Writer/artist Bruno Stahl will launch his first-ever crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter this week, for Boom Bandits: The Complete Saga from HellDunkel Studios. With cover and print colors by Felipe Sobreiro, a foreword by Pat Mills, and edits by Odette Schofield, Boom Bandits is a cyberpunk satire saga partially inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road.
Here’s the synopsis:
A battle for technological supremacy left the world in ruins. As the elite fled to their fortified city, Methuseland, where genetic enhancements granted them indefinite life, the surviving youth of the wasteland—dubbed “Guttersnipes”—became a rebellious force. To crush this insurgence, Methuseland’s rulers unleashed the Youthanisers—cybernetic enforcers designed to keep the young in line. In this dystopian warzone, young rebels Freydank and Pixie find themselves on the run, pursued by the most fearsome of the Youthanisers. But when they unearth a long-buried relic, the spark of revolution ignites, setting the stage for an all-out battle against the oppressive elite.
Check out cover and interior art for Boom Bandits below.
“Boom Bandits officially started as a lockdown project—but its roots go back to the early 2000s. Back then, as a geriatric millennial fresh out of art school, you couldn’t check the news without stumbling across yet another article declaring us the laziest, most entitled, and least competent generation in history,” Stahl said.
“Apparently, all our financial struggles were self-inflicted, and if we just stopped whining and worked as hard as the Boomers did—cough, cough—we too could afford nice things— Well, Boom Bandits is my answer to that,” he continued.
“Visually, I wanted it to embody the raw, unfiltered energy of a real comic book. The page layouts, the frantic pacing—everything should make it unmistakable. Boom Bandits is pure, anarchic comics. One of my biggest inspirations was Mad Max: Fury Road—not so much for the post-apocalyptic punks, but for the way it builds character through action,” Stahl explained. “Like Fury Road, Boom Bandits relies on momentum rather than exposition—no clunky dialogue, no captions spoon-feeding the plot. Will I succeed? That’s for the reader to decide.”
Pat Mills, who wrote the foreword, said, “The art is wonderfully loose and dynamic. The gang scenes are out of this world. And I’m so envious of the Youthanisers who deal with the problem of youth infestation. Such a great name for villains! I can’t wait to see more. This is a classic in the making.”
Boom Bandits will go live on Kickstarter on Thursday, September 25, and you can sign up to be notified on launch.
