Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Benjamin Bailey, Comics, kickstarter, Taylor Stauft, Uncaged

We Prayed At The Altar Of Die Hard, Commando, Rambo And Lethal Weapon

Published Sun, 08 Dec 2013 10:00:08 -0600

Last updated Sun, 08 Dec 2013 10:43:56 -0600

Benjamin Bailey writes for Bleeding Cool:

I grew up in a very devout household. We had a strict doctrine that we worshipped, a code that we lived our life by. While other families loaded their cars up to head down to church every Sunday, my family – my dad and I, really – watched action movies. We prayed at the altar of Die Hard, Commando, Out for Justice, Rambo, Cobra, The Last Boy Scout, Lethal Weapon and so on. Our scripture was written in blood, our religion born in a hail of bullets.

Maybe that's a little over doing it, but the point is I love action movies; specifically the action movies of the 80s and 90s. If the protagonist of a film is referred to as a "loose cannon" or "one man army" or "cop who plays by his own rules" then I probably love it. I eat this stuff up.

As you probably guessed, I also love comic books (my character is the Punisher, of course). I write about comics over at IGN.com and I have a monthly(ish) comic book called Captain Ultimate that comes out from the fine folks at MonkeyBrain. Since I was eight-years-old, comic books have been an intense passion of mine.

This brings us to UNCAGED, the Kickstarter campaign I'm running right now. Artist Taylor Stauft and I have crafted a love letter to the action movies of the 80s and 90s in the form of a comic book. The evaluator pitch is essentially Die Hard in a Zoo. Ridiculous, I know, but that's the point. We're attempting to embrace all the hallmarks of those films. There's a down on his luck, loose cannon cop, of course. Naturally we also have terrorists, hostages, one liners and lots over-the-top violence. Lots and lots of violence.

Taylor and I turned to Kickstarter to have the book lettered, colored, printed and shipped. This isn't some failed pitch that every publisher turned (not yet, anyway), but a passion project that we decided to do ourselves. We're shooting for $8,000 and at the time of this writing we are at roughly $3,000 with 25 days to go. It's doable, but we need your help. For ten bucks, you can get a digital of UNCAGED (it's a looking to be about 40 pages long). That's a steep price for a digital comic, we know, and we are immensely thankful for everyone who kicks in.

To sweeten the deal, if we can get to $5,000 by the end of next week, we'll draw Rich into the comic and let Bleeding Cool readers pick his death scene. Tramped by elephants? Torn to pieces by monkeys? Having his head shoved into a giant pile of rhino poo and suffocating? Whatever you guys and dolls want! That's worth ten bucks right there, right? At the very least we should be able to get Mark Waid to kick in.

Thanks for your time, folks. Yippee ki yay, m'fers.

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