Saturday, June 7, 2008

Forte Update for June '08!

What’s new in the world of Forte this summer?

Most of the additions are Forte 2000-related this time around. Let’s start with the F2K Gallery, since art’s always the most fun! We’ve got all color shots this round, and all from two different returning artists – Kevin J. West and Dennis Martin Willman. First, Kevin West continues his Forte 2000 team head-shots (I’m working to collect ‘em all) with shots of Dyna Girl and Rainier. Next, Mr. Willman jumps in with a big grab bag of colorful Forte awesomeness. First, “The Dark Lord Anubis” gives us a look at the full headmask look of one of Forte’s greatest villains. Next, “The Plotting of Erebus” shows us a scene of the mystic menace called Erebus with villainous thoughts of Phantashia on his mind. Mr. Dusk” is a moody shot of Nicholas Ares’ mysterious right-hand man. Dyna Girl” rather speaks for itself, a gorgeous look at F2K’s petite powerhouse. There’s a beautiful shot of “Savannah”, the tragic villainess who’s appeared in a couple of F2K tales. And there’s the amazing photo-quality “Seahawk” shot, designed, in the artist’s words, to look like it came from “Seahawk: The Movie”. Perhaps the most completely mind-blowing addition is this stunning (and suitable for framing, for crying out loud) shot of a trio of F2K bad girls – “Prowler, Toast and Blue Dragon”. And we have an eye-popping shot of “Bobby McMillan”, otherwise known as Max, but out of costume and in suit and tie. And speaking of out of costume, we round things out with one simply called “Cincoflex in Repose”. As you can see, Mr. Willman didn’t just hit it out of the park with this collection, but didn’t even seem to know the park was there. Enjoy.

On the Forte 2000 story front, the origin tale of Seahawk continues in “Seahawk: Number Zero (Part Two)”. When we last left the story, we were back in 1999, in a time before the new Forte team formed when Seahawk had just gotten started as a new Seattle solo hero. In this chapter, we pick up where that left off, but we also take a further leap back to 1998, to a time before Jared Banks even became Seahawk, to look in on his first meeting with someone who would come to play a big part in his (and Forte’s) future. Don’t miss this chapter filled with intrigue, emotion, suspense and action! The pre-history of Forte 2000 continues!

And just for something, as they (over)say, completely different, the Forte 2000 page proudly presents the Forte 2000 Soundtrack! There have been a group of songs that have been inspirations for Forte 2000 stories and characters for some time, but finally that collection has been put together and posted up on iTunes. If you have iTunes, you can click on any of the songs, right off the Flash display on this page, and sample them (or even buy them). Or just use the text on the page itself to check out the song list (where there are notes on the usage of each track) and pluck those songs from whatever other MP3 outlet you use. Either way, we hope you enjoy some of the sounds that inspire the adventures of Forte, and hope they’ll increase your enjoyment of these stories, too.

But on the non-F2K-front, there’s a brand new Forte Universe page that’s just gone up! This awesome new addition is called “K.C. Ryan’s Forte Universe”, a page dedicated to the non-Forte stories of the hero universe Forte inhabits—written by the universe’s creator himself! Here you can currently check out recently-written tales of Captain Thunder, Angel Flight and Hornet, but can also jump into the brand-new Justice Squadron story called “The Rule of Law”. This page will be the home base of K.C.’s continuing tales of these other beloved heroes, and soon will add the adventures of The Four Aces and the Enforcers. Keep checking back for more!

And we’ll see you next time.