For those of you who don’t already know Kevin Gentilcore is my partner and co creator at Creephouse Comics. We were just getting rolling and had put out The First part of Never Send a Monster and compiled our first two offerings together in the Book “Creeps.” So we were looking for the next thing to do and Kevin had seen someone doing some interesting things with web comics formatting and wanted to play around with it.
One of the things Kevin and I bonded over early on was our love of cheesy things. And one of the things that we had shared some laughs over was the old Saturday Morning serial sci fi from the 40’s and 50’s. The tropes of predicting the future in our past seemed like fertile ground. My first encounter with the “Atom Gun” in the John Carter stories left a 13 year old me cackling. The sheer innocence of the idea that an Atom Bomb in ray form was in any way a good idea was hysterical to me.
So I tossed put the idea of a Flash Gordon / Buck Rogers sort of character and dubbed him Krush McNulty. Now inevitably we’re going to get the Zap Brannigan comparison mostly because we’re paying homage to the same idea. And while I really enjoy Zap he is not Krush McNulty. Brannigan is a Shatner parody without a spine.
Captain Delroy “Krush” McNulty is more of a Jethro Clampett. He is grandiose by nature and a corn fed, white boy from some wide open state where he bench pressed cows as a kid. He is wonderfully oblivious to the world beyond his own narrative. He doesn’t shrink from conflict and his world view is simple: I can solve this with my fists.
Somewhere along the line Kevin decided he wasn’t interested in the new web comic format but he did Krush as an online only comic. So we put out our first Krush McNulty tale; Krush McNulty and the Siren Planet! It is a campy little romp that is stone cold Saturday Morning serial style percolating nonsense.
And then Kevin decided against type that he wanted to do more Krush. I say against type because I had made some low grade attempts to talk him into doing some ongoing titles but he didn’t want to get stuck in something
with which I empathize. But there are just so many more things you can do with characters that have history that you can’t do with a one off in 22 pages.
So I had fun writing Krush and I was onboard to do more. As much pure silliness as Siren Planet was it seemed like a pure waste of opportunity to not do more storytelling on a starship called The Hyperbole. So I started thinking about what would be a good follow up.
Krush McNulty and The Beakmen of Nerdilon VII is about a world in political torment over sci fi movie casting choices. It also introduced a core constituent of the Krush Universe that stands right up there next to the personal reconstitutor: Nerds.
I won’t kid you. Kevin and I find ourselves extremely funny and we spent a lot of time giggling at this one. Not just the nerd stampede above but Krush not knowing that gravitas was a word. Baffleck as Blood Weasel the sullen crusader. And of course, nuclear war breaking out over the new Stellar Conflict VIII movie casting of fan favorite Licaprio. But one day Kevin called me on the way home from work and suggested a United Space Armada recruitment bit.
I met Kevin at the Paris on the Platte coffee house in 2005 and he has occasionally joked about the coming space monkey invasion. It’s out of nowhere but it is always funny, and comes across like a mad man’s prophecy. Since he wanted to get a few issues out in order to release a trade paperback we decided it needed an arc. Thus was born the Bundt Mun Kee; A race of hostile space monkeys with glass dome cranium that exposed their brains who wield Nana guns and zoom around with jet packs.
The United Space Armada recruitment tool thus became sort of a preview for The Battle of Shakta Mun Kee. (Thank you for the appreciative snicker) This expanded the Krush universe from just Krush himself, his faithful sidekick Bob Lachey and their Hyperbot (Assigned to The Hyperbole obvs) chum Rodchester they added Dr Irene Ersatz brilliant scientist and Krush’s high school science teacher.
Krush has a few foils and they tend to be women. Despite the obliviousness that defines him Krush is chivalrous and as much as he likes a throwdown he’d never punch a lady. That includes his chief rival in the Armada Captain Juno Megaladawn of The Virago. Tough as any man, she’s a hard drinking, hard smoking Starship Captain who takes shit from nobody especially not Krush McNulty.
So between these folks and the aliens, fleet captains and sidekicks we have a blast creating it and we want you to have at least that much of a good time reading it. So please take the time to drop by The free Creephouse Comics PDF catalog ( through the link to Kevin’s page at the bottom of this blog ) and enjoy Krush and any of our other selections. We’ve always got new stuff coming up and have some really cool and exciting projects coming down the pipe. http://www.kevingentilcore.com/comics/
Evil Chocolate 