The Golden Age Leaf / Jill Canada in Small Press Heroes #1

Here's a little something I picked up yesterday.

Small Press Heroes #1c 

They came from the sky!!! Thousands of ships raining down from the stars and bringing death and destruction until the earth's greatest heroes banded together to save the planet!' 

Small Press Heroes is the cooperation of dozens of creators to bring their creator-owned characters to print in one cohesive story. Join the Golden Age Leaf, Seer, White Shadow and others as they save humanity. 

With 10 amazing covers from 10 dynamic creative teams!!!!

Cover C art by Robert Norton and Federico Sioc

This is a nice method by which small publishers and/or emerging talent can get a little exposure for their product.  I was not familiar with the majority of the characters included in the book but was attracted to the project by the appearance of The Golden Age Leaf (as well as the modern day version, and Jill Canada, as seen on the cover above, in a far more combat-appropriate outfit than we're used to).

Find out more about the SPH project here and since the next issue is scheduled for June of this year, if you think you might want to submit something you should probably get on that.

The contact information at the back of the book led me to Robert Norton's deviantart page and another pleasant surprise. Norton has contributed a number of the pin-up on the Red Leaf Comics website, such as the rather lovely version of the Victorian era Leaf character (spelled "Leafe") below.

However, late last year he added a couple of images of a group called NorthForce to his online portfolio.

Yeah, I...I think I can get behind that!

NorthForce is by no means a new concept for Red Leaf; they have been talked about for years and a few strips of it were posted onto the company's message board.  They were most recently meant to appear in early issues of the main Leaf book, but that was postponed in order to let the Leaf character establish himself more solidly beforehand. The eighth issue of the Leaf title was released earlier this week so I suspect that it might not be long until NorthForce leaps onto the scene.