Kickstarter Spotlight On: Kros: Hallowed Ground by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake

Good morning, Matt Signal readers. You'll be getting your normal Monday reviews later today, but I wanted to take a minute this morning to call attention to a specific Kickstarter that I backed this morning. While it's been featured on Bleeding Cool and Comics Alliance already, and I figure if you're reading my blog you probably read those sites as well, I am so excited I wanted to post this.

I've written plenty about John Ostrander on here. His Star Wars run with Jan Duursema introduced my two favorite Star Wars EU characters from the comics, Quinlan Vos and Darth Krayt, and his 80s and 90s work at DC, including Suicide Squad, The Spectre, Manhunter, and Martian Manhunter are some of the best DC Comics in that era, if not ever. And of course there's Grimjack, his bounty hunter sci-fi/magic comic that is one of the great indies of that era. And his collaborator on more than a few of those projects, including Spectre and Martian Manhunter (as well as a four issue arc on Batman), as well as part of Grimjack, was artist Tom Mandrake, whose heavy blacks and dynamic lines make him one of my favorite artists in comics.

Well these two legends of the medium have a new Kickstarter that just went live a few days ago, Kros: Hallowed Ground.  It's a horror comic set against the real world horror that was the Battle of Gettysburg. It's the story of Kros, a vampire hunter, fighting in two wars, the American Civil War by day, and his war against the undead by night. Ostrander has shown a deft hand at writing stories set in the American past, with his multi-generation story of Superman's adopted family, The Kents (part of which was drawn by Mandrake), and two stories set in Marvel's old west, Blaze of Glory and Apache Skies. And Mandrake has drawn some great horror comics over the years, including the awkwardly named but highly amusing Superman and Batman Vs. Vampires and Werewolves, and you have to have horror chops to draw the Spectre, believe me. Check out some art from Kros below to see how great it looks.

I've backed a lot of comics Kickstarters, talked about a few here, and plan to write some up as they arrive. But this book, with this caliber of creators? I had to get the word out so more of you can enjoy. Check out the link here if you didn't click it above for more details, and let's see this book get made.