And now for something a little bit different. Tales of The Buddha Before He Got Enlightened collects Alan Grant, Jon Haward and Jamie Grant's adult humour comic strips together for the first time. Tales of The Buddha started life in Northern Lightz Magazine 10 years ago, then continued in Wasted Magazine, chronicling the fictional adventures of a young disillusioned Buddha being introduced to hedonistic pleasures, whilst also sampling some of the other religious choices available before, one day returning to his true calling.
When Alan asked if Renegade would be interested in putting out the collected Buddha tales, it raised an interesting question of how to work with creators bringing an almost complete project to the company without having had support or input from Renegade itself. With Alan being a founding partner in the company and the stories themselves being 'laugh out loud' high quality tales, it was pretty much a given that we'd publish it and we worked out a deal that meant that 80% of revenue from sales of their stories would flow to the three creators directly.
Initially, the collected Tales of The Buddha will be only available digitally, but we are all hoping there will be enough readers interested to warrant a print collection release in time for Christmas, featuring brand new comic strip adventures too.
This collection is 69 pages of wonderfully written and beautifully illustrated humour tales, guest pinups from creators including Simon Bisley and Glen Fabry, and a foreword by writer John Wagner, is available as a high quality PDF directly from our webstore here, and through our free iPad bookstore app here (apple approval should be through very soon). What price for this collection of comic wonder? Only $4.99, a bargain for sure.
Here's what some of our fellow comic creators and industry collaborators think of Tales of The Buddha:
John Wagner writer Judge Dredd, Darkies Mob, History of Violence
''Buddha is OM-TASTIC''
David Lloyd artist/writer Kickback artist V for Vendetta
'' Fantastic and Funny! ''
Frank Quitely All Star Superman, WE3, The X-Men, Batman and Robin
"Jon Haward's art has never looked better"
Mike Deodato Jr artist New Avengers, Secret Avengers
''Great work! Epic adult humor!''
Liam R Sharp artist,novelist and Publisher. CCO at Madefire.
"If this doesn't raise a smile it can only mean Botox abuse, death, or dentistry."
Duncan Fegredo artist Hellboy
"So it turns out the road to enlightenment is paved with levity, thank God for that!"
Dave Taylor artist Batman, Judge Dredd
"more hilarious than the Bible and far better illustrated."
Lew Stringer cartoonist artist/writer comics historian of blimey another blog about comics
"Tales of the Buddha delivers witty scripts and meticulous artwork
that makes it a pleasure to read. Like many of the great comics it's
irreverent and non conformist, but most importantly it succeeds at being
very funny. Jon Haward goes the extra mile to give value for money in
every page he draws. Enlighten yourselves and buy it!"
Joe Gordon Forbidden Planet International
"the path to Enlightenment can be fun"
Terry Hooper-Scharf Publisher Black Tower Books and comicbitsonline.com
"Tales of the Buddha before he got Enlightened" is a fun thing to read.
Great gags. Great artwork -one of the few things that I can read and get
a smile from! It has long deserved a solo volume of its own."
Tales of The Buddha also has its very own facebook page, where both the creators and fans of the collection, can connect, talk and find out the very latest news and gossip. Find it here. Jon Haward has also created a blog for all things Buddha, which you can find here. All of us at Renegade hope you find some laughs and light relief in this collection from three very talented comic creators.