Warren Ellis & Mike Allred To Depict 'The Spirit Of Bacardi'

Here's some crazy news: Writer Warren Ellis (Moon Knight) and artist Michael Allred (Silver Surfer) are teaming up for a comic about a rich industrialist who wanted to change the world and is often associated with the symbol of a bat. No, not that one!

Their graphic novel The Spirit of Bacardi, about Emilio Bacardi, the son of Bacardi Rum founder Don Facundo Bacardí Massó, will debut on the company's website August 6.

The younger Bacardi is a really compelling historical character. He fought in a rebel army that sought Cuban independence and spent much of the last two decades of the 19th Century exiled from the country. He returned after the Cuban War of Independence and in 1899 and was appointed mayor of Santiago, later becoming the first-ever freely elected mayor of the city. In 1906, he won a seat in the national senate.

He also went to Egypt and bought a mummy one time.

Here's what Ellis had to say about the project, according to a Bacardi press release:

Storytelling requires great characters, and in Emilio Bacardí we have exactly that. Emilio was a patriot, passionate about his homeland of Cuba. My focus was to bring his drive and determination to life.

Allred said location was the big draw [<---editor's note: sorry about that] for him:

Working on this project gave me the chance to bring to life a time and a place I've never worked with before - Cuba in the late 19th Century.

OK, so they don't sound like the most excited people on Earth. But we weren't expecting all that much out of Moon Knight, either, and look how that turned out. That book's great.

The Spirit of Bacardi will be available at bacardi.com/spiritofbacardi starting August 6.