Small Press Heroes

by a Cadre of Creators

The latest celebration of old-school adventure comics by a barrelful of talented creators, including a Black Fury story told by four different creative teams!

_{Full-size 44-page comic, color cover w/b+w interiors. $6 with a Patreon subscription!}

Sample pages:

Jason‘s thoughts:

I’ve been a member of the YEET Patreon for a bit now and have been thoroughly enjoying each adventure-filled issue they put out, largely because of the sheer joy that clearly is going into the production of each issue. But it’s this issue that really got me hooked. As you may be aware, I love a good jam comic. I love the collaborative nature, the fun competitiveness and the excitement of never knowing where the story is going to go. And as I was reading the intro to “The Exquisite Challenge”, I realized I was about to read a very special comic.

As Bob Kroll explains in the intro, the story is in part an homage to the “DC Challenge” and the “Kamandi Challenge” (neither of which I’d heard of but immediately sought out). In short, one creative team starts the story and ends with a cliffhanger that the next creative team has to resolve and so on and so forth. In other words, a jam comic! And while jam comics can run the risk of becoming disjointed and incoherent, I was incredibly impressed with how smoothly the story flowed as each team picked up the creative baton. Not only that, but while the artistic styles obviously changed, all of the artists really brought out their best. I particularly enjoyed Kent Clark’s section, mostly because of the awesome splash page of Black Fury riding a shark.

There was also a great back-up feature where all the creators discussed their own ideas of how they pictured the story would go and I absolutely loved Scott Mollon’s fantastic exploration of potential alternate versions of Black Fury that frankly, I hope the team explores further. Ultimately, the entire project was exactly what I love about small press comics, a bunch of creative folks having a good old time, and it clearly came through on each and every page.

And that was only ONE of the stories in this one! There was another solid Black Fury story pitting him against the White Warrior, plus an interesting first chapter of a sci-fi story about exploring an alien planet, which is always a good time, and a fun, odd little tale involving a. . .pepper monster maybe? Plus it’s a flip book, another nice touch and there’s also a good old-fashioned letters page.

Speaking of flip books, both covers were fantastic, but I’m absolutely in love with Clayton Murin‘s artwork. I wasn’t familiar with his stuff, but his cover of Black Fury about to toss the White Warrior is absolutely fantastic!

My only suggestion, for what it’s worth, would be to make it easier to figure out not only who did what but also how to see more of their stuff. Besides the link to Clayton’s FB page and the YEET Patreon page, there were no other links to folks’ work and there was no credit at all from what I could see of who did the pepper monster story. Part of it is really just me being selfish, because if I had everybody’s websites available, I’d be reaching out to all of them to work on the Sunday Jam.

But on the other hand, it does speak to the spirit of the YEET series, which is a bunch of creators having fun and not worrying too much about self-promotion. Which I deeply respect, and so I’ll be anxiously awaiting my next issue to see what new adventures these talented creators will bring. And definitely hope one of them will be another Exquisite Challenge. . .