Sex, Spies, & Rock 'n Roll Volume 3

Story

In Sex, Spies, & Rock 'n Roll Volume 3, the continuing serialized adventures of “The Hitman,” “Cowboy,” and “Gulag-a-go-go” are combined with new stories with new sex, new spies, and more rock ‘n roll. New artists from around the world (Italy, Brazil, Hong Kong, Indonesia) join the series regulars (from Mexico, Italy, Egypt, and the USA) in these retro-1980s adventures, unfolding the wider tapestry of the Sex, Spies, & Rock ‘N Roll universe of characters!

Created by 

Jeff Douglas Messer

Cover art by

Steve Scott

1: “The Hitman” chapter 3

Written by Jeff Douglas Messer art by Migueal Guzman

2: “Gulag-a-go-go” chapter 2

Written by Jeff Douglas Messer art by Erica Durante

3: “Cowboy” chapter 3

Written by Nicholas Christinason-Messer art by M Faoud

4: “Girl Spies 2” chapter 1

Written by Jeff Douglas Messer art by Elena Ominetti

5: “Mission To Afghanistan” chapter 1

Written by Jeff Douglas messer art by Ahbyn Gustavo

6: “Operation Nude Beach” chapter 1

Written by Jeff Douglas Messer art by Elisa di Virgilio

7: “Hong Kong Cool”

Written by Jeff Douglas Messer and TenbinStar art by Samuel Andre

8: “Mission Report”

Written by Mike Russell and Jeff Douglas Messer art by Christian Abel Pena

Pinup for Halloween by Vasco Gioachini

Pinup for Gulag-a-go-go by D. Trull

Katrina Volpova created by D. Trull

Preview

Art Prints

Ramona Fradon / Mike Grell

Background

The 1980s. Music was loud. Fashion was louder. The hottest days of the Cold War were filled with intrigue, danger, and adventure. It was up to the International Security Foundation, and its network of daring secret agents to prevent the spies of the world from triggering a war to end all wars. And the planet. These are tales of spies across the 1980s and beyond, whose deeds of derring do will save the world with style, and the volume turned up all the way.

What started as Jeff Messer bringing back stories he wrote in his youth, quickly grew when his son, Nicholas presented the proud dad with a first screenplay. The sense that the son was telling the same kinds of high-adventure and intrigue stories he was in his youth, Jeff decided to make it a family affair. This quickly grew, when the concept went from a lead feature and back up feature to a second backup feature being added, then a third. And once the first crowdfunding campaign in 2021 began to gain traction and become very successful, the idea of adding more short back up features became the way to conquer stretch goals. The campaign also offered the chance for backers to be drawn into small supporting roles in the back up stories. The popularity of this pledge level created the need to generate a few more back up stories just to have enough roles to fill with the eager backers.

The first two volumes of Sex, Spies, & Rock ‘N Roll’s flagship anthology book featured the art and talent of over two dozen creators from 5 continents! This is truly an international project.

Volume 1 grew from a planned 80 page book to almost 120 pages in total, with 16 backers having their likenesses captured in various stories as a variety of characters. Some of those characters have lived on to appear in further stories as well. The fun of the campaign was infectious, and soon more artists were reaching out wanting to work on future stories. As well, several writers expressed interest in telling tales in this fun-filled universe.

Volume 2 continued the stories launched in Volume 1, as well as introducing new storylines, and spinning the main feature (SPADES) out of the anthology book into its own standalone title, which launched simultaneously with Volume 2 with a double-sized first issue. Also, a new series launched at the same time, bringing Miguel Guzman from just the artist of the  six page back up “The Hitman” to art chores on the epic ISF ORIGINS series, which tells the pre-1985 stories of the characters. 1985 being the starting point of the Sex, Spies, & Rock ‘N Roll universe.

As the series evolves, it will encompass a timeline from the 1960s to 2019, creating an ever-growing tapestry of the lives of the characters across multiple generations, and going from the nascent days of espionage, through the Cold War, and up to the modern Hi-tech age of spies. An advantage of being allowed to rapidly expand this universe is the discovery that the main character across the entire universe is the sexy covergirl, Cassi Storm, whose creation began as Duke Spade’s spy girlfriend, but expanded with the birth of this anthology series. She became the focus of most of the storytelling, thus becoming the character that connects all others within this universe. The character presented herself as more powerful, and more dominant than expected when the project launched, and her ascension became the creative driving force for the serie, making it all the more unique. There are lot of standard “Boy Spy” adventures out there, but Cassi turns that trope on its head and makes it a lot more fun to see things from the “Girl Spy” perspective, filtered through the 1980s era.

Sex, Spies, & Rock ‘N Roll is planned to be a ten volume anthology series, with each book being between 64 to 80 pages of serialized stories. Along the way, a number of those characters will spin off into their own solo titles. Each crowdfunding campaign will offer multiple issues of comics, thereby offering over 100 pages of new stories and material with each campaign. Eventually most of the serialized stories will also be collected into their own one shots or trade paperbacks with bonus material and exclusive new pages of content in those collected releases. More writers,and more artists will be joining the series as well, with some ambitions of getting contributions from bigger names in the comic industry. Kevin Van Hook, Steve Bryant, and Mike Grell have already contributed pages and pinups.

Bio

Jeff Messer, writer & publisher of Sex, Spies, & Rock 'n Roll, is a 2019 Eisner Award nominated writer for the TWOMorrows book "Mike Grell, Life is Drawing Without An Eraser." He also became Editor-in-Chief & co-publisher with Mike Grell's Masterstroke Studios, launching a number of successful Kickstarter campaigns in the past three years. He has also successfully funded and published the first in a series of graphic novels called ROBIN HOOD, THE LEGEND OF SHERWOOD (with Chris Geary as artist) based on a series of stage plays he co-authored with Robert Akers.

Stretch Goals

Also, just added late in the campaign: if we hit 225 backers, all of the physical backers will get a free print of the cover art!

Timeline

As of the launch of the campaign, Vol 3 is all drawn, and 1/3 colored and lettered, and we expect the book to be ready to head to the printer a month after the campaign. Printing, manufacturing and shipping should take around three more months, so delivery of rewards is expected to be done by the beginning of Summer 2023.