Sal Abbinanti has a new Kickstarter out this week with an all-new, massive omnibus edition that includes rare and never-before-seen art by legendary illustrators. The Kickstarter, now live, is for a self-published comics series called Atomika. It’s a sci-fi cold war era superhero comic about a god of the 20th Century Soviet Union battling gods from Slavic mythological gods.
To give us insight into the series, Abbinanti shared the influences on the series, which was published between 2005 and 2011. The 12 issue series features 75 new pages of art as well as a wraparound cover by Alex Ross. It also follows Abbinanti’s successfully backed Kickstarter The Hostage earlier this year.
Check out the influences as well as a preview of Atomika below.
I watched the films of Sergei Eisenstein, a Russian film director and theorist whose work includes the three film classics Battleship Potemkin (1925), Alexander Nevsky (1938), and Ivan the Terrible (released in two parts, 1944 and 1958)
Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde
I really enjoyed studying Soviet Avant-Garde movie posters, especially those from the 20s and ’30s.
Chicago Tribune political cartoons
Growing up in the ’70s the Soviet Union was always the evil empire The Russian Bear. I used to see lots of exaggerated political cartoons in the Chicago Tribune.
As a kid, the first comic I ever bought was Thor #206 by John Buscema and I was hooked. When I discovered New Gods by Jack Kirby my path was set. So New Gods and Thor were what I had as my creative identity for the book.
I researched and read how much influence Greek mythology and Biblical characters had on Jack Kirby, so I did a ton of research on Russian mythology and found a rich source of the material.
Check out the Atomika preview below.
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