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Evil Knievel Jumps Onto Kickstarter For New Comic Book Series

Evil Knievel jumps over seven buses onto Kickstarter for a new comic book series, launching today

When I was a kid in the seventies in the UK, the most famous American to us, more than Neil Armstrong, more than the President, more than Elvis Presley or Harrison Ford, was Evel Knievel. Half Evil Comics, with publisher R.E. Nelson and Evel Knievel's son, Kelly Knievel, has launched its Kickstarter funding for the first-ever proper Evel Knievel comic book series, featuring the famed stunt motorcyclist I loved from my youth. In 1974, Marvel Comics gave away a bicycle safety comic book one-shot featuring the stunt motorcycle rider known as Evel Knievel. Over fifty years later, in 2025, he's back in the saddle. Evel Knievel is written by Rylend Grant of The Jump and The Peacekeepers, artist Dave Acosta of Terrorwar, Elvira and Dragon, letterer HdE, and editor R.E. Nelson, with covers by Flops and Ray-Anthony Height.

"On the eve of the outrageous motorcycle jump that would make him the most famous man in America – his iconic leap over the fountains at Caesar's Palace – daredevil Evel Knievel must lock horns and match wits with an ornery Outlaw Motorcycle Club who believes they are entitled to a very large piece of his pie."

Rylend Grant says;

"Evel is one of the most iconic characters in American history. A folk hero in the truest sense of the word. Well, we've leaned WAY the hell into that. I'm a screenwriter by trade. For over a decade, I've made my living writing smart, mind-bending thrillers for directors like JJ Abrams, Ridley Scott, Justin Lin, John Woo, Luc Besson, and F. Gary Gray, so I can't help but think of things in cinematic terms. Our original mandate here was to make him an adventurer, to find this character's Smokey and the Bandit or his No Country for Old Men. And I think we ended up with something pretty damn incredible. We see this story as a modern Western. Some fit of terrible befalls a community. Evel is the swaggery gunslinger who rides in on a steel horse, howling at the goddamn moon and solves the mystery, runs the bad guys out of town, and beds the local bombshell. Fiction aside, we went out of our way to honor the actual history. This first story arc of the series – titled THE LAST GLADIATOR – will start with Evel crashing at Caesar's. We'll be there when he goes from relative unknown to stratospherically-famous, essentially overnight. It's then, when he has the entire world's attention that he boldly declares that he's going to jump Snake River Canyon." We'll also see him brawl with more bikers at the Cow Palace in San Francisco… we'll be there for his wonderfully infamous "million dollar party" in Butte, Montana… we'll see him win bets, bed woman, and fight jerks in bars… we'll see him jump just about everything a lovable lunatic could on a motorcycle… and we'll love him for it."

Robert Craig "Evel" Knievel was a motorcycle daredevil who made the leap from rural county fairs to sold-out stadiums and international fame. He invented himself and his business of jumping, crashing, and miraculously recovering to promise even more outrageous stunts to come. Despite failed jumps, crashes, and the Guinness World Record for most broken bones, he always rose to perform again. He died in 2007 at the age of 69, but now returns in comic book form…

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