Image Comics’ ‘Hell Yeah’ gives a new take on superheroes

If you’ve ever found the superheroic worlds of DC and Marvel to be just a little too neat and tidy, Image Comics may have a super new series for you.

Harvey and Eisner Award-winning author Joe Keatinge (PopGun) teams up with Elephantmen’s  Andre Szymanowicz to kick off Hell Yeah. The series focuses on Ben Day, a college student who discovers his alternate versions are being killed throughout the Multiverse, attracting the attention of the world’s superstar superheroes. Day, naturally, spends the issue trying to figure just what the hell is going on.

Keatinge enthuses about the unconventional superhero comics he’s been able to draw under Image’s auspices. “Anything could happen. You could kill lead characters in first issues. Obliterate long-standing villains in a page turn. They could be in different tone than what’s normally presented by the diversity shown in anything from Youngblood to Casual Heroes. They didn’t have to be noble, they didn’t have to maintain the same status quo.”

One can expect the same lack of adherence to the status quo with Hell Yeah. According to Image Comics’ press release about the series, the world of Ben Day is quite different from the one we know: “Twenty years ago, the world was rocked by the emergence of real-life superheroes. Sports and entertainment industries collapsed overnight as people run across the planet and punch through walls.”

All of which sounds like a pretty entertaining world to read about, if not to live in. Having your alternate versions die in gruesome ways and having the futuristic equivalent of Snooki punch through your living room looks a lot better on paper. If you’d like to visit this world yourself from the comfort of your undamaged home, the first issue will be available digitally and in comic book stores on March 7th. If you can’t wait that long, however, check out the preview at the end of Chew # 23 on January 18.

Written by Bree Kornblum Katz (@breekatz)

Bree writes when she is not skiing off cliffs, facing down funnel clouds, or plumbing the depths of the internet. She's published short stories with Dead Dog Press, Six Sentences, and BlazeVOX and currently blogs about her hair-raising experiences in the Rocky Mountains at extremetothemax.com. She's still waiting on her… More »