Brian Payne

When I first started reading comics, John Byrne was writing and drawing "Fantastic Four" and Walt Simonson was soon doing the same on "Thor." I read them along with other comic books like "Iron Man," "Daredevil," "Batman" and "The Legion." Another comic I particularly liked was "The All Star Squadron" written by Roy Thomas. However, I soon discovered books like "Eightball" and "Yummy Fur" and all the other so called "alternative" comics. These books (or at least one of their publishers) have always pretended to be better than and/or too good for superheroes. But if that is indeed the case, it's hard to explain why then did the cream of the "alternative" cartoonist crop recently line up to draw Marvel's new "Strange Tales" book.

I was always a big fan of Bob Burden's "Flaming Carrot" and "Mystery Men." I also loved Don Simpson's "Bizarre Heroes." But recently, I read Mike Allred's "The Atomics" and Jay Stephens's "Atomic City Tales" for the first time and rediscovered my own secret love of superheroes. However, nowadays the only comic I actually collect is Dave Sim's "Glamourpuss" which is a parody of fashion magazines, a sureal super-heroine comic and most importantly a history of the photorealistic comic strip. This is why after completing "Jake Wilde" I was inspired to try my hand at a newspaper style comic. I was also encouraged by strips like "World Of Hurt" by Jay Potts, "Red Sparrow" by Steve Fuentes, and especially "Project Auberdem" by Ron Gravelle. (You can check their comics out by clicking on the links below.)

I briefly considered drawing another western, a soap opera, or a space fantasy but I had to admit that I had masks on my mind. Recalling classic strips like "The Phantom" or "The Spirit" I decided to combine my desire to draw a new adventure strip with my old love of superheroes and came up with a group of masked detectives I call "The Midnight Agents." I've already drawn twenty four strips or four weeks worth of "dailies" but because of my impending return to "Indian Country" I won't be able to ink or post any of these strips online for a month or two. I hope that you are now at least looking forward to reading them and will wait patiently until I make my move and can begin to post these new comics online.

http://worldofhurtonline.com/

http://steve-fuentes.livejournal.com/18835.html

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/rono64/ausserdem/series.php?view=single&ID=154434