Bleek & the Metafriends – What and Why?

Incurious Bleek Meets the Metafriends written by Mark Shainblum and lettered by Jeff LeBlanc
Incurious Bleek Meets the Metafriends written by Mark Shainblum and lettered by Jeff LeBlanc

Last year I was approached by Troy Wilson to donate my artistic skills for Mark Shainblum’s writing for a charity project. I was quite tickled by Mark’s story which is an exceedingly clever mash-up/parody of Curious George and the Superfriends and as a fan of DC Comics, the Superfriends cartoon and monkeys I was happy to contribute.

It’s been a long road but the work is finally done and on May 4th the story will go live on act-i-vate.com. Over the past week I have been showcasing some behind-the-scenes character design for the story.

When the big day comes and the comic goes online I’ll post a direct link to it, but in the meantime here is the lowdown:

What is Panels for Primates?
Panels for Primates is a charity anthology of primate comics that has been updating every Wednesday at ACT-I-VATE (http://act-i-vate.com) since October, and will be winding up on June 1st.   The ever-growing Panels for Primates archive can be viewed absolutely free, but if readers are encouraged to swing over to http://www.primaterescue.org/ and make a donation.

International effort
The project features work by creators from the U.S., Canada, Israel, Britain, Mexico, Germany and Indonesia.

Loads of Canadian contributors

  • Lower Mainland – Toren Atkinson, Colin Upton, Jonathon Dalton, Scot Ritchie.
  • BC – The above Lower Mainland creators, plus Troy Wilson, Gareth Gaudin, and Simon Roy (all in Victoria).
  • Canadian – The BC creators, plus Mark Shainblum, Jeff LeBlanc, Clayton Hanmer (Toronto, ON), Kari-Lynn Winters (St. Catharines, ON), and Faith Erin Hicks (Halifax, NS).

Some other coverage of the project

Stats so far [ie. As of the Bleek story running.]

  • 31 stories
  • 50 creators
  • 105 pages (not counting the cover or the donation reminder pages)