Posted in: Comics, Indie Comics | Tagged: bloodforce trauma, kickstarter

How Blood Force Trauma Finally Marries Comics And Fighting Games

Published Mon, 24 Aug 2020 16:00:26 -0500

Jake Smith has a rather distinctive comic book in the works on Kickstarter, Blood Force Trauma. He writes (and adds a special offer for Bleeding Cool readers:)

How Blood Force Trauma Finally Marries Comics And Fighting Games — Image from Blood Force Trauma: Issue 2. The image is used with permission.

My friend Hiram and I were 42 rematches into a sweaty, white-knuckled night of playing Dragonball Fighterz. I had been on a winning streak for the past few matches, and Hiram had finally figured out my secret strategy, so I knew it was time for Hiram's streak to begin. Just past 2 am, we finally had had enough and began riffing on an idea to do our own story that incorporated our love of the games that were able to captivate us through countless rounds of combos, supers, and upsets.

We started with our own roster of characters that took our favorite parts of the genre and filtered them through our unique style. We started with a character we had created years ago based on our affinity for the blaxploitation genre of the 1970s: Lightnin' Legs Jones! Next, we needed our champion; The character that all the other fighters would look up to. I had a design for a ripped dude with a floating energy skull tucked away in my sketchbook for years, and it was finally time to find a home for him. Thrash Skullcracker was born. Hiram designed a sick drawing of our antagonist, Slicer Dex, and the shark man that appears in the first issue, Meat Grinder! We were missing something, though: our main character.

Most fighting game/anime protagonists traditionally are on a quest for power — to be the best fighter in the world. For us, these were characters like Ryu, Jin Kazema, Scorpion, Goku, and Terry Bogard. Our hero would be different, however. He would be us. He would be a video game nerd, who now has to learn to be a real-life fighter. We wanted that relatability. We wanted the story of the kid who's brand new to fighting games and feels lost and feels like they can't quite get the hang of quarter circle specials, and then they start getting the hang of it. They start feeling how fun fighting games can be. We wanted a hero that readers could grow with. So Zap Daniels was created.

We had it! We had our comic book version of a solid fighting game campaign mode. We always thought fighting games had lackluster campaign modes, and we saw this comic as us doing one right! Blood Force Trauma was willed into existence by a couple of nerds after playing video games all night, and then went on to be successfully funded on Kickstarter!

And now we're on to Issue #2! Zap Daniels has become the Blood Force Trauma world champion by complete accident, and now the most brutal warriors in all the known universes are after the title, and looking to tear Zap apart! Lightnin' Legs Jones has appeared to take Zap under his wing! So this issue starts with that and goes to some crazy places.

We took our love for anime, fighting games, and 80s VHS aesthetics and created the book that we've always wanted to read. We hope you do, too! The Kickstarter campaign is up and running and will end August 31st, so snag a copy while you can! The rewards we've come up with this time around are really special. We've got T-shirts, original art, a custom Blood Force Trauma Arcade Stick and a physical VHS tape with a fully voice-acted motion comic version of the book on it!

For Bleeding Cool readers, if you get an original art reward, an arcade stick, or a commission, you will also get a FREE T-SHIRT of your choice! At the end of the campaign, when you're filling out your survey, put in discount code: BLEEDCOOL, and you will get a free T-shirt added to your order! GO TO BFTCOMIC.COM TO SUPPORT THE CAMPAIGN!