Just in case you missed it last week I wanted to reach out to you about this unique project I’ve been working on. Croix Noire is a three-fold project that includes a music album, game, and graphic novel. All three of these items are used to fully immerse listeners, players, and readers into the dark and mysterious world of Croix Noire.
Step into the world of Croix-Noire, but watch your back. This is not the safest place to be. Croix-Noire is one of the roughest areas in France, full of deadbeats, drug addicts, and hookers. And that’s just the municipal library!
Spearheaded by huge names in the comic, game, and music industries, the dangerous world of Croix-Noire will take the form of a 140-page graphic novel, a game hosted on the ROBLOX platform, and a full-length music album. The graphic novel will be released in 7 monthly comic issues, starting April 1st, coinciding with the launch of the online ROBLOX game. Prior to the August 1st release of the album (on vinyl, CD cassette, and digital), each issue of the comic will coincide with the release of one new track from the album with the first single ‘A Whole New Day’ welcoming the listener into the moral kaleidoscope of the streets and clubs of Croix-Noire.
A chance 2020 meeting between top singer-songwriter/producer Mike Batt and singer-songwriter/entrepreneur Jean-Charles Capelli led to a chain reaction in which EMMY-winning writer and novelist David Quantick, legendary Marvel/DC comic artist Mike Collins (Spiderman, Superman, Dr. Who), and executives from leading online games corporation DUBIT (Disney, Brit Awards) created a dramatically interlinked world starring hypersensitive, reluctant protagonist Ace Hansel Jr.
Ace is equipped with the means of manipulating emotions using new and unique technology, enabled and facilitated by his senior-citizen sidekick, inventor, and strategist Colonel Talbot. Readers will be immersed in a grim world filled with intrigue, mystery, and all manner of lowlifes, villains, and rejects.
To give fans just a taste of the graphic novel before its full release, a flipbook of the first 13 pages is currently available for £3.99 in the prestigious Shift compilation magazine issue #10. Unusually, Quantick’s prose novella chapters will also be bound into the printed comics so that readers may compare the two-story formats. Ace’s first single, ‘A Whole New Day’ may also be accessed via a QR code contained within the comic.
