A Dundee comic book artist is launching a fundraising drive to pay for the publication of his “groundbreaking” new title.
Monty Nero hopes to raise enough money to publish six issues of Hollow Monsters.
The story connects real and imagined horrors for a gang of children growing up in a suburban housing estate in the 1980s.
The Dundee-based artist is a member of the city’s Inkpot Studio in the Dundee Comics Creative Space and is a Masters graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone at Dundee University.
He co-created the critically-acclaimed hit series Death Sentence with artist Mike Dowling and its sequel, Death Sentence: London.
He has also written for 2000AD and publishers Vertigo and Marvel, where he worked on iconic characters such as Hulk and Amazing X-Men.
Hollow Monsters marks his first solo comic project and, unusually he will script, pencil, ink, colour and letter the entire series himself.
He said: “It’s a very personal and spooky semi-autobiographical story: a timely commentary on how fear shapes lives over time, and how the world has changed over recent decades.
“Like my previous comics, Hollow Monsters is funny, scary, thoughtful, shocking, and lyrical, exploiting the full potential of comics in a way rarely seen before.”
Monty said he wanted to experiment with the look, feel and structure of comics through the series.
Combining manipulated typography with fluid drawing techniques he aims to blur the lines between the verbal and the visual and the real and the imagined, to create something ethereal, disturbing, and challenging.
The story unfolds over six 32-page comics, the first of which is completely finished.
The next step is to raise the money for printing through crowdfunding.
He said: “I haven’t even thought about sending this one to a publisher. It’s too ambitious and unique a story for anything but Kickstarter.
I’m trying to break new ground with my storytelling techniques and the first thing publishers always ask is ‘What’s it like?’ Well, it’s not like anything else. It’s new territory.”
Monty developed the comic on the Dundee University Masters in Comics programme as a proving ground for some academic ideas he was researching about the differences between comics, books and imagery.
“It’s a fascinating area to study, and a great story,” he added.
“If you’re interested in what the medium of comics can do, Hollow Monsters is the comic for you.”
A number of rewards will be offered to people who support the project on Kickstarter, including prints, collector’s editions and even signed pages of comic art.
The appeal will launch at noon on Monday and will run until November 8.
