In checking off the list of things I’ve recently chatted about, seems I’ve covered all my bases. Comedy. Pro Wrestling. New movies. Old movies. Indie movies. And, of course… Unshaven Comics. Well, guess we start at the top and take another spin, aye?

With my forthcoming special appearance on the award-winning Pop Culture Squadcast (I promise that’s my last link kiddos.), I’m elated to scoop myself to note that at the upcoming Dragon Con (September 3rd – 6th), my lil label will be debuting our latest issue of The Samurnauts… Rage of the Rep-Simian #1. Penned by Kyle Gnepper, with interior art by the always awesome Steph Mided and cover by equally effervescent Steph Stanga. Colors were helmed by our intern, Ava Luiz — who Matt and I have been teaching the ways of comic books since Ava herself was in elementary school. She’s a high school junior now… and an amazing talent. I did a bunch of stuff on the book too, but I’m just here for a good time. While it’s been a few years since a new issue graced our tablescape, it makes no difference: Unshaven Comics works hard and sells everything with the same zeal and gusto we’ve been living off of since (checks Facebook memories) 2008. Yeesh.

First off, let me dish a little bit about Rage of the Rep-Simian. Same as Samurnauts: To the Max!, this is the first issue of a fresh short series of Samurnauts books that tell a singular story in a singular time period (versus Curse of the Dreadnuts and Genesis having time-jump narratives throughout). In this case, we’re going back to the very first assembled team under the immortal Kung-Fu monkey, Al, as they face off against a mutated monkey-dinosaur hybrid… with an interesting tie to Master Al’s secret origin. I won’t spoil anything mind you, but fans of lore should be pleased that we Unshaven Lads are leaning into panels of the past to mine new tales to tell. If you can’t tell? I’m proud AF of this book. 

Prouder still of how the production itself was pulled off. When we completed Curse, on another long and winding trip home from whatever con it was at the time… it was decided the next wave of stories we’d tell would meet a specific criteria of challenges we felt necessary in our evolution as creators. First? Each Unshavenaut would be helming their story solo — acting without collaboration in plot points and story beats as we had for issues prior. For Matt and myself? This meant art and writing duty for an entire book. For Kyle, it meant for the first time, Unshaven Comics would open up the Samurnauts to another artist for interior art.  Continue reading “So Long and Thank For The Fish, Man 123: Manifesting… Unshavenly” →