By Zack Quaintance — If you pay attention to Kickstarter comics, you’ve likely heard of Immortal Studios, which has used the platform to launch a shared universe of comics headlined by The Adept. Well, now the publisher has a new series getting ready to hit Kickstarter: Fa-Sheng — Origins, which features a story concept by Peter Shiao, a script by Rylend Grant, and artwork by Dexter Wee.

That book is getting ready to launch next month — find the pre-launch page here — and today the creative team has shared with us some new character designs, preview pages, and some quotes about the work. Check it all out below!

Fa-Sheng: Origins

The character designs…

The preview pages…

The creator quotes…

“If there ever was a time that called for new heroes -- that time is now. In the Immortal Storyverse we are not talking about radioactive spiders or chemical spills as the source of transformation, but the power of will, inspiration and knowledge to forge heroes from people just like ourselves. That makes what we are doing relevant to people's lives.” – Peter Shiao
“I designed Fa Sheng based on a young Jet Li in the 1982 Shaolin Temple movie. I loved that movie growing up. And when I read the script a young Jet Li came into my mind. His outfit for the first issue is based on the boxer rebels of that time. The designs of the other characters like the boxers and soldiers are also based on the outfits of that era. Rylend provided references that were useful for the development of the design process like BODHIDHARMA who wears a red robe and Imperial General Yuxian who wears loud and lavish armour that reflects his personality.” – Dexter Wee
“In the THE ADEPT - the first Immortal studios Wuxia title - we met Fa Sheng as an older, fully-formed Arhat (enlightened being). We have a tendency to think that someone like that just pops out of the womb fully formed, but that’s never the case. These folks start out just like you and me. Enlightenment is always won slowly-but-surely over time and is often the product of substantial setback and strife. The Fa Sheng we meet here in ORIGINS is young and brash. He doesn’t yet know what he doesn’t know. As the series progresses we’ll watch him get put through the meat grinder of the Boxer uprising and the Warlord Era that followed, gaining insight from glorious victories and agonizing defeats. We’ll watch an Arhat get built from the ground up, brick-by-brick. It’s a hell of a thing to watch” – Rylend Grant

Check out the pre-launch page for Fa-Shen: Origins #1!

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He has written about comics for The Beat and NPR Books, among others. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.