Creature Academy: The Legacy

Following is a news release on what promises to be a fantastic production:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 

CONTACT: Kevin Hanna (frogchildren@gmail.com)
 

Clockwork Girl's Kevin Hanna Completes Kickstarter Launch of Creature Academy, new Steampunk Fantasy
 

SEATTLE (September 27, 2012) - Creature Academy: The Legacy, a new steampunk-inspired fantasy adventure comic, completed its successful Kickstarter campaign this week, raising over $10,000 from backers. This new comic is a dark tale about kids and their magical creatures teaming up to fight the evil forces that kidnapped their parents. New backers can still order a copy before Saturday Sept. 29, 2:28am EDT.
 

THE ADVENTURE
 

Wes Mendes, 14, has lived his whole life on the run with his mom. When she gets kidnapped by evil forces, they come for him next. So he must hide in an underground city where the human and the magic worlds collide. There Wes joins a team of kids and their magical creatures, at a school like no other. He finds his own magical creature and leads the team on a dangerous quest to destroy the evil and save their parents.
 

STEAMPUNK COMICS WITH KIDS & CREATURES
Creator Kevin Hanna and artist Grant Bond are comic book veterans who collaborated on the best-selling steampunk graphic novel The Clockwork Girl. But the world of Creature Academy is both more realistic and more magical. The young heroes of Creature Academy fight evil alongside mythical creatures such as: grigs, hippogriffs, basilisks, manticores and leviathans. There's even the world's first steampunk unicorn, with fiery eyes and armor plating---a creature that doesn't want to hear your "My Little Pony" jokes, ever.
 

CREATORS
Creature Academy's creator, Kevin Hanna, does art for animation, comics and video games (Crimson Skies) and is best known for the award-winning graphic novel The Clockwork Girl and the Web comic, Frog children. He also directed the soon-to-be-released feature film of The Clockwork Girl.
 

Creature Academy's lead artist/colorist, Grant Bond, reunites with Kevin Hanna for the first time since The Clockwork Girl, Grant's fantastic art can be seen in projects such as: Igor: Movie Prequel, Supernatural  and Tron.
 

For more information about the Creature Academy Kickstarter campaign, go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1588801126/creature-academy-the-legacy-a-steampunk-graphic-no?ref=search  To send questions or schedule an interview, please contact Kevin Hanna (creator) at frogchildren@gmail.com and/or Dave Fagan (script) at faganinstitute@gmail.com

International Dieselpunk Day

Something as wonderful as Dieselpunk deserves to be celebrated and that is exactly what’s going to happen. Thanks to an idea inspired by the Dieselpunk known as Lady Smoke, November 12th, 2012 has been designated by the Dieselpunk community as International Dieselpunk Day. The date was chosen because traditionally the source material for Dieselpunk starts around the end of the Great War, which ended on November 11th, 1918. Therefore, the date after its conclusion, November 12th, was chosen as the holiday.

Individual dieselpunks and the various Dieselpunk organizations around the world are preparing parties and celebrations. If you want to learn more, a web site exists to help promote International Dieselpunk Day.  

Gatehouse Gazette 22 – Special Summer 2012 Issue

In numerous postings, I’ve referred to the importance of the online magazine Gatehouse Gazette as in the development of Dieselpunk. It was in the premier issue that Nick Ottens and Mr. Piecraft published the landmark article “Discovering Dieselpunk.” That article provided an analysis of the genre as well as a framework that the genre has continued to build upon. Unfortunately, the Gatehouse Gazette stopped publication in November 2011 with issue number 21 and became a blog.

However, a special Summer 2012 issue has been released and it’s full of Dieselpunk goodness. There’s an excellent article by Tome Wilson (owner of the site Dieselpunks.Org), Marcus Rauchfuß wrote a thought-provoking article on the role of Nazi aesthetics that’s sometimes found in the Dieselpunk community, Nick Ottens wrote a very nice article on the importance of the automobile within Dieselpunk, and Hilde Heyvaert wrote an excellent article on noir and Dieselpunk fashion. I even have a review of the book Third Reich Victorious, which is an anthology of short stories exploring the nightmare scenarios of how the Axis might have won World War II.

Along with all of these great articles, the issue is simply beautiful visually. It’s a sophisticated as anything printed by a major publisher. The art, photography, and layout are amazing making the magazine pure eye candy.

You can download the issue from their web site along with all of the prior issues.