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Exclusive: Heroes and villains make all the wrong choices in Mark Russell's superhero spoof 'My Bad'
In this new series from Mark Russell, Bryce Ingman, and Peter Krause, the greatest enemy is a superhero's own ego.
Imagine a whole new universe of superheroes and supervillains, each with their own unique name, costume, and set of powers. Now imagine just about everyone in that universe makes really strange, often really crummy life choices. That's the starting point of My Bad, a new superhero satire from AHOY Comics created by writers Mark Russell (Second Coming) and Bryce Ingman (Edgar Allan Poe's Snifter of Terror) and artist Peter Krause (Irredeemable). First announced at Comic-Con@Home over the summer, the series promises to sarcastically usher in an "important new superhero universe" often driven by good guys and bad guys doing some really ill-advised stuff.
"My Bad is a sort of unique comic book universe, resigned to telling the story of the poorly conceived life-choices of the heroes and villains who populate it," Russell told SYFY WIRE. "About how, whether they are 'good' or 'bad', their decisions are ultimately driven by ego."
The five-issue series will begin with two parallel narratives, one written by Russell and the other written by Ingman, both set in the same universe, both illustrated by Krause, and both often following the same characters. At the center of each story is Emperor King, a supervillain with a couple of different grudges against heroes who constantly foil his plan. In Russell's story "Happy Birthday," Emperor King sends a strange birthday gift to his nemesis, a superhero dubbed The Chandelier, who's both perplexed and unnerved by the gift and becomes obsessed with the idea that his secret identity might have leaked out into the world.
In the exclusive preview pages below, you can get just a taste of what that looks like.
Meanwhile, in Ingman's story, "Two Minutes," Emperor King has hatched a plot to catch his other nemesis, the blue-skinned alien speedster known as The Accelerator, and he's set up an extremely elaborate set of death traps in order to pull it off. Then, something unexpected happens: He captures someone he didn't mean to grab. You can check out the beginning of that story in the exclusive pages below (Warning: A little NSFW language ahead.)
"There's a place where blue-skinned alien super-speedsters have their own chicken restaurant chains," Ingman said, teasing the series. "And rich men build sixteen-stage torture traps on the rooftops of their headquarters hoping to catch blue-skinned alien super-speedsters. And other rich men run around fighting crime with chandeliers on their heads while worrying about the implications of unsolicited salad shooters they receive in the mail. It's a place where young men who dress up like traffic lights to fight highway crime accidentally end up in sixteen-stage torture traps that weren't meant for them. And giant anthropomorphic lizards bargain for lamps. And pop culture arguments transform men into superhuman monsters. It's a place where people eat the biggest bologna sandwiches you've ever seen. And adorable chimps run around with buckets of acid. It's your new favorite place. It's My Bad."
The first issue of My Bad arrives from AHOY on November 3. By the time the fifth issue rolls around, Russell and Ingman plan to merge their stories together, creating a payoff that will ring through the whole My Bad universe. For more from the first issue, including covers and a table of contents, check out the gallery below.
