Shaun Paulet has always loved comic books.
As a child, his mother bought him a new comic every month, hoping it would encourage him to read regularly.
Paulet couldn’t get enough of them.
“My first comic was X-Men in 1991. That’s what hooked me. I enjoyed the fantasy and escape from reality.”
The Tarneit resident is about to launch his own series of comics, Xtreme Champion Tournament.
The series is about some of history’s most famous heroes and villains, including Greek gladiator Spartacus.
Paulet says the series is set in 2069, when the remains of heroes, villains, monsters and creatures long believed to be myth or legend have been found and cloned.
The clones are then trained and forced to fight each other to death in an arena, with people looking on.
Paulet’s inspiration for his comic was New Zealand TV series, Spartacus.
“I loved the TV series and when it ended I came up with how I would continue the stories of most of the characters and introduced some other heroes from throughout history,” he says.
Paulet has been working on the comic for about 12 months.
To help fund its release, he has launched an online crowd-funding campaign. He’s hoping to raise $5000 in the next four weeks to allow him to print and distribute the comic and travel to the US to promote his work.
While in America, Paulet will attend the Dallas Comic Con and Comicpalooza in Houston.
He hopes the rise in popularity that comic books have experienced over the past three years will encourage people to invest in his work.
“Comic books are very mainstream now, whereas they used to be a niche market.
“I go to conventions in Australia and New Zealand which get 20,000 to 60,000 people turning up.”
» kickstarter.com/projects/2067957354/xtreme-champion-tournament
