“The HEK Treasury” From Brian Hurtt, Marie Enger and Matt Kindt! HEK Studios Launched!

Brian Hurtt, Marie Enger, and Matt Kindt present The HEK Treasury! It’s a deluxe collection of “all-new epic, experimental science fiction, fantasy, and genre short stories.” The Kickstarter campaign of The HEK Treasury is currently live and will run for 30-days.

According to the press release:

What if the TWILIGHT ZONE and McSweeney’s made a baby?

And what if the baby was one hardcover treasury of comics — curated and created by three acclaimed creators — featuring over 100 pages of story and art?

The HEK Treasury will be presented in a large prestige format hardcover (8 ¾ x 11 5/8 ) and offer readers an “immersive experience, featuring full-color art, a tri-fold narrative poster, and loose-leaf story cards.”

Hurtt, Enger, and Kindt began sharing a studio in St. Louis in 2015 and have been creating graphic novels and comic books side by side for the last four years. This is their first truly collaborative effort and the inaugural publication by their new collective, HEK Studios.

“My first book was published in 2001 and I’ve been publishing ever since,” said Matt Kindt, the bestselling creator of Mind MDMT and Dept. H. “But it didn’t start that way. I did over 600 pages of mini-comics from the end of high school until I was out of college in 1995. And for the next five years, I continued to write and draw and self-publish my own comics. I was playing around with the form even then. Using special papers and mixing paper and binding techniques to make some strange looking books. Once I was published, a lot of that formal experimentation got left behind. I’ve spent the majority of my career working within the covers and on the pages – trying to push comics into new territory within certain boundaries and limitations that traditional publishing requires.”

Matt’s contribution to The HEK Treasury is “The Great Mech Wars,” 3 interconnecting 10-page chapters presenting the tale of an old, sad war-mech.

“When Brian approached me with the idea of doing a studio project, I immediately said yes,” said Kindt. “It was a no-brainer. It was a chance to work with both Brian and Marie, and I liked the idea of the format – a big sci-fi fantasy magazine or European album formatted book. It allows us to use bigger pages and to play with the panel layouts in new ways that a traditionally sized comic doesn’t. Also, the expectations of a large prestige stylebook are greater so it’s a chance to really blow out the art and do something really special.”

Marie Enger’s stories for The HEK Treasury “share a dystopian theme of bleak, fantastical, ruined worlds and great despair — leading to new, dangerous, beginnings. From death cults to telepathy, her stories push the outer limits of storytelling.”

“I’m really afraid of change,” said Marie Enger, the creator of the table-top RPG CASKET LAND and the graphic retelling of NOSFERATU. “That is super weird to say because I think if you want to make art, you have to…adapt to changes very quickly. I don’t. I get scared, I get anxious. I love telling stories about that kind of stuff too – things changing (and not usually for the better), people being thrown out of their routine into something strange, or rotten, or dust-covered, or bloody. I sit with all these short little stories in my head, they’re not enough for full-length graphic novels, or even a single issue sometimes.”

Brian Hurtt’s stories, like Matt’s, “consist of three interconnected dystopian tales, featuring weaponized flora and fauna, suspended animation and mutants.”

“In addition to publishing through Kickstarter, HEK Studio intends to make a shared creative space for visiting writers and artists and eventually host boutique comic book creation workshops that will be open to the public and make available our combined 45 years of experience in the industry,” said Kindt. “We’ll continue to work with traditional publishers, but we have big plans for HEK Studios.”

The HEK Treasury Kickstarter campaign is live right now with an initial goal of $20,000.

If funded through Kickstarter, pledges will be delivered to backers this fall.

For updates follow HEK Studios on Twitter, Instagram, and Patreon.

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Author: Farid-ul-Haq

Farid has a Double Masters in Psychology and Biotechnology as well as an M.Phil in Molecular Genetics. He is the author of numerous books including Missing in Somerville, and The Game Master of Somerville. He gives us insight into comics, books, TV shows, anime/manga, video games, and movies.

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