Busy season for ‘Fearless’ Ajax comics writer and radio personality

A love of historical drama, gobs of writing skill and a ‘Fearless’ personality are all very useful weapons to have in your arsenal if you want to break into the comics industry.

For ‘Fearless’ Fred Kennedy, the afternoon drive DJ for Toronto radio station Q107, Star Wars podcaster and now a comic writer with a major project already under his belt and several more coming soon to your local comic stand, having the right friends helps too.

Coming this November from Kennedy and his artist partner, Nick Marinkovich, is a book based on the Assassin’s Creed game – a longtime favourite of the Ajax writer and radio personality – that came about through his partnership with Marinkovich, the artist for last year’s six-issue historical comic Dead Romans series – Kennedy’s break through into the business.

Studio Lounak in Montreal is producing Assassins Creed Visionaries, a graphic novel featuring non-canonical stories (set in different time periods) by more than 20 artists as a tribute to Assassin’s Creed, and Marinkovich had worked with studio vice-president Serge Lapointe in the past, Kennedy said of his ‘in’ to the project.

“He said it could be anything,” Kennedy explained, his eyes lighting up while at his booth on Artist Alley at Fan Expo in Toronto on the weekend.  “I have long argued that Hong Kong during the opium wars would make the perfect setting for an Assassin’s Creed story.”

The story won’t even be his first project to hit the comic stores this year. That honour goes to a tale Kennedy wrote for Savage Sword of Conan #4, which is being released this week.

Savage Sword was a black and white magazine format comic featuring several stories about the Ron E. Howard-created barbarian (famously portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger on the big screen) that was produced by Marvel from 1974 to 1995 and again in 2019-20.

This run, now under the Titan label, had its re-birth in February and Kennedy’s story (‘Dark Agnes,’ with artist Andy Belanger) will be part of the Battle of the Blackstone saga.

“There’s just so many Conan stories you can tell,” Kennedy enthused.

Coming soon is another installment of the Dead Romans series with Marinkovich, this one a sequel titled ‘Invictus’ that is set 13 years after the Battle of Teutoburg, a confrontation in 9 AD between the advancing Roman Legion army and a group of Germanic warriors, secretly led by Roman-trained Prince Arminius. The Romans were decisively destroyed in the ambush, bringing an end to Roman expansion in Europe.

Details on the comic and a few other projects on the go he can’t talk about are still a little hush-hush – other than to say it’s “really dark.”

Kennedy was at the spring Toronto Comicon in 2019 when he met Marinkovich, an illustrator, graphic novelist and multi-media artist who has worked for several comic publisher in a 20-year career, including Marvel (When The Hulk Attacks), IDW (Impaler) as well as releasing his own titles under Image and Pop Sandbox. He is known for a signature ink-rendered, photo-based artwork that is heavily stylized, and an artist friend of Kennedy thought he would be perfect for the Dead Romans project.

Kennedy said he never actually expected Dead Romans to take off, noting previous comics projects “imploded at the launch pad.”

Fearless Fred Kennedy