Alternative/Indie Transmedia Studio Black Mask Gets Comics

And there came a day unlike any other, where a rag-tag team of alternative comic book writers and artists joined together to start the indie-est, most alternative transmedia publishing company the world has never seen before.

V for Vendetta team Alan Moore and David Lloyd, Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus creator Art Spiegelman, The Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard, Mike Allred (Madman), Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night), J.M. DeMatteis (Justice League, Spider-Man), Molly Crabapple (Shell Game) and Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and Ghostface Killah, among many others have joined Black Mask Studios created by comic book writer Steve Niles, entrepreneur Matt Pizzolo and Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz

“The way we put together the slate is with wanting to push the boundaries of what can be done in comics,” said Pizzolo told THR, who notes that Black Mask will operate under the mottos “to create you must destroy” and “Inspire, never meddle.”

“One of the chief goals is to expand the audience of comics,” he said. “We are trying to do that by bringing in different sensibilities, like Wu-Tang, like hard sci-fi and futurism, and with madcap energy. Remember books like Transmetropolitan? You don’t see much of that today.”

The first book that will be hitting shelves May 1st will be the politically themed Occupy Comics Anthology, featuring the three issue miniseries created by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

The next, coming May 29, will be 12 Reasons to Die by the RZA and Ghostface Killah. The release corresponding with Ghostface Killah’s next studio album. Described as “a brutal tale of gangsters, betrayal and one vengeful soul hunting the 12 most powerful crime lords in the world,” 12 Reasons to Die will also feature a stream of rotating artists on the project.

June 19 Black Mask will release Liberator, from writer Matt Miner and artist Joel Gomez, a vigilante series about two young heroes who avenge the torture of animals.

Finally, coming June 26, Transmetropolitan co-creator Darick Robertson and indie filmmaker Adam Egypt Mortimer will release Ballistic, “a psychedelic and bizarre buddy adventure about an air conditioner repairman with master-criminal dreams and his best friend, a drug-addicted, genetically modified, foul-mouthed firearm.”