Radiant Black, Kyle Higgins and Marcelo Costa’s tokusatsu-influenced superhero hero series, has already expanded its world beyond its titular hero with not just similar wielders of Radiant Black’s cosmic powers, but also with Mat Groom and Erica D’Urso’s Kickstarted upcoming series Inferno Girl Red. Now, they’re being joined by a third.
io9 has the first details from Higgins, Groom, Parrott, and Abel about the team’s plans for Supermassive, a new one-shot crossover between Radiant Black, Inferno Girl Red, and the new hero Rogue Sun, whose adventures will continue in a new ongoing series. The books will be published by Image Comics, which recently chose not to voluntary recognise a union established by its employees in a major sea change for the comics industry.
Supermassive will be written by Higgins, Groom, and Parrott, and feature art from Francesco Manna, who has previously worked with Higgins and Groom at Marvel on their official Ultraman miniseries. “One of the things I love most in the world of comics is the feeling between creators working on a project,” Manna said of working with his Ultra collaborators again, in a statement provided to Gizmodo over email. “It’s a synergy that drives every story and every page to its best. That’s what brings Kyle, Mat, and I together again for this Supermassive story. It’s thrilling, because Kyle, Mat, and Ryan are the story’s writers and the creators of their own characters. It’s very challenging to work on these well-known characters who have their own personal structure and universes; to stage them into a unique world pushes the tokusatsu mechanisms to a new level.”
“There’s a tremendous freedom that comes with doing creator-owned comics. But that freedom comes with a responsibility — to experiment, to swing for the fences… and maybe even to encourage people to rethink where the fence should be,” Groom added in their own statement. “I think anybody who has been reading Radiant Black can attest to the fact that Kyle and Marcelo have been living up to this responsibility–and I see Supermassive as not only continuing this, but escalating it dramatically. There’s a reason we gave it that name!”
“The best part of making comic books is the collaboration. My favourite part is when that collaboration is with your friends. From Power Rangers to Ultraman, Mat, Ryan and I have done quite a bit of world building together,” Higgins said of the collaboration, “all of which feels a bit like a warmup act for what we’re building now. To echo Mat’s sentiment — there’s a reason we’re calling this Supermassive.” The one-shot Supermassive story will mark an Image debut for the star of Inferno Girl Red — a young girl named Cássia Costa, who finds her city invaded by demons and herself destined to battle them when a mysterious armlet bonds to her, letting her transform into a masked hero. But it will also introduce a hero we’ve not met yet at all, ahead of their own comic series: Rogue Sun.
The new series, written by Boom Studio’s Mighty Morphin’ and Power Rangers alum Ryan Parrott, and featuring art from Harley Quinn’s Abel, as well as colours from Chris O’Halloran, will follow a young teenager named Dylan Siegel, who finds out that not only has his his father been murdered, but that he was also secretly the superhero Rogue Sun. Now tasked with solving the mystery of his father’s death and with inheriting the Rogue Sun mantle, Dylan has to save the world and process his tumultuous past relationship with is father.
“To me, the beauty of the original Image shared superhero universe was that it was modern, accessible and free from the weight of massive corporate oversight,” Parrott said in his own statement. “It felt like it was just a bunch of friends telling stories together and we wanted Supermassive to encapsulate that same spirit.”
“It feels to me like Rogue Sun was never created; he just burst out in front of us,” Abel added. “Being part of this is a thrilling flight in so many ways!”
Supermassive and Rogue Sun will be released in February 2022.
Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.