat?
This is the question that faces the heroes of the fictional Paragon City in the upcoming pages of “Furia and the Guardians” as they start a multi-part storyline called “Icarus”.
Writer and publisher David 2 says that the crisis that Earth faces will seemingly come from nowhere and put everything on hold.
“The heroes of the city will be busy handling their own problems. Things will seem boring or mundane. They will have no idea that something this big will be coming.”
The threat, according to David 2, is something that comes straight from the cable channels.
“One of the things I enjoy watching on cable channels like the Science Channel and the Discovery Channel are shows that feature what’s out there beyond our own atmosphere. The message that we continually get is how lucky we are to be on the right kind of planet in the right kind of orbit with the right kind of conditions for us to exist and how perilous that perfect balance is and how easy it could be for it to just end.”
“There are many things that are out there even in our own solar system that could spell the end for us all. The most obvious threat is an asteroid like the kind that helped exterminate the dinosaurs. But that scenario’s been done over and over. We could get hit by a comet. The moon could break away from us or even come crashing down. We could cross paths with a rogue planet.”
“But then I realized that there is one threat that we face every single day, and it’s from the one source that we can’t help but see every single day. Every day we play a roulette game with it, wondering if today is the day we roll snake-eyes. And sometimes we do that. And sometimes we don’t. And in today’s heavy technological age, we really don’t want the cosmic dice to roll snake-eyes on us, because even a close-enough near-hit could mess things up for us.”
The threat will first appear in “Furia and the Guardians” #17, in an issue appropriately titled “Prelude to Calamity”.
“After the threat appears, everything up to this point will pretty much be put on hold,” said David 2. “When you’re facing a threat this large, when you seriously have to wonder if you will be able to exist afterward, you start to put things into perspective, and that’s what you’re going to be seeing here.”
President Barack Obama will appear in “Furia and the Guardians” #18. This is not the first time a sitting president appeared in the pages of a comic series set in the “City of Heroes”. He appeared in a quick cameo in “City of Comic Creators Compendium” #5 as part of a special “Guardians of the Dawn Spotlight” story, and again in flashback in “Guardians of the Dawn Spotlight” #14. He has also made an appearance in the “PNN News Break” teaser series.
David 2 says including the President in the story is important.
“We’re talking about what will be a global threat, and with a threat that size, you can’t help but involve the President of the United States, whomever that person may be. He’s the leader of the free world, whether you like him or not, and at the very least, you need him to try to explain the threat to the public. This has been the traditional role of the President. Plus, this will pretty much be the last chance I’ll be able to include Obama as the President, since he steps down in a few months.”
Obama won’t be the only one playing a part in the crisis, though. The Justice-Knights, the central superhero team of the JK Comics publication, will also be appearing in the storyline. David 2 says that this is the continuation of the teamwork between himself and fellow creator-and-publisher Joseph Cohen.
“Joseph and I have worked on a few collaborative efforts before. He’s helped with my comics, and I’ve helped with some of his, and we’ve also worked together on ‘The City’s Finest’ #2. And with a threat this size, we can’t just have one superhero group simply doing everything. Paragon City is called ‘The City of Heroes’ for that reason.”
Although JK Comics describes the Justice-Knights as “an unfamiliar d-list super-group”, they do apparently have one advantage that make them uniquely qualified to play a role in the coming crisis.
“Not too many groups can claim to have a repurposed mothership as their base,” David 2 said.
While the details of the threat are being kept quiet for now, David 2 says that the focus of the hero series will change afterward.
“For the past few months, the series has been temporarily renamed ‘Galatea and the Guardians’ while Furia Powers, the central character, has been sidelined. By the end of this storyline, though, Furia will be taking center stage again. And, I think, the readers will understand why by then.”
“Furia and the Guardians” is a fan-made comic series based in the now-defunct City of Heroes MMORPG. All material is acquired through the client-side applications using Titan Icon and through demo-recording.
The “Icarus” series begins with “Furia and the Guardians” #17, which will be online on August 26th.
For more information about the Justice-Knights, visit the official website of JK Comics at http://jkcomics.com or visit the MMO Comic Index resource website at http://mmocomicindex.com
At the end of “Guardians of the Dawn GRADUATION” #3, a now-retired Icon Powers asks his old friend Ryder Lightning to keep an eye on Galatea Powers. And, as we see on that same page, the two of them have something to be concerned about.
Somehow, Galatea found a connection to the Champions Universe, where her alternate-future version is located. And, as we saw in that same issue, that connection somehow influences her relationship with John Cole, aka Guardian Star.
But then, as we see in “Furia and the Guardians” #16, the connection between the two universes shows up again…
A stranger that somehow Galatea knows… and one who bears a striking resemblance to a certain mutant villain in “Future’s Guardian”…
And after that encounter, we see this…
What is this strange book? And how does it seem to know everything going on in another universe and its connection to both Galatea Powers and Galatea Future?
The answers will start to come out in “Furia and the Guardians” #17.
Things start to escalate in “Furia and the Guardians” #16!
(Please click on the cover or this link to download the PDF file from MMO Comic Index.)
As Jason Knight looks deeper into the murder of Rose Vesta, something else happens in Kings Row that shakes Galatea Powers. Meanwhile, Guardian Star makes a shocking discovery concerning his hyper-powered girlfriend. What will he do with this new information? And just how long has Carlton Sage been watching over the Guardians of the Dawn? You might be surprised!
One of the things about fan-made comics like “Furia and the Guardians” is that it takes an incredible amount of time to put an issue together from start-to-finish, especially when it’s done by one person.
Big publishing companies like DC and Marvel have whole teams of writer and artists that handle all of the elements that make up an issue. Fan-made comics usually just have one person doing all of that.
It helps tremendously when you are using source material from an MMO like the now-defunct “City of Heroes” game, because the graphical portion is mostly done. But sometimes you need to create elements that do not exist, and that requires some creative work.
To show you how difficult it can get with a fan-made comic, we’ve broken down the steps used to create just one custom frame in the upcoming Issue 16 of “Furia and the Guardians”.
First we get the source material, which in this case comes from either a program called Titan Icon or Paragon Chat, which only uses the City of Heroes MMO game that was previously installed on the computer. (Just so you know, this is the “i23 Beta” version, which the developers were testing and were about to release before their bosses stopped all work in 2012.) Here is the original screencapture of the scene.
As you can see, Galatea Powers is flying towards the side of a building. The story calls for her to fly through a window that was shattered during a structure fire. Obviously that isn’t possible in the system, so we have to add it.
It’s usually good to create a copy of file that you’re planning on changing so in case you have to start from scratch, you still have the original image.
Next, we open up an open-source image editing program called GIMP. GIMP is the closest thing you can get to using Adobe’s Photoshop without having to pay them all of that money.
We need to “break” all of those windows, but obviously we can’t do that with Galatea’s backside in the way.
So once we open the image in GIMP, we create a duplicate layer of the image and then “hide” the original layer. Then we use the eraser tool to cut out everything in the layer except Galatea. With the original layer hidden from view, all we see is just Galatea.
Then we “hide” this layer and bring the original one back to view. Now that we’ve preserved an image of Galatea, we can work on the original layer without worrying about her.
So we use the lasso tool to highlight the window frames…
And we use the “fill-in” tool to turn all of the selected items black.
We remove the “select” borders, and then add in the “smoke” above the frames to show smoke damage from the fire.
We’re almost finished… now all we need to do is bring the frame of Galatea back into view.
And now we can save the finished work.
And now we have a modified image that we can use for the issue itself.
All of that work… just for one panel of one page of one issue.
And we haven’t even gotten into all of the coding in demorecording!
Well, you can check out the finished work when “Furia and the Guardians” #16 goes online later this month.
(Please click on the cover or this link to download the PDF file from MMO Comic Index.)
Make that “Galatea and the Guardians”. With Furia incapacitated following her recent encounters, Galatea Powers must resume her mantle as the city’s “True Guardian”. And it couldn’t come at a worst time, as pressure mounts for Furia’s arrest, Lexie Lothora kicks off the next phase of her program, and someone new arrives at Guardian Base.
