Broken Frontier

Over the last three years, The Hero Initiative, a charity dedicated to helping older comic creators in medical or financial need, has enlisted the aid of 100 top-flight artists to create The Ultimate Spider-Man #100 Project, The Hulk 100 Project, and the Wolverine: Weapon X 100 Project  --collections of 100 original covers featuring great Marvel characters. This year, The Hero Initiative reprises the program with Marvel’s premier super hero team.

The call has gone out to create The New Avengers 100 Project, and dozens of artists are putting pen to paper. Marvel Comics has generously donated 100 blank-covered cardstock copies of New Avengers #1 to Hero, with artists involved including well-known stars such as Howard Chaykin, Ian Churchill, Mike Deodato, Terry Dodson, Steve Epting, Dave Gibbons, Adam Kubert and more.

“Every year, these projects get me back to the drawing board to work on some of my favorite characters,” said Hero Initiative Board member and longtime Marvel artist John Romita. “We have a great lineup of artists slated, and it’s even more fun for me to see the great covers come in than it is to draw my own!”

“The Hero Initiative does important work for some of our most treasured creators and Marvel’s glad to be part of that,” said Dan Buckley, Publisher & CEO, Print, Animation & Digital Media, Marvel Worldwide, Inc. “Taking the hottest franchise in comics—the Avengers—and combining it with the top talent in the industry is a win all around..”

All 100 original New Avengers covers will be published in a book slated for release in 2011, and a public viewing of all covers will be scheduled as well.