Broken Frontier

All Those In Favor Of Sensational Silver-Age Storytelling? The i's Have It!

Irrational Games, the award-winning developers of the heroic real-time tactical RPG for the PC and Mac, FREEDOM FORCE, and the forthcoming Golden Age follow-up, FREEDOM FORCE VS THE 3rd REICH, have teamed up with Image Comics to publish a 6-issue miniseries based on the property beginning in January.

Scripted by Irrational newcomer, Eric Dieter, and featuring stunning Silver Age-style artwork by Tom Scioli (Myth of 8-Opus), the FREEDOM FORCE miniseries adapts the original best-selling computer game of 2002 for comics. Rounding out the title’s creative team are Tom McCraw (WildGuard) on colors and the tag-team of Jim Keplinger (Small Gods) & Charles Pritchett (The Iron Ghost) on letters.

The miniseries relates the story of a noble band of heroes led by the mysterious Mentor, the patriotic Minuteman, the fiery El Diablo and the melancholy Man-Bot who are assembled to fight for our freedom against an alien warlord's insidious scheme to conquer Earth. Besides alien invaders, these soldiers of the Silver Age must turn back a tidal wave of evil including Communist hordes, giant robots, clone armies, deleterious demigods and cosmic-powered criminals that plague the citizens of Patriot City, USA.

"Whether you're a long-time fan of the original game or new to the party, the miniseries is an ideal jumping-on point to the ever-expanding FREEDOM FORCE universe.", says miniseries writer, Eric Dieter. “FREEDOM FORCE was initially conceived as a tribute to the optimistic and action-packed comics that we grew up with. It’s fitting that we get to take it full circle by telling the story through the medium that inspired it.”

“We’ve wanted to do this project for a very long time.”, says Irrational’s General Manager, Ken Levine. “With his love and understanding for the story and characters, Eric came onboard to make this happen and was instrumental in getting all the pieces to fall into place. He introduced the idea of putting this together to Image publisher, Erik Larsen, who then introduced us to artist Tom Scioli. It was kismet.”

The Freedom Force comic is being launched in celebratory anticipation of the aforementioned FREEDOM FORCE VS THE 3RD REICH, which will be shipping to stores in early 2005. FREEDOM FORCE VS THE 3RD REICH will take the team back to comics’ Golden Age of the 1940’s. Allied with that era’s World War II mysterymen, the team will confront the super-powered German mastermind known as Blitzkrieg.

When asked if there would be more Freedom-y Goodness in the future, Irrational's Levine said “We’d love to do more FREEDOM FORCE comics and have some long-term plans for doing so but ultimately, it’s up to the readers. The best way to make that happen is to pre-order FREEDOM FORCE from your local comic book shop!”

FREEDOM FORCE #1 is available for pre-order starting October 27th in the November issue of PREVIEWS for comics shipping in January. To find your local comic book retailer, call 1-888-COMIC-BOOK (1-888-266-4226) or visit http://csls.diamondcomics.com. To learn more about the Freedom Force series of games, please visit www.freedomfans.com.