Unshaven Comics, an independent comic book publisher owned by Homewood natives Marc Alan Fishman, Kyle Gnepper and Matt Wright, is licensing its first piece of non-comic book media. The Samurnauts, their most popular comic, is set to be a video game on Roblox, an online gaming platform, by the end of the year.
Twin Atlas, an online gaming company, will release the Samurnauts game. The game is about 90% finished and the story will be in the same canon as the comic books, Fishman said. It’ll include “easter eggs” that reference parts of the comic and expand on the lore of some of Samurnauts’ characters, Fishman added.
“We’re excited to finally realize a promise Unshaven Comics made to our younger selves. Making comics is amazing but wouldn’t it be cool to be a TV show, a video game?” Wright said. “Comics will always remain the first venue, but expansion into other media to broaden our reach of Samurnauts is welcome.”
“The best-case scenario for us is going to be – a kid plays Samurnauts on Roblox and they want to learn more. From what I’ve been told, we just have to set up a Discord that gets tied into the front part of the game,” Fishman said. “That kid comes to our Discord, learns that we’re a comic book company and the next time we’re in his neck of the woods [at a convention], he buys a book from us.”
The Samurnauts is an all-ages comic book series with both fantasy and sci-fi elements. The title is a blending of the words, “samurai” and “astronauts.” Samurnauts comics can be purchased from unshavencomics.com or at Zone Comics & Games at 18107 Dixie Highway in downtown Homewood.
Unshaven Comics’ first licensing deal, a Samurnauts game, came to fruition after they met with Twin Atlas at the Las Vegas Licensing Expo in May.
Booths at the Licensing Expo are more expensive than most comic book conventions. Fishman said they attended anyway because Unshaven Comics was determined to find a company to license their work as a video game, a toy line and/or an animated series or movie.
Fishman said they scoped out the show floor and didn’t see any other comic book-related booths. Some of the brands in attendance were Coca-Cola, NASCAR, the Natural History Museum of London, Paramount Pictures, Scholastic, SEGA and Yale University.
“Every day, from about mid-February to when the show started in May, seven days a week, I’d send out about 25 to 50 interview requests,” said Fishman, who generally handles the business side of Unshaven Comics. “If they were at all tagged for entertainment, I’d send them this form letter that basically said ‘hey, we’re Unshaven Comics. […] Please meet with us and here are the details.’”
Fishman said Unshaven Comics scheduled about 27 meetings at the Licensing Expo, eventually landing on a deal with an investor and Twin Atlas.
“They are passionate storytellers,” Andrew Bereza, director of Business Development at Twin Atlas, said of Unshaven Comics. “We see an opportunity to bring those stories to life on Roblox – a platform which is increasingly becoming the dominant social hangout place for kids and teenagers and remains unburdened by publishers and other relics of the traditional games industry.”
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