Peek Inside Section Zero's Pinup Section With Chris Samnee, Jerry Ordway, and More

05/11/2017 01:04 am EDT

When veteran comics creators Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett recently announced that they planned to revive their Gorilla Comics series Section Zero via Kickstarter and to finish the story they began more than 15 years ago, they weren't alone.

Among the rewards on their Kickstarter campaign was a "Gorilla Dossier" of one-sheet images as well as pinups which will appear in the pages of Section Zero itself.

Walter Simonson, Ben Caldwell, Matthew Clark, Terry Dodson, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, John Paul Leon, Jerry Ordway, Kelley Jones, Chris Samnee, and Dave Gibbons — who between them have created some of the most memorable comics of the last forty years -- are all contributing to the pinups.

The Gorilla Dossier is a manila envelope containing four mini-prints of the Section Zero members by artists George Perez, Stuart Immonen, Barry Kitson, Mike Wieringo and Tom Grummett, all inked by Karl Kesel.

Kesel, it should be noted, was also recently a part of the Tellos tribute to Wieringo, who passed away unexpectedly in 2007.

You can see a sampling of the art -- with more to come soon -- in the attached image gallery.

Samnee has already drawn his pin-up, seen below, of a new Section Zero member named Reagan Atomic, who Kesel describes as "a sort of sci-fi gunslinger with a Kirbyesque 'ray-glove' as her weapon of choice."

Of course, all pin-ups will be inked and colored in their final version.

"Karl and I have known each other a long time so I agreed to this when he mentioned doing the Kickstarter," Ordway told ComicBook.com when we asked how he came to be involved. He said that Kesel chose the character he will be drawing, so "The pressure is on, but I won't let him down."

(That last bit was presumably said with tongue in cheek, since Ordway and Kesel have worked together enough over the years that it's pretty safe to assume that Kesel knows what he's getting.)

For himself, Ordway admits that he's tempted by the lure of nostalgic Kickstarters like Section Zero and the recent Swords of the Swashbucklers project, which give creators an opportunity to revive stories and ideas that might otherwise sit on the shelf -- but having done a Kickstarter lately, he would want to handle his a little bit differently next time.

"I do have multiple characters I'd love to get back to, but having gone through a Kickstarter for Semiautomagic, with Alex DeCampi last year, I feel like the best way is to complete as much of the project as possible before launching a campaign, in order to minimize the time between funding and shipping," Ordway said. "It also allows you to promote your project without also trying to draw pages. It's an investment of time, to bang the drum for a project. So for myself, I am trying to figure out how to motivate myself to draw my own stories instead of watching TV or going to the movies!"

A week into its month-long campaign, Section Zero is about halfway to its $60,000 funding goal. You can check it out, pledge support, and see more about the project at its Kickstarter page.

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