Kamloops artist with lifetime love of comics publishes retro style book
A Kamloops artist and comic book fanatic self-published his first comic book called Life The Necropolis, a passion project that took a year in the making.
Nick Klie, who manages a comic book store, has been writing, illustrating, colouring and lettering for the book on his evenings and weekends, driven by a lifetime love of comics.
“As a kid I’d get Archie and GI Joe comics, then went onto Superman, Batman and Spiderman comics,” he said. “I’d bike to the store with my friend on the weekends, buy comics and draw characters all afternoon. I loved it.”
Life The Necropolis is a science fiction adventure illustrated in a retro 1970s fantasy style.
It’s based around a wandering mercenary named Life who travels from village to village and planet to planet fighting mutants to get a farmer’s valuable stolen property back.
“I kind of made it like Disney’s The Jungle Book where the main character meets all of these interesting characters along the way,” he said.
Klie said while a lot of people create short comics on websites, he doesn’t know of anyone else working on producing physical paper comics. Manager at High Octane Comics, he said there has been an increase in interest in comic books over the past few years where parents are introducing their favourite comics and characters to their kids.
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He said his comic has some violence in it and is not appropriate for really young readers, but there isn’t profanity and if parents are all right with kids watching Marvel movies it is similar to that kind of content.
He dedicated the book to his wife for her encouragement and patience.
If he sells enough copies, Klie plans to produce more comics in the future to “keep chasing that childhood dream.”
Copies of Life The Necropolis are for sale at High Octane Comics at 250 3rd Ave downtown Kamloops, open Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Mail-order a copy online here.
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