About Us
KCC was founded in January 2009 by Nick Orsa. Originally a solo effort on a single comic series, it
eventually expanded, bringing in new artists and new
perspectives. Despite roster changes, Kestrel City comics remains true to its founding principle: We reject the polarization of adventure storytelling in modern comics and
television, where pieces marketed to adults are soaked in blood and sex, and pieces marketed to children are stupid, innane, and poorly-written. Young men and women are smarter than
they're given credit for and can handle more complex themes and characters than those presented in such vapid productions as "Batman: The Brave and the Bold." And for grown-up folks
like me, there's no shame in enjoying the same comic that one of my teenaged cousins might read.
Ultra-Secret Invisible Text! Warning: Do not read. Knowledge of this sentence is illegal in the sovereign nation of Mars!
About Specter
by creator Nick Orsa
I came up with Specter when I was twelve. At the time, I called him "the Shadow" (this was before I knew anything about Lamont Cranston) and had him dressed in a black helmet with a polarized visor and clunky silver and black armor. He had ghostly powers (a theme I abandoned in favor of teleportation after Danny Phantom appeared two years later in 2004 and swiped the concept-- no hard feelings though. It was a great show. Wish it had stayed on the air longer). I soon abandoned the Shadow to the bottom of my binder and focused on another character, Goshawk, who looked better in a visored helmet anyway.
I think what brought me back to Specter was the film "Batman Begins," released in June 2005, a year after Danny Phantom. I enjoyed the movie so much because it played up the stealth aspects of the costumed hero, the tactics of surprise and intimidation--things that could never be believably attempted by my smiling, handsome, brightly-colored hawk hero. I went back to Specter and, after a massive re-design, embraced him as the true hero of Kestrel City. Four years after "Batman Begins," I became determined to turn Specter into a comic series and KCC was the eventual result.
Specter's story is about contradictions. Here is a kid with the power to go anywhere, and yet is trapped by his family's troubles. He is a costumed hero with super powers, but he can't save his mother from her worsening dementia or his friend Karen from her unhappy relationship. He is destined to save the world, but also to destroy it. In a more general sense, Specter is also about young people coming into their own and coming to grips with a much larger, and more complicated world, and the way their experiences shape who they become.
About Warlock
by creator Nick Orsa
Warlock, strangely enough, started as a love story I wrote when I was fifteen. It was fourteen pages of single-spaced, twelve point type in length, and while the craftsmanship was not too bad for my age, it was still just your normal teenaged schpiel about how I felt alienated and unaccepted by my peers and how all my hope for redemption rested with a girl I was quite madly in love with at the time. It was a simple story. Oliver the warlock was me, and May Levesque was Amy, the girl I was interested in. May rejected Oliver when she discovered what he was--just as Amy kicked me to the proverbial curb--but came back in the end to save him and they had hot make-outs forever, the end. The last bit was wishful thinking on my part, but it actually came true. Amy and I eventually got together seriously and had some very nice make-outs. We dated for the better part of two years after high school and then broke up. I haven't seen her since, but what we had together was just exactly what I had wanted.
Oliver, however, went on, even after Amy had gone. I continued his story, beginning a year after the end of the first piece (which had been entitled "Real Magic") when Oliver and May split up. Oliver and I grew more and more distinct from each other until we were two completely different people. Thank goodness for that. I'd hate to be one of those painfully obvious autobiographical writers. I actually ground out about 350 pages--single-spaced, twelve point type-- of a novel before it petered out. Still, I knew there was a nugget of goodness in the story. It had stopped being about a pathological need for someone, and turned into a story about accepting yourself as you are, and about Oliver's eventual realization that being alone didn't have to be a tragedy. So, when KCC began expanding, I knew Warlock had to be converted into a comic so that maybe Oliver's story can finally be told in its entirety.
Specter: Herald of Ku, Warlock, and all related images, characters, and content
© Kestrel City Comics Group.