Introducing My New Comic Book: 'Mad Villain'...

Check out our epic new nazi-punching comic book about a middle-aged dad who joins an antifascist crew to defeat the far right in his city. The superhero you never knew you needed.

I’m really proud (and nervous) to tell you about a new project I’ve just launched with my great friend, artist, Camille Aubry. We’ve written a comic book. It’s called ‘Mad Villain’. It’s five issues long and we’ve just self-published issue 1 today, thanks to support from Watershed. It’s about a middle-aged dad who, worried about keeping his family safe in a city ravaged by fascism, joins antifa. It’s about men and their capacity for violence, what we do to keep the ones we love safe, and the impact of seeing racists, neo-Nazis and far right dickheads on our streets. Sounds serious, I know! But it’s fun and funny, I swear. Camille and I have created an absurdist noir comedic thriller about rising fascism and desperate people, we’ve created a bizarre superhero origin story that is very contemporary and realist, while also being a fun, fictional exploration of the mood of the country right now.

I’ve been thinking so much about meeting the moment in my recently. That’s why I published that pamphlet last month. There’s something empowering about being agile and quick. About having the idea, working on it, and just doing the whole publish and be damned thing. Because the things we’re writing about are serious, they’re real, they’re happening now. I don’t want to write a reflective piece wondering how we got here. I wanted to write something that addressed what we can do right now. Maybe antifa’s the answer, maybe leading an anti-fascist life, maybe direct action, maybe getting in the streets, maybe looking to your localities, maybe getting offline and looking up. I don’t have the answer. And ‘Mad Villain’ is my exploration of that.

I met Camille through the Pervasive Media Studio, where we both co-work. As concerned, politically minded parents, our conversations have been about how to raise our kids now, what our responsibilities as artists are to meet the moment, and what the hell we do as parents. We knew we’d work together. We just didn’t know when.

I had been wanting to write about the antifascist groups in Bristol for a while. Last year, when I went to a protest, where I got into a weird physical altercation with a racist who lunged for me out of nowhere, I talked to someone in the Black Bloc about how to stay safe and how they were here to protect our right to protest against racists, because they felt that the police were allowing equivalency to happen, racist protest was equal to anti-racist protest, and that felt messed up to me. And to the person I spoke to. Watching the bloc occupy the space and work hard to check in on us non-bloc’ed up protestors, was so stirring and powerful. They felt like superheroes. I didn’t know who any of them where and I imagined they were just ordinary people, who I was walking past every single day.

I wondered what would happen if I joined them. And an idea for a superhero was born. It had to be a comic book because I wanted it to be visual and kinetic, fun and funny, but also action-packed. I love Camille’s style’s, it’s filled with mischief and thoughtfulness. The way she’s brought her personality to the page, to the script and to the idea, the questions she’s asked of me, have all made this a very fun project to work on.

So without further ado, here’s a link to buy issue #1 of Mad Villain, ‘Alerta’: Meet Mad Villain, aka Sanjay, a middle-aged father of two. He just wants to punch a Nazi in the face. Is this a mid-life crisis? Probably. Is he the hero we need? Maybe. Does he just need therapy? Definitely. Before all that, he’s going to join Antifa.

‘Urgent, funny and moving…’ Nish Kumar.

‘Mad Villain’ is a new comic book collaboration between Nikesh Shukla (‘The Good Immigrant’) and Camille Aubry (‘A Journey To Motherhood’). A comedic thriller, an absurdist noir, a superhero origin story, this is a comic book about rising fascism, direct action and desperate people. Issue #1 is on sale now, thanks to support from Watershed.

If you like it and want to see the rest of the story, Camille and I have a Kickstarter to help us get the rest of the run over the line. Here is the link to the Kickstarter to help Nikesh and Camille get issues #2-#5 made. Expect more thrills, spills, car chases, fist fights, double identities and Nazi-punching.

Imagine ‘One Battle After Another’ set now, in a divided Bristol. Imagine Phil Dunphy was Indiana Jones. Nazi Punching Biffy Dads For The Win!

Buy either a signed or unsigned copy of ‘Mad Villain’ here