Secrets & Shadows

Earlier today, I was sitting on the couch working out some things for a new story when I heard the postal worker jamming the mail in our mailbox (as she usually does). I was surprised to find that among the usual junk mail, there was a sizable package. I rushed into the house, grabbed a knife and cut open the package to reveal Sexcastle.

I remember backing it on Kickstarter, but I hadn’t heard anything about the book being shipped so I was quite surprised to find it on my doorstep. But after reading it, I’m glad it did.

Sexcastle tells the story of Shane Sexcastle, a former assassin who has just been released from prison. Shane has given up his life of violence and starts a new life in a small town. Of course, as is the case with such scenarios, it isn’t long before aspects of his past come back to haunt him and Shane must decide whether or not to return to his killing ways. If that doesn’t grab you, just know there is a character named Thunderbutt. Thunderbutt.

I was a great read. Honestly, this was a book I wish I could have written. It’s sharp and keeps the reader interested and entertained. Plus there are enough references to please the 80s action film fans in all of us.

I don’t know if there are plans for the book to be mass printed, but I hope so because more people need to read this book.

Check Kyle Starks out at: kylestarks.com, twitter, and tumblr.

Today would have been my father’s 62nd birthday. Unfortunately, he passed away from a sudden heart attack while I was in Japan. It made me sad for the obvious reasons but also because he never got to see this comic. Mostly because he was the inspiration for it in more ways than one.

When my father was a kid, he was a massive comic book fan. His favorite comic was Daredevil and his hero was Jack Kirby. He idolized the man and wanted very much to be just like him. While my father was in high school, he drew all the time and at one point had even made his own comics. When I say made, I mean he penciled them, inked them, and lettered them all by himself. I feel like if he’d stuck with it, he could have done pretty well for himself.

The problem was that my grandparents were church going folk from the south and they didn’t see any use in it.  At one point, my grandmother made my father give away all of his comic books. This included the entire original Daredevil run which would be worth some serious change today. What was worse was at one point, she threw out the comic books he’d made himself. He never quite recovered from that and rarely drew other than a few doodles. Despite this, he never told me not to dream or want to create. He showed me Calvin and Hobbes books and took me to comic book movies.

One of the reasons I was so determined to make a comic book was because they had told my father that he couldn’t do it. I wanted to make a book and hand it to him. I wanted to let him know that his parents were wrong.

When I originally came up with the story, it was vastly different. The best way to describe it would be crude. It was way more profane and ridiculously immature. However, when I finally decided to make it a more serious story, I needed to find something to ground the story in reality. I decided to use what I saw. My grandfather was a successful man and was well known in my hometown. He was a pastor, a politician, and an educator. People knew who he was. My uncle was a successful businessman and very much like my grandfather. While my father was successful in his own right, it was a different kind of success and because of that he was always looked at as different. I took that dynamic and used it to set the tone for the story you are now reading.

But my father never got to read it.

Still, I am glad for the time that we got to share and appreciative of his constant support. I wish he could have seen the finished book, but I know that he would have loved it.

Happy Birthday Dad

Come in and make yourself at home. I believe an introduction is in order.

Years ago when I was in my final semester of college, I decided that I was going to buckle down and seriously create a comic. I’d written scripts before, but they never made it past the writing phase. I told myself that I would make a full comic and got to work on writing what would become Secrets & Shadows.

Secrets & Shadows is a story that takes place in Haven City, a city filled with cape wearing, crime fighting heroes. The story focuses on Joseph Shaw, the son of the hero Black Sun. Joseph has struggled to live an average quiet life, but people and events from his past are making his dream somewhat difficult. At the same time, a new villain has arrived and is violently dispatching of heroes in the city. Who is this person? What is his or her issue with the seemingly heroic Paragon Society? No one knows, but one thing is for sure, things may not be as they seem.

This comic was a labor of love that I took with me when I got a job in Japan. I worked on it during the March 11th Tsunami, and even after finding out my father (who I based a bit of Joseph on) had passed away. It allowed me to work with other people from all over the world who helped me see it through (which I could have never done it without). And while I’ve been finished with it for some time (I got the last lettered pages four months ago), I never had a concrete plan with what to do once I was done.  So, after months of mulling around, I finally decided to put the book online where I could get a bunch of eyes on it and share it with as many people as possible. Which brings us to now.

To all of the people what helped create this comic, thank you for all of your hard work. Thanks to Steven Forbes for working with me and turning the scripts into something better than they were, Marco Roblin for helping me create the very first issue, Dexter Wee for the great covers as well as the interiors for the rest of the series, Kote Carvajal for the gray scales, Kel Nuttall for the logo and lettering, and Jeremy Colwell for the cover colors. You are all greatly appreciated.

The story will begin next Monday and the comic will update four days a week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday). One of the pluses of having all of the pages is that there will be few lulls or delays (barring something catastrophic). In fact, I have it buffered well into July. So, expect timely updates four times a week.

Now, if you somehow found this site by chance, I hope you like what you read. For the people who have heard me talk about making a comic for years or have seen my bits of progress over time, this is what I was talking about way back when.

Jon