Mask of the Red Panda Makes the Leap to Print

The fifth Monkeybrain Inc. digital series to make the leap to print through IDW Publishing, Red Panda: Mask of the Red Panda by Gregg Taylor doesn’t have what you might call the most typical of origins.  Spawned in a medium many thought extinct, the former award winning 1930s-style radio drama turned digital comic will hit comic book stands as a collection in one printed volume. Initially created in the medium that complemented the story’s setting, The Red Panda Adventures followed the Red Panda and the Flying Squirrel, two masked avengers solving mysteries and fighting bad guys in depression-era Toronto.  It briefly became a novel before settling into a comic book, which better suits the style in which it’s written: in the spirit of 1930s and ‘40s pulp fiction stories.

 

  With masterful and striking artwork by Dean Kotz, Mask of the Red Panda looks and reads like classic noir.  About the transition, Taylor was quoted saying, “because these characters started out in the radio serial, they’ve literally just lived as voices in my head for years now.  To actually see them spring to action-packed life… is absolutely a dream come true.” So “the two-fisted masked guardian” the Red Panda, and his sidekick, the “fearless fighting female” the flying squirrel will fight gangsters and super villains once more, but in print!  IDW and Monkeybrain have done it again.  It’s scheduled for release on March 4^th, 2014.