Pere Perez gears up for post-apocalyptic kung fu in ‘Shaolin Mutants’
by Chris Arrant | October 23, 2013 @ 3:00 PM
Artist Pere Perez has worked on comics for the likes of Dark Horse DC, Marvel and Valiant, but now he’s poised to strike out on his own with his first creator-owned graphic novel Shaolin Mutants.
Described by Perez as an “epic kung-fu adventure,” Shaolin Mutants follows a kung fu-trained Shaolin monk named Leroy as he fights mutant armies in a near-future apocalyptic world. Kung fu is often used in comics, but Perez has a leg up on many of his colleagues: He’s a black-belt Wing Chun instructor who’s been practicing martial arts for nearly two decades.
“My love for martial arts has triggered the creation of this book, and my knowledge of them has helped me to create fighting choreographies and page layouts unlike anything you’ve ever seen on a comic book,” Perez writes on the Indiegogo page for Shaolin Mutants. “Also, I’ve tried to explain the philosophical and moral aspects of martial arts, so hopefully this book is not just an anthology of cool action scenes.”
Even without Perez’s artial-arts skills, the characters in Shaolin Mutants seem ideal for cool action scenes; shaolin monks, short-order cooks, mutants and dinosaurs? Planned as a 114-page graphic novel, Shaolin Mutants is characterized by Perez as his most personal and rewarding project of his entire career — and he’s asking for his fans’ help to make it a reality. He’s looking to raise $30,000 through Indiegogo to publish Shaolin Mutants as a graphic novel, funding his work and others as well as the final publication and distribution.
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