Part 2 of 3 articles on the background to this project and The Human Fly

By Gerry Huntman

In Part 1 of this series Chris Sequeira eloquently mapped out the Fly’s ride from real-life stuntman to multi-generational champion against evil of both natural and supernatural kinds. Quite a journey with many twists and turns, and no shortage of pervasive mystery. Chris’ core observation was the parallelisms between ‘real life’ turning to fiction for both the Fly and Dracula—we noticed a lot of nodding heads on that score since the article was published.

I want to talk about that journey too—how we got to the Human Fly v Dracula project, and what makes it so exciting. From a publisher’s viewpoint.

A publisher taking on an existing franchise is no easy call to make and my decision to greenlight partnering with Human Fly International was heavily influenced by Chris Sequeira’s advice (he is second-in-charge in my company), as well as my gut feeling. The Fly’s most unique trait back in the 1970s—including the Marvel comic series based on his adventures—was the fact that he was a REAL stuntman from Canada, a larger-than-life figure well known to the public in that time period. Transitioning him to a street-level superhero was a fascinating move by Marvel and people even today—well over forty years later—still talk about the limited run with fondness and nostalgia.

An excerpt from ‘Behind the Scenes’ documentary (late 1970s) showing Stan Lee and Archie Goodwin
conceptualising The Human Fly for Marvel Comics

The filter I used when looking at the Fly for today’s market—and this ‘filter’ was a combination of hard business assessment and creative interest in equal measure—was not a matter of simply replaying the formidable character in 2020s settings but rather capturing the magic of the original man and the Marvel representation, and growing it to a new audience. In simple terms, honor the older generations’ memory of The Fly, but at the same time wowing those who don’t know him at all. While a complex goal, the IPI team didn’t see it as difficult, and in fact saw a myriad of opportunities to exploit.

Without giving away any spoilers, we made sure that the canon of The Fly is maintained, but much mystery surrounds his identity and even determining if The Fly of the 1970s is the same man now. The mystery compounds with the revelation that there were Flys going back to at least to 1776, and I can safely say that it certainly does go back further! There are onion-skin layers of plot—The Human Fly Vol 1 (5-part series) provides glimpses of the ‘bigger picture’ but is focused on introducing everyone to the champion of justice and his sidekick, Mercury—someone who has an equally mysterious and complex history. These 5 issues help us understand The Fly better and prepares us for an explosion of storylines crossing geographies and centuries. 

This is what captured my imagination and caused me to agree to take on the partnership with Human Fly International. IPI Comics isn’t a mainstream superhero comic publisher—our brand encompasses the speculative fiction fields (science fiction, fantasy and horror) and all the sub-genres and mashups you can think of. We love stories that span historical epochs and we love the ‘what ifs’ of seeing iconic characters/monsters (real and fictional) interact with our storylines. That’s who we are: and that is what The Human Fly has grown into as well. Yes, he is a superhero (or more aptly, a ‘champion’), but he is also a complex character holding the burden of generations of Flys on his shoulders.

We want to provide readers with glimpses of these nuances of The Fly, while still maintaining his core traits—his anonymity, his daredevil, never-say-die attitude, his near-indestructability. Given his collective hundreds-of-years of existence, we want to showcase how he has, on numerous occasions, shifted lanes into iconic storylines known to readers, and befriended or fought, memorable characters.

In short, we believe we have steered The Human Fly into the most captivating of comic book adventures.

You haven’t backed this Kickstarter? What are you waiting for? You will LOVE this.

Gerry Huntman
Managing Director, IPI Comics

Our Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ipicomic/human-fly-and-dracula-conflict-across-centuries