Forces of Good and Evil

Rhys here. This is a very exciting day for me, as today we are publishing the cover for our next big Forces story! And I mean BIG? Now, it is just about 30 pages, this tale; but it is a big deal because it is sort of a dream come true! You might notice this, but there are a TON of characters on this cover. And why is that? Because there are tons of characters inside!

We hinted at some of this on the Epilogue to the last chapter (here) But I think this is as good a place as any to let the cats out of the bags!

In addition to our normal Forces cast, Chad and Greg are taking a road trip through web-comics past! (Well, past to us! Remember, this story is happening in July 2005!) In keeping with all that, allow me to introduce our special guest stars!

If you have been reading Forces since the beginning, you might remember that we started on ComicGenesis way back when. At that time, one of the CG heavy hitters was Terry Cortland. Created by fellow Nebraskan web-comicker Matt Johnson (who also co-created this story’s villain 4n410g), Cortland was an office-comedy-cum-techno-fantasy and the eponymous hero seemed a natural fit for our story, and one Johnson was happy to lend. (I also had the pleasure of interviewing Matt a few years back in an series over on the main site.)

Another CG web-series featured is Simon Shepard‘s NeTrek.  The story of a pair of Ohio teens who got zapped in to the internet in 2002 and embarked on an epic journey home! From here we borrowed the “witch for hire” VanaRo. Simon has since unpublished NeTrek, but you can learn a little about it here.

A little closer to home, long time friend and IC Faithful fan Darby Ellis Lewis Wilson (who had these nice things to say about us) is the co-creator of the sadly defunct Super University for College Kids and he graciously allowed us to invent an alternate reality version of his vision; and to borrow his heroes Grace and Milo.

And rounding out our cover-featured guests are the stars of The Adventures of Seth and Murphy. Little known fact: our very own Chris Lawton used to make a web comic about video games. I convinced him to make one about superhero-teenagers. His first one is better than he remembers, and is fully incorporated into our Ideal Comics continuity. Maybe someday we’ll even finish the story.

Well, that is about all for now. Happy Reading!