October Dawn: Coming Spring 2013
With a special thanks to Ty Templeton for the inspiration.
Season 2 Teaser
Last weekend we shot the first scene of Heroes of the North Season 2! You can view the results on our Facebook page. It was a cold day and a tough shoot because it was raining heavily, especially in the afternoon. But everyone involved had a lot of fun! Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Our (first) most important post of the year
The Heroes of the North 80 pages behemoth, Omnibus volume 2, will hit the comic book stores everywhere in North America this fall - September to be precise. Yet, you should nag your favourite friendly comic book store this month (July) about it. Or, alternatively, if you live abroad or do not have a comic book store nearby, you can also pre-order it from our online store.This is the wraparound cover for the second Omnibus, by Geof Isherwood.
Why now? What is the rush?, do you ask? Because the way it works is as follows: The book is currently being solicited now in comic book stores all across America in a magazine/catalog called Previews and published by Diamond Comics - which is pretty much the sole distributor of comics in North America for the retailers.
Retailers ie your favourite comic book store, must collect their orders during that month and submit them at the end of it to Diamond, who will in turn, inform the publishers of the minimum amount of copies the publisher needs to make to fulfill the demand, in order for everyone to minimize their risks, especially on lesser known titles like ours.
Now here is the rub: comics are a tough business these days and most retailers are pretty conservative. They usually stick to what they know and that is why they are still in business. They do not want to get stuck with stuff that does not sell and so on. And no one can blame them for that. But if their clients ask for it, they will order it. Maybe a few more, because there is a demand. And that is good for us and the show, for many reasons. Keep reading to find out why...
For the first Omnibus, the book was under ordered by a lot of retailers - most stores had ran out of the books three weeks after its release! - and they had to order more the next month. Thankfully we over printed a bit for conventions and so on - and we were (barely) able to meet up the demand. Whatever we had left for conventions has been selling like hot cakes with the end result that we have almost none left! If you want to get your hands on it, you can always visit our store or perhaps we will have some at the next convention, but that is the extent of it: a few dozens left.The cover of the first Heroes of the North Omnibus, released in February 2012.
Now you may be thinking that we are making lots of money going through Diamond , with its extended distribution market that is so much wider than anything we could humanely cover on our own, but the truth is we are not: once you factor in the printing fees, Diamond’s own, huge distributor’s cut (60%!), our publisher’s share and other expenses like the fees of the artists and other contributors themselves, not to mention the cost of shipping at almost every steps, there is really not that much left, quite frankly. Not enough for a profit.
But going through Diamond allows us to get the book far and wide and spread the news of the shows to people we could never afford to reach otherwise. And that is why we do it and it is also why we ask you to order it from your retailers instead of through us, even though we technically lose money when you do it at this point.
As the books get more popular, get great reviews and so on, the show also gets more known and it helps on many fronts - people end up buying merchandise that is not available anywhere but in our store, they talk about the show to their friends and neighbours, they buy the next comic and so on… Allowing us to continue our growth.
And who knows, one day we might reach the critical mass in comics sales to an extent sufficient to make us a decent profit once all the people in the chain have taken their fees and all expenses are paid. We are not there yet but we are not that far off either. And with your help, we can definitely get there.
We want to do more comics and we want to keep going with the show. It is difficult but also a lot of fun and very rewarding on so many levels.
So, what can you expect in this new book, besides comics that are already on the site? As it turns out, a lot! In the first book, we only had one extra stories that appeared nowhere else. We have several more for this book. Here is a run down:
The book will feature five of the 12 pages book currently (or soon to be!) available on the site. They are:
- Nordik and 8 Ball Team-up: Chilling me softly, written by Yann Brouillette, with art by David J. Cutler, colours and lettering by Keiren Smith.
- 8 Ball and Black Terror team-up: The Bang Bang Theory, written by Yann Brouillette, with art by Gibson Quarter (with some inks by Guillermo Ortego), colours and lettering by Keiren Smith.
- The Archie style hilarious romp called Zombots being schooled, written by Yann Brouillette, with art and colours by Dan Parent and lettering by Zen.
- The tragedy packed Acadia: Pretty Clear, written by Yann and Michel Brouillette, with stunning art by Geof Isherwood, and colours and lettering by Keiren Smith.
And, last but not least, a superb story of the Canadian written by Canadian comic legend Ty Templeton, definitely the man for the job, illustrated by Daniel Wong. Those five 12 pages stories make up some two-third of the book’s sixty pages. There is twenty more to go. Here is the line up for those:
- A 12 pages, psychedelic and bat shit insane crazy Black Terror story called The Dark Alley, written by Yann Brouillette, illustrated by Zach Fisher, coloured by Aljoša Tomić and lettered by Zen. What happens in this one is so insane, we would not know where to start if we tried to explain it. So we won’t. An image should suffice:
- There is a fun little mystery three pages story called Blood Bath, featuring 8 Ball and Alpha Q, written by Yann Brouillette, illustrated by Geof Isherwood, coloured by Aljoša Tomić and lettered by Zen.
- A short but gorgeous Pacifica story called ASAP written by Yann Brouillette, with art by David Cutler, coloured by Aljoša Tomić and lettered by Zen.
- and we round up the book with a New Felquistes Halloween tale called October Crisis, written by Jean-Dominic Leduc and illustrated by Geof Isherwood.
With this line-up, we managed to feature every single characters featured on the gorgeous cover above, illustrated by Geof Isherwood. Every single one of our Heroes, and indirectly, our current main villains, made it in this 80 pages collection!
And you get all that Canadian superhero madness for six bucks! Canadian! We are not kidding, folks! As a reviewer said (about the first book): “Heroes of the North is the best bang for your buck right now in the comic book world!”. We may be biased, but we strongly agree with that! And we are bold enough to think we even topped it for the encore!
So spread the word! Like this post, tweet it, google plus it, whatever you need to do to let it be known that the time to get the book is NOW! And order it now yourselves, regardless of the way you choose to do so!
We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support. And we look forward to entertain you with the book this fall!
The Heroes of the North Team
ARDENN ENTERTAINMENT SEPTEMBER RELEASES
Featuring the stories available in the comic book section of the site, it also features several new stories not available anywhere else, including a story with the New Felquists, Pacifica, Alpha Q and 8 Ball, as well as a trippy Black Terror tale.
Here is the description synopsis:
Nordik and 8 Ball team up to elucidate cold blooded murders. 8 Ball and Black Terror bring down a counterfeiters ring. The Canadian, Fleur-de-Lys and Nordik thwart a zombots attack in Riverdale, Toronto. A CDO agent discovers what it means to be The Canadian. A young orphan becomes Acadia. All that and more in this 80 pages follow-up to the Heroes of the North: Dark Origins!
Order it now from your favourite comic book shop if you do not want to miss it!!!
Heroes of the North, Archie style...
MAJOR UPDATE TIME - PART TWO: EPISODES
EPISODES: Three out of the four episodes left to release are for the most part edited - the sound needs to be done on them. Three of the last four episodes have a lot of special effects in them and it has taken longer than anticipated to finish those amidst all the other complicaitons. We are working hard on getting it done and at least two of them should be released very shortly.
DVD: The release of the DVD has been delayed because of the episodes. This is both a good and a bad thing - bad because we cannot send the DVD right away, good because we have more time to had more features to it.
DVD Launch: Several fans have asked us to make a public DVD launch with a screening of episodes. We are planning one in July. More details to come. But we will also make it an exposition of costumes, props, art and other HOTN related stuff.
Season 2: Several comics a quite a few episodes have been written for Season 2 with more on the way. We are currently starting writing a few more. We start shooting Season 2 in August and September of this year.
Secret Project: Those of you who remember a few posts in this blog about the secret project will be pleased to hear it is progressing well. We should have something to show you very soon! It is very exciting and the whole team is pumped with even the partial imagery we have at the moment.
Website: We are still working on the best solution to accommodate all possible platforms via flexible width. Not perfect but it seems to be the best direction to take. We are learning as we go, so bear with us. That is also a big reason we are behind.
Internet Explorer: We officially no longer support this piece of crap browser. It is not standard and causes all kinds of conflicts and problems. Until Windows gets its act together, we strongly suggest you use one of the many, free browsers out there made by people who actually use the internet. Suggestions: Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera. Your computer - and web designers world wide, will thank you with tears in their eyes.
All in all, this is pretty much where we are at. Since yesterday, strangely enough, we have picked up some steam on a number of comics. Some are getting significantly closer to completion. Expect new material very soon!!!
And thank you for your extreme patience!
Sincerely,
The (exhausted) HOTN team
MAJOR UPDATE TIME! PART ONE: COMICS
We know it has been a while since new episodes and new comics have come up on the site. Be reassured - we are not dead yet. In the spirit of being honest and transparent with our fans and supporters, here is what is happening:
We had a month long conventions sequence that took us literally from one end of the country to the other. The logistics and preparation for that took its toll on our small crew. But it is not the only cause of delays.
For some reason, despite a healthy diversification of our artists and pencilers, most of our books are severely behind for reasons out of our control. Several of our pencilers had to deal with either health related or family and/or business related issues. with the end result that a lot of books are delayed. Which brings us to the following comic book related updates:
- Mr. Richard Pace, who was to pencil and ink the most excellent Ty Templeton scripted comic of The Canadian had to bailed out of those duties for health reasons. Consequently, we now welcome Daniel Wong to the team, who will pick up on Mr. Pace’s duties and will heroically attempt to nevertheless help us deliver the book on time for the end of the month for the upcoming Heroes of the North: Missions comic book coming out this summer via Ardenn Entertainment. Which is where we remind you to order the book from your favourite comic book retailer!!! Hopefully we manage to make that deadline and get that wonderful story in the book! If it does not make it in the book, you will at least get to enjoy it in our comic books section later this summer.
- You probably saw some work in progress on a Black Terror story by Zach Fisher, who did those terminally cute Chibis versions of our characters a little while back. Well, Zach has been hard at work on a very strange Black Terror story that will also be featured exclusively in our upcoming summer book. We do not want to tell you anything about this story except that it is so wild and fun, it is definitely not one you will not want to miss… Especially since it will only be available in the printed version of the Heroes of the North: Missions Omnibus! This story is also notable because we are introducing to you a new member of our little team, a new colourist from Serbia, Aljoša Tomić. Welcome to the team Aljoša! Aljoša joins to team to helps us lighten the load on poor Keiren Smith, who besides having life complications of her very own, was now faced with an incredible amount of pages to colour and letter since so many books were delayed… They are now typically, arriving mostly at the same time… Which created a major clog in the work flow and sadly amplified the delays.
- Another story that will only be found in the upcoming book is a tale called Politically Incorrect, by Yann Brouillette and masterfully illustrated by Geof Isherwood. This one is right on time. But it was meant as a back up tale. From the looks of it, it will end up in the book as well! And it definitely earned it - the art is simply stunning! Isherwood fans will be happy to hear that he also contributed his considerable talents to two short tales that will also be exclusive to the Heroes of the North: Missions release. One features the New Felquists and Fleur-de-Lys while the other is a fun 3 pages romp starring 8 Ball and Alpha Q called Blood Bath. Which is also our cue to introduce Zen, another talent coming to the rescue to help us get the books out on time! Zen will be lettering the shorter stories - and perhaps a few longer ones, in order to ease the burden on Keiren… who is heroically colouring and lettering an Acadia story, drawn by Geof Isherwood as well and written by Yann and Michel Brouillette, which will also be part of the book and very soon available online in our comic book section as well.
- Another story about to hit our comic book section very soon is the long awaited team-up by Archie artist Dan Parent. The Zombots being schooled story is a lot of fun and we just cannot wait for you to read it!!! It will be part of the book being released this summer as well.
- Those who enjoyed the art of our last Nordik/8 Ball team-up will be happy to learn that another exclusive story, a Pacifica tale this time, has been penciled and inked by David Cutler, with colours by Aljoša Tomić and lettering by Zen. And to complete the book, there will be the 8 Ball and Black Terror tale penciled by Gibson Quarter!
- And while it is not part of the next book, another important piece is being finished as we speak, albeit terribly late as well. We are talking about the 24 pages Season Finale book, which wraps up Season One and is written by Yann and Michel Brouillette, penciled by Olivier Raymond and inked by Kellam Templeton. This one is an action packed piece featuring most of the characters of Heroes of the North and is NOT to be missed!
Well, that is already a pretty major post and we have just covered the comics! So if you have read this far, you can pretty much surmised that we had our hands pretty busy just with conventions and comics! But stay tuned tomorrow as we will go over what is happening with the remaining episodes, the Season One DVD release, Season 2 preparations and more!
The Heroes of the North: Dark Origins Signing Tour
To celebrate the North American release of our comic book compilation published by Ardden Entertainment, we are going on tour! So far, we have three locations confirmed in Quebec City, Montreal and Ottawa. Keep an eye out on our Events page for more locations and dates as we get them confirmed.
Come get your copy of the book and get it signed by the writer(s), artist(s) and get your picture taken with some of the actors of the series! We will also bring some of our merchandising, so you can stock up on Heroes of the North goodies and save on those crazy shipping costs!
So far the dates and locations are:
Boutique L’Imaginaire, Quebec City, Saturday, Janurary 28, 2012, 9:00 - 5:00 PM.
2740 blvd. Laurier, Place Laurier Shopping Mall
3rd Floor, Ste-Foy (Québec)
Who will be there: Hornet (Marie-Claude Bourbonnais), 8 Ball (Anderson Bradshaw), Artist OIivier Raymond and writer Yann Brouillette.
Expert Comics, Ville LaSalle, Saturday, February 4th, 2012.
8185, Newman Blvd, Ville LaSalle, (Québec)
Who will be there: 8 Ball (Anderson Bradshaw), other actors TBD at the moment, Artist Olivier Raymond and writer Yann Brouillette.
The Comic Book Shoppe, Ottawa, Sunday, February 5th, 2012, 11:00-5:00 PM.
228 Bank Street, Ottawa, Ontario
Who will be there: TBD.
Heroes of the North: Newsmakers!
Here you have it! The interview the Heroes of the North gave last week to Montreal anchor and all-around nice guy Todd Van der Heyden which was aired today as part of the CTV News Montreal NEWSMAKERS segment. The interview features Larry Vinette as The Canadian, Marie-Claude Bourbonnais as Hornet and Anderson Bradshaw as 8 Ball.
Expert Comics Interviews
While we were at the last Montreal Comicon, we had the pleasure of being interviewed by Dave Michaels who runs Full Page Bleed, one of the many blogs at Expert Comics, a Montreal virtual comic book shop.
Dave conducted two interviews with us. One with Hornet aka Marie-Claude Bourbonnais, complete with a cosplay souvenir book and one with Christian Viel and Yann Brouillette. Dave also did a little run down of his adventures.
You can also find both of these interviews in the press section of our MEDIAS menu.
Heroes of the North now on First Run TV!
TECH SHEETS GALORE!
Already ONE YEAR!
To celebrate, we have decided to put online the screenplays to the Origins episodes. You can access them from the spiffy new Episodes menus for the Origins block our directly on the episode page, by clicking on the script icon below the CAST AND CREW icon.
For those with an interest in production, it will be the perfect way to see where things went wrong, what went well, what was improved or destroyed.
It also allows you to see how we manage to shoot the episode, often with limited resources. How faithful, or not, we manage to remain to the source material.
In any case, we thought it would be a cool addition to the episodes and if it turns out to be popular, we may well implement it on all episodes.
Let us know if you want more by firing us up some emails.
The End is Near: Medusa Rising
MegaCon Sampler DVD
The Heroes of the North Team
