AfterShock Comics has announced their newest original graphic novel at the New York Comic-Con this weekend and it’s definitely a contender. Kill a Man comes from writers Steve Orlando & Phillip Kennedy Johnson with Alec Morgan handling the artwork and coloring on it while Jim Campbell is on the lettering. The book is set for an early summer 2020 debut with more details to come early next year.
“It’s the perfect creative confluence, right here, at this moment,” said Steve Orlando.” Could I have told this story earlier? Maybe. But it took meeting Alec Morgan, meeting Phillip Kennedy Johnson, and going through the production of a book like DEAD KINGS with Aftershock for me to know the moment was right. This story, an allegory for the fight each and every one of us go through to prove ourselves to ourselves, is extremely personal. It needed to be authentic, it needed to be raw and real, and to provide that I needed more than myself. I needed the perfect collaborators. And in 2020, at last, the bell’s ringing and we’re hitting the shelves.”
“KILL A MAN is about deciding what kind of person you want to be, and who you want your heroes—your family—to be,” said Phillip Kennedy Johnson. “That’s a theme I relate to in a big way. When Steve Orlando, one of my best friends in comics, reached out with this compelling story idea, it immediately struck me as a story that would obviously be very important and personal to him, but I quickly discovered that its themes were personal for me too. The idea of defying the expectations that other people have for your life, of showing the world who you are when you’ve been backed into a corner… these are experiences I’ve had, and having the opportunity to tell that story with pros like Steve and Alec is a real pleasure and a privilege. ”
“There are a lot of aspects of KILL A MAN’s story that are real challenge for an artist,” said Alec Morgan. “The conflict between characters, the struggle with identity, public scrutiny and the media, the spectacle of fights and their choreography…There’s a lot to capture. My goal is to get into the story and do my best to wring everything out and get it on the page, with style being a byproduct of that process.”
Plot Concept: In the early days of Mixed Martial Arts, kickboxer icon DJ Bellyi slurs a queer opponent in the ring, and is beaten to death while his young son James watches in horror from the stands.
Sixteen years later, young James Bellyi has become an MMA star in his own right, with top-tier endorsements and an imminent title shot. But when James is outed as gay by an opponent in a press conference, he loses everything: his title shot, his fans, his team, even his family. To fight his way back, he turns to the only one left in the world willing to train him: Xavier Mayne, the man who killed his father.
