'Lightning Squirrel' bolts onto comics scene
BY CHRIS GAETANO Staff Writer
Readers, prepare to be shocked by an electrifying new superhero — one who doesn't remain static in the face of injustice but is, rather, a resistor to the many evils of the world, conducting himself with courage and bravery the whole time.

Lightning Squirrel, created by Edison resident Jeff Kipnis, uses his power over electricity to make the suburbs safe for rodents everywhere.

That superhero is none other than Lightning Squirrel, a high-flying, bolt-flinging sciurid who makes the world, or at least the suburbs of Clifton, N.J., safe from the terrors of rodent-hating swimmers and bothersome dogs. Created by Edison resident Jeff Kipnis, "Lightning Squirrel," a comic book published by independent studio Ronin Press, launched its inaugural issue at the beginning of this month, the first of what is promised to be a six-part miniseries.

The first issue tells of Lightning Squirrel's origins as the result of a mad scientist's use of a tesla coil to prevent squirrels from getting into his birdfeeder. While the device manages to trap his fellows in its electrified grasp, the rodent that will eventually become Lightning Squirrel instead gains superpowers that include flight, the ability to toss bolts of electricity, and human speech. His archenemy, established early on, is Swimming Lady, who was taught to hate and fear squirrels from an early age by her mother, who warned that they could carry rabies and kill her with but a single bite.

The book is composed of short vignettes that, Kipnis said, are graphic representations of a series of short stories he wrote when he and his wife, Nany, were dating. He said that she told him about her two big "paranoid fears."

"One was squirrels, because of how her mother taught her that they had rabies and she could die, and the other was lightning, [because] she was life-guarding at a pool and she didn't want to get struck by lightning," said Kipnis.

Kipnis put the two together into a series of short stories for her when they first started dating. Each story eventually turned, years later, into a chapter of the comic. Kipnis, a near lifelong comic book fan, said it was actually his wife who encouraged him to turn the stories into a comic, a possibility that the 51-year-old analytic scientist hadn't considered before. The only story in the first issue that didn't come from the stories he wrote was the origin story, which his art team, consisting of penciler Victor Cabanelas, inker Eran Aviani, letterer Brant Fowler, cover colorists Ed Davis and Mick Clausen, and editor Dustin Archibald, insisted

on.

It took about 10 years to get "Lightning Squirrel" off the ground, according to Kipnis, because the comic is more of a side hobby to his regular day job. When he was ready to find artists and editors, he began his search online, which is how he found Ronin, who became the publisher for "Lightning Squirrel." He said that Ronin operates more like a community than a publishing studio. It connects artists and writers across the globe to work on projects together and critique each other's work. The team that was eventually assembled to create the first issue exemplifies this idea, with all of them living in different parts of the world. Cabanelas, the penciler, lives in Argentina, Aviani, the inker, is in Israel, and Archibald is from Canada. Kipnis, David and Clausen, meanwhile, may all live in the U.S. but all in different parts. With this in mind, Kipnis said that e-mail was invaluable when they were putting the issue together, since each person would work on his part of the comic, scan it in, and then pass it on to the next person in the process. This long process, which everyone, including Kipnis, did on their own free time, eventually turned into "Lightning Squirrel."

"Thanks to e-mail and the Internet, we have this international team we put together. … We have each other's home numbers … but we do everything by e-mail; the pages are passed electronically from the artists," said Kipnis.

"Lightning Squirrel" stories tend to be light and cartoonish, which Kipnis noted is a deep contrast with the darker and more violent direction many mainstream comics seem to be going today. His stories, he said, can be enjoyed by just about any age group, provided they can read.

"It's fun. A lot of stuff gets blown up in the series, but it's fun. It's not body parts flying around and everything taking place at night, it's more of a cartoony kind of story taking place in a comic, so people can enjoy

them," said Kipnis.

The character Lightning Squirrel also appears in two novels that Kipnis published as well as in two benefit comics that Ronin published, one to aid survivors of Hurricane Katrina, "Hope, New Orleans" and the other for the nonprofit Hero Initiative, which helps comic creators unable to work due to health problems.

Five more issues of the main book, all inspired from the original set of stories Kipnis wrote years ago, are set for publication, with the next one due out sometime in 2009.

The comic is available for direct purchase at www.indyplanet.com. More information is available at the author's web site, www.danokdath. tripod.com.

Chris Gaetano can be reached

at sentnorth@gmnews.com.