Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, ron marz

Ron Marz And The Chicago Bears' Israel Idonije

Published Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:00:34 -0500

Last updated Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:31:23 -0500

Josh Kopin reported from NYCC for Bleeding Cool;

Israel Idonije plays on the defensive line for the Chicago Bears. As a unit, the Bears' D has been one of the best in football this season, combining for eighteen sacks, thirteen interceptions, five touchdowns, four fumble recoveries, and allowing only 65 points over their first five games. Idonije is an essential part of his team's success– not only has he recorded two and a half sacks for himself, but he helps the Bears' front four put pressure on the opposing team's quarterback, which is surely partially responsible for the number of interceptions and defensive points.

Although Idonijie is often locked in on the line, getting to the passer and stopping the run, he has begun to produce more than monstrous defense: Israel Idonijie, athlete by day, has decided to moonlight as a comic book creator. He took advantage of the Bears' bye this past weekend to come to New York Comic Con to talk about his new project.

At exactly 6:30 on Saturday evening, I sprinted from Marvel's Cup o' Joe panel, in the E hall, to the room in which Idonijie had gathered those who are helping him put the project together, in the A hall. I'd been looking forward to the talk all day; I've been a Bears fan since I was a kid. Every Sunday I don the blue and orange and tune in to the game, organizing my whole day so I can watch. I revel in the team's victories and I am defeated when they are; to say that I was excited to hear a great player from football's greatest team talk about the two cultural experiences I love most would surely be an understatement. It was to much to pass up, even over the siren song of signings and con popcorn, so I sprinted across the Javits center, and walked in just as Michael Uslan (yes, that Michael Uslan, the same one who has produced every modern Batman film) was introducing Idonije, writer Ron Marz, and the book's "producers," Uslan's son David, who works at Graphic.ly, and David's friend Aaron Foyer. The talk, groan inducingly called "Israel Idonijie of the Chicago Bears and Ron Marz Tackle the Graphic Novel World" was an introduction to a series that tells a story of the defensive end's design, written by Marz and drawn by Bart Sears.

Idonije said that he began thinking about doing something creative off the field during pre-season training camp in 2007, when he decided he needed to do something to escape the monotony of heavily regimented camp life. Although this is impossible to verify, if I had been thinking about it I certainly would have asked him, I suspect that Idonije's pursuit of this outlet had something to do with his teammate Lance Briggs, an extremely talented outside linebacker and vocal comics fan who helped create a book called Seraph for Top Cow Pilot Season last year. However he came to it, though, Idonijie has now teamed with Marz and Sears for a series he's calling The Protectors, which he's producing under the auspices of a company he's recently put together, Athleta Comics.

I've long thought that professional athletes would make a great subject for a superhero book, particularly one set in a realistic world, thematically similar to something like Kick-Ass, wherein the athletes use their superior strength and speed to fight crime off the field, just as they use those abilities to score points and win games. This comic book is not quite that comic book– instead of starring your friendly neighborhood football players, it wants to suggest that athletes, Idonijie name-dropped the Bears ace kick returner Devin Hester here, are descended from super powered Protectors, put on the Earth in pre-history to, well, you know. In the course of the book, several professional players of sports will learn of the source of their abilities and be faced with a choice– do the stay entertainers? Fo they take up the mantle of their ancestors and protect the world? Or will they use their powers to join the vaguely defined evil conspiracy that controls it?It isn't a particularly high concept book, that's for sure, and the more Marz and Idonije attempted to describe the world they were building, the more unclear their vision seemed. More worryingly, perhaps, was the way David Uslan talked about the marketing potential of this excitng new intellectual property, which is to be both physical and digital, released in every ebook format in the world. During the panel, I often found myself wondering if creators and producers of The Protectors are on the same page about their goals. My expectations for the book are not high. Still, because The Protectors doesn't seem to have been written yet, I'm not so surprised that the project has some fuzzy edges, and Marz and Idonije both seem genuinely interested in putting together a good sports comic book, in combining two worlds that they love– Marz admitted that his first job was as a sports writer, and that he spent a good five years doing it. Perhaps more importantly, Idonije seems to recognize the potential that his book has to do some good, that he can help deal with issues that he cares deeply about through this kind of work.Given all of this, I'm withholding judgement until the book comes out, hopefully at C2E2 in April. Making a decent sports comic does seem like a genuinely hard project and, although The Protectors is kind of hamstrung by how unnecessarily complicated the concept is, I'm interested to see how Idonije and Marz, along with artist Bart Sears, approach it. Until I can see it, though, until I can hold it in my hands the way that a football player holds a play book, I'm just going to hope that the Bears defensive lineman is as brilliant a writer as he is a football player, no matter what David Foster Wallace has to say about how likely that is.

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