Andrez Bergen and Frantz Kantor Play with the Hero Genre in ‘Magpie’

On January 31st, 2016, writer Andrez Bergen and artist Frantz Kantor are launching a new superhero series in the pages of the Australian comics anthology Oi Oi Oi! Their series, Magpie, offers a humorous take on a superhero world, and the art that's been released thus far introduces an unlucky superhero with the familiar name of 3D-Man.

Kantor's art is nothing like what we're used to in traditional superhero comics. The figures are highly exaggerated, but the art has a three-dimensional quality, which creates a look reminiscent of Pixar's The Incredibles. There's also something very reminiscent of Don Simpson's Bizarre Heroes in the design and character of 3D-Man.

Andrez Bergen cites Roy Thomas as an influence on the series, so the similarities of this hero to the 3-D Man that Thomas created at Marvel in the 1970s are clearly no coincidence.

Check out a page of process art and the finished product below:

Andrez Bergen has this to say about the series:

Magpie is done very much in the spirit of, well, The Spirit – taking on the concept that people like Will Eisner and Tarpé Mills did of telling complete stories and off-beat vignettes, with a sense of humor as much as a nod to noir, over 8-page installments. While an homage to the comics we love from the golden age to contemporary ones, it also carries with it a pastiche/deconstruction of multi-media pop-culture sensibilities, and the odd fracture of the fourth wall.

Along the way, within each tale, there are nods and winks at everything – from Roy Thomas to Ghost in the Shell, M.C. Escher wrestling Russ Manning’s Magnus, Robot Fighter, and on into mass-media current affair programs.