Posted in: Comics | Tagged: ashley madison, comare, Comics, entertainment, kickstarter

Fed Up With Ashley Madison? Infidelity Begets Murder in Comare, A Dark Romance Comic

Published Sat, 22 Aug 2015 16:00:18 -0500

Comare #1: The Other Woman, by Mario Candelaria, Ashley St Lawrence, Lesley Atlansky, and Zakk Saam, is live on Kickstarter until 10PM EST on Saturday, September 5^th with an expected publication date of Late October/Early November.

Mario Candelaria writes,

Have you ever had a secret that was so shameful and so dishonorable, that you'd stop at nothing to keep it from getting out?

There's a good chance that most of you reading this kept a secret at some point in your lives. Maybe you remained silent when confronted by a co-worker whose lunch you've eaten, or maybe you've went on a date with someone that you're less than proud of, or maybe you've been secretly having an affair and saw murder as your only out.

That is the very dilemma that Amelia finds herself in as she struggles to quietly end her affair with a married restaurateur after her assumed-dead fiancé unexpectedly returns home from the war in Korea.

Co-created by illustrator Ashley St. Lawrence (Épilogue) and I (ASHES, The Reception), Comare is a six-issue mini-series about love, lust, betrayal, and retribution set against the dramatic backdrop of 1953 Los Angeles, and I couldn't be more excited. Comare is our homage to the romance comics and movies of yesteryear that were high on drama, suspense, and firmly rooted in the real world.

One of the components I am most proud of is the creative team we've assembled. Color artist Lesley Atlansky (High Crimes, Unlawful Good Anthology) has developed a bond with Ashley and it really shows in the way she paints each page, but even the most beautiful art would easily be ignored if the lettering isn't up to par. Thankfully that isn't the case here with rising superstar Zakk Saam (Unlawful Good Anthology, Stronghold) adding a high level of quality to each page.

To make our comic look as attractive as possible we brought on two artists for the covers. The main covers, illustrated by fan favorite artist Victor Santos (The Mice Templar, Sleepy Hollow: Providence), will have more of a traditional pulp noir feel to them, and countering Victor's style is Jim Towe (Silver Plague, The Art of Guilt) creating variants that will highlight the more romantic side of the story in glorious landscape paying homage to classic wireframe movie posters.

Our goal with the Kickstarter is to create a finished product that we can sell at conventions to build a grassroots following while we try to shop Comare around to publishers who might be interested in helping us get the rest of the series out there and especially into comic shops. Our modest goal of $4,500 is enough to take care of a print run, shipping, backer perks, and also some compensation for the entire creative team (minus myself) to help them pay bills while they create because we are strong believers in compensation for work.

On that topic, I would be lying if I said that running this campaign has not been a lot of hard work. We've only been at this for a couple of weeks and it has been one of the most stressful and demanding experiences of my life so far, but I wouldn't trade it in for anything in the world. At the end of the day I get to make comics! How awesome is that?

But as fun as this has been, we are behind the scenes everyday grinding to make it happen. Everyone on the team shares the same dream of working in comics and successfully reaching our goal will get us one step closer to making that dream a reality by showing potential publishers that even as relatively unknown creators we have the skill and the drive to go out there and earn.

As a special thank you we'd like to offer a perk made special for Bleeding Cool! For $20 you will receive a replica of the wallet-sized photograph that Amelia's fiancé Bradley carried around with him during the war. This level will also include a copy of the comic with Victor's cover, and a replica matchbox from the story!!

Thank you very much and we hope you'll join us in making this book come true! You can click here to visit the Kickstarter page, and if you'd like to communicate with us directly, we are all fairly active on Twitter. I am @TheOtherMarioC, Ashley has the awesome handle of @SaintAsh, Lesley can be found under @Latlansky, and Zakk is @ZakkSaam.