As I had mentioned earlier, around a couple of years or so ago, I had worked on a 48 page one-shot called RYDERS for Virgin Comics (now reborn as Liquid Comics).

Just after I had submitted the script and Dean Reuben Hyrapiet finished the art, things at Virgin got a little… umm… hairy.

Now the erstwhile Virgin Comics team is back as Liquid Comics and are pursuing an aggressive digital distribution agenda. One aspect of it is the partnership with Scribd.

RYDERS is the story of vigilantes/outlaws armed with custom cars in a dystopic future where cities are ruled by totalitarian regimes who have outlawed free speech and personal vehicular ownership. It has kind of a Mad Max meets Fast & the Furious vibe. I borrowed a lot of motifs from Westerns in terms of setting and story elements. Dean did some fantastic art on this project (Might just be me but I felt a great Geoff Darrow vibe when I was visualizing the world and Dean delivered that tone pretty nicely).

I was kind of sad that (as I thought at the time) RYDERS got “lost” in the transition from Virgin to Liquid. Long story short, RYDERS is now available for purchase from Scribd. So if you like your dystopic future/post-apocalyptic melee and muscle cars, do check it out.

West Coast Customs presents RYDERS

Towards the last days of Virgin Comics (now reborn as Liquid Comics), I was working on a pretty interesting project — a one shot titled RYDERS based on a license from West Coast Customs (of Pimp My Ride fame from MTV).

It was a kicker of a project to work on. I wrote a story about a near future America where much of the country is a barren wasteland after a cataclysmic nuclear strike by rogue nations. The population survives in huge fortified city states, where in order to keep them docile any form of ownership of private vehicles is denied by law.

Ryders is the story of a bunch of vehicular vigilantes who defy the status quo and become the law in the wastelands. They ultimately come head to head with the city states and thus begins the great muscle car rebellion

I wanted to get a Mad Max/Road Warrior meets Serenity kind of vibe for the story and the art by Dean Hyrapiet (Snake Woman, Virulents, Voodoo Child) was amazing.

Sadly, I don’t know if it ever came out or not. Well, them’s the breaks. Here is the comixology listing.