READING, PA – At the NHL All-Star Game on January 30, 2011, the NHL, along with famed comic book writer Stan Lee, THE GUARDIAN PROJECT was officially released. During the second period of the ASG, a video presentation gave a brief glimpse of the characters based on each NHL clubs surname, and the storylines main bad guy, Devin Dark. The video was a bit underwhelming but the production wasn’t meant to be Star Wars. It lasted 3:31 and did its job of promoting The Guardian Project Graphic Novel. There is some good news and some bad news regarding The Guardian Project but mostly good. The bad news is, if you’re older than age 10 the graphic novel is not for you. The good news is, if you’re a child aged 10 or below, the graphic novel is for you. It is 192 pages that are mostly made up of five page short stories of each Guardian taking on a foe in their own respective city. They are not origin stories of how each Guarding came to. The stories aren’t epic just good clean fun. Also, before those stories take place, the book talks about an upcoming novel that will be an origin-story and will be something that teenagers and older fans alike will be able to get into. It will touch on how The Guardians came to be, along with our villain and our hero, Mike Mason. From the excerpts it reads more like a true comic book is being done currently. Here is an excerpt of the upcoming novel based on our hero, Mike Mason, who has some secrets of his own. Mike Mason wasn’t sure what was about to happen next, but like everything elsehe’d seen in the last hour, he knew it was going to be bad. Really bad. The massive brick and glass building where his father worked was literally shaking in its foundation, rumbling in place as if some giant motor had been started up in its basement and the entire structure was getting ready to take off into space. “C’mon!” All four of them, Mike, Jed, Mike’s girlfriend Kayden and Kayden’s father, took off running in a tight group as fast as they could out into the vast, empty parking lot, wide-eyed and terrified. The events of the past several minutes were just not possible, and yet, there was no doubt that they had happened. And were continuing to happen. Right behind them.
The building suddenly did what it had been threatening to do and imploded in a thunderous explosion, roaring to the ground in a mushroom cloud of dirty smoke and crunching metal and cracking cement. The deafening roar of demolition washed past them like a tidal wave as they ran. Staggering to a stop at the fading edges of the explosion, they made it just far enough away where they felt safe enough to regroup and try to catch their breaths. His hands on his knees, his chest heaving, Mike glanced back through the slowly lifting haze to see if he had really just seen what he thought he saw.
He had. It was not his imagination. They’re real. Not bad huh. Kind of makes you want to keep on reading. Needless to say if the rest of the upcoming novel sounds that good it should do well sales wise. Lee has some of the most talented people in comics today working on the project: Chuck Dixon (Punisher), Matt Haley (Badass), Sal Velluto (Justice League Task Force), Al Bigley (Iron Man, Spiderman), Mike Lilly (Nightwing), Bob Almond (Black Panther), Mark MacKenna (Batman, Wolverine, Incredible Hulk) Trevor Von Eeden (Black Lightning). There are no hacks to be found on this project, just some very talented people who should make for a fun project overall. Lee is most famous in the comic book industry for creating some of the most beloved comics including Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, The Avengers, Silver Surfer and Dr. Strange. Lee first became publisher of Marvel Comics in 1972 and is presently the Chairman Emeritus of Marvel Enterprises, Inc. and a member of the Editorial Board of Marvel Comics. The website, www.guardianproject30.com has some videos of all of the characters and does have PDF’s of each characters story in the graphic novel, so if your not wanting to pay the full $29.99 for the whole 192 page experience, you can download the PDF of for your favorite teams characters that is in the graphic novel. Currently there are only two videos of THE FLYER and THE KING in their cities but there are video bios on all 30 Guardian so stayed tune for more videos for each team’s character in their respective cities. The ones I did see are very well done. Here is hoping that Lee and his team will come up with a motion comic on the future. There is also a very cool behind the scenes look at how they were done. Very cool stuff. I am a big kid and proud of it. I look forward to how this will all play out. Keep checking back on their web site for news and such on their web site. As a hockey fan and comic book lover I give it a thumbs-up. I plan on keeping up with the project and I hope you do the same. Contact the author at Brian.Jennings@prohockeynews.com
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