Sidekicks Impressions, News and Pictures
I recently had a chance to look over the Preview Edition of Sidekicks and I must say, it was quite impressive.
The 8 page preview was a little too short to get a good feel for the story, being mostly just an introduction to the protagonist, Terry Highland, upon her first visit to a new school, Shuster Academy. Even so, the short progression left me interested in her character and curious to find out what J. Torres, Sidekicks' writer, has in store for the rest of the series. While a judgement on the story will have to wait, I can safely say the art had an immediate appeal, both in its style and its attention to detail. One aspect in particular that caught my eye was the character designs, possessing a solid sense of realism, yet being anything but drab, each character having a unique visual personality. This is the first piece I've seen illustrated by Takeshi Miyazawa, but I definitely hope to see more, both in the way of upcoming Sidekicks issues and other future projects.
To give you an idea of what to expect from this series visually, I've put together a couple of image galleries. The first page, containing a series of character design sketches, as well as a couple of preliminary pages from the manga, can be viewed here. The second page can be accessed here and features a couple of pages directly from the Sidekicks Preview Edition, as well as the cover art from issue 1, 2 and the Preview Edition.
The series will start in earnest on June 14th with the release of the first full issue, followed by the second issue on July 12th. How the story of these superpowered sidekicks in training will unfold is yet to be seen, but I'm certainly looking forward to finding out.
In other Sidekicks news, Fanboy recently announced plans to expand the first issue, going from an original page count of 32 pages to a new count of 40 pages. This change came in light of the fact that Takeshi had originally run a little wild in his illustration, surpassing the original count by 3 pages, necessitating a reworking of several scenes. It was planned to rework the pages found in the Preview Edition, but considering how well this book was received, it was decided to leave the pages as is.
More changes on the Sidekicks front include the announcement of variant covers for each issue, in an equal ratio for each cover, as well as a relettering of the dialogue to make it easier to read. I personally found the original lettering quite pleasant, complementing the art nicely by its personal feel, but I can't argue with a functional change to deal with any difficulty in reading it. Some of the artists on board to do the variant covers include Kia Asamiya, Ed McGuiness, Mike Wieringo and Keron Grant. For full details on these changes, take a look at the following press release.
In a final bit of Fanboy news, they recently launched their official website at www.fanboyinc.com. The page contains information and art on the various books and merchandise they publish, as well as daily anime, manga and comic news. Fanboy's C.B. Cebulski hopes that the site will blossom into a thriving community for anime, manga and comic fans alike, providing a forum to interact with each other, as well as give feedback to the folks at Fanboy directly. Here's the full press release on the matter.
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