Giants Of Comics, Busiek And Nicieza With Stephen Mooney Team Up For New Series ‘Free Agents’ From Image Comics

by Olly MacNamee

Two of the legends of the comic book industry, writers Kurt Busiek (Astro City) and Fabian Nicieza (Deadpool) are teaming up with artist Stephen Mooney (Half Past Danger) with colourist Triona Tree Farrell (Harley Quinn, Detective Comics), and letterer Comicraft’s Tyler Smith for a new ongoing series, Free Agents.

“Free Agents introduces readers to a team of young veterans, survivors of a massive interdimensional war: Salvo, Pike, Katari, Shakti, Ridge, Maraud, and Chalice. They’ve fought every day of their existence and won a terrible victory. Now they’re stranded on Earth, free agents for the first time.

But when relics from their long war appear, threatening their chance at better lives, their greatest battle begins. They’ve fought for a million planets. Can they fight to save their own souls?”

Each issue will also feature a variant-cover character portrait by Kevin Maguire (as seen above), all well as variants by a plethora of comicdom’s top artists.

Speaking in the record, Eisner and Harvey Award winning Busiek said, with the following back-and-forth across Image’s full PR statement. Ready? Then read on…

“It’s a superhero series with a twist. The Agents were done. They were retired, and had started building new lives, going to college, making themselves a place here on Earth. And then it all starts coming back.”

Cover D 1:25 incentive cover by Erik Larsen

Nicieza added:

“Whenever Kurt calls and says, ‘Wanna work on something together?’ my answer is always a really fast, ‘yes!’ Making Free Agents even more fun is that I’m really proud to produce creator-owned work under the Image banner for the first time.”

Busiek retorted:

“With Fabes suckered—er, recruited, we needed an artist. Luckily, Eric Stephenson suggested Stephen, and his work on Half Past Danger, The Rocketeer, and more, was more than enough to make us delighted to welcome him aboard.”

Cover E 1:50 incentive cover by Pete Woods

Cue Image Publisher Eric Stephenson:

“This was an idea that just wouldn’t let itself be ignored. It first came up in plans for a crossover project Image Publisher Eric Stephenson and I talked about years ago. The crossover idea died, but the Free Agents wouldn’t. The thought of their series kept resurfacing, saying, ‘Hey, we don’t need any stupid crossover! That’s all backstory! Let us out! Let us exist!’ The thing was, the more I thought about them, the more they felt to me like a series that, much as I liked it, was a very Fabian Nicieza kind of book. So I figured ‘Why not?’ and gave him a call. Besides, this way I can get Fabian to do all the heavy lifting.”

Not to be left out, Mooney concluded:

“It took me all of five seconds to jump aboard Free Agents when Kurt got in touch and asked if I’d like to work on a creator-owned book with him. Learning that Fabian would also be involved was a massive bonus. I grew up (sorry guys) reading so many legendary superhero runs by these two; getting to create my own with them was an opportunity too tempting to pass up.”