Two years after the formation of the Queen’s Comic Book Legion (QCBL), the club has officially created a brand-new series of comic books about Queen’s that will represent the student experience in a fun, exaggerated way.

President Brendan Montgomery, Sci ’15 and the founder of the club in 2013, decided that this year they would expand the club’s opportunities by introducing the comic to students on campus.

“After one semester of simply having comic book discussions and watching superhero shows together, I decided that in the fall of 2013 that the club should explore the possibility of making our own student made comic books about Queen’s,” Montgomery told the Journal via email.

This year, the club covers both comic book discussion and creation at their weekly meetings, in addition to running other small events.

The comic, “Gael Force”, has created one issue so far that will be published next month, and it took the group some time to settle on a plot and characters that would accurately represent the Queen’s student body.

“We talked a lot about ideas for the comic since the possibilities are limitless,” Montgomery said. “Originally, we tried to make one superhero to represent all of Queen’s — but no matter how we came up with it the character couldn’t represent the diversity of our student body.”

The club then shifted gears into coming up with a team of heroes for the comic book instead, Montgomery said. The team could then represent several different faculties and personalities of students on campus.

“With this diverse team we wanted readers to be entertained by the hypothetical situation of students with super powers,” he said. “They eat cheap ramen noodles and go to a party like any other student. When trouble arises at the party though, they don’t flee in terror but rise up to face the menace.

“Similar to teams like the Justice League or Avengers, this style of book can appeal to more people and include group dynamics and social commentary,” he said. “This diverse team is what Gael Force has ultimately become.”

Once the idea was set, the QCBL artists started with the design process for the characters, followed by several revisions of the script storyboard.

To promote this exciting new endeavour, QCBL is focusing on partnering with local comic book store 4-Color 8-Bit’s replacement, Kingston Gaming Nexus. They’ve also set up tables at the JDUC and the Queen’s Centre to reach out to students.

For the first issue, the club hopes to introduce characters to the readers, but not in a conventional manner.

“This issue, we really wanted to introduce our characters to the reader, but not in a traditional origin story,” Montgomery said. “We decided to focus on what our characters are doing rather than how they got their powers.” The first issue took about a year and a half to complete, and ideally the QCBL will release one new comic book per semester.

“Gael Force” will be published over a three-story arc, with three different issues — the next two are in the works right now.

“That’s the idea with this first issue — that we can all rise up and make a difference in the lives of our fellow students,” Montgomery said. “Not everyone can have super powers but it is a symbol for what us students can aspire to.”

“Gael Force” Issue #1 will be printed and sold on campus and at local comic book stores by the end of February.