Originally debuted in the Australia comic Anthology, Pizza Man was created by Damien Shanahan in the mid 1990’s. Gaining a national following Damien then released Pizza Man in a printed black & white stand alone series. Damien explains the basic premiss of this super cheesy dude:
"It's a world of superhero silliness. At the heart of our comic, we poke fun at the much loved world of superheroes. Our hero Pizza Man and his trusty sidekick Mozzarella duke it out with a cast of bumbling villains, least of all their arch nemesis Professor Klink who always has some new harebrained scheme cooked up."
During the 1990's creating comics was extremely expensive and distribution was predominately through one company in Australia so Pizza Man was temporarily retired. Fast forward to 2011 and while waiting for his work visa in the USA, Damien started colouring some of the old Pizza Man pages with the help of his wife Julie.
"I was never really happy with the way the originals made it to press and decided it would be great to apply my years of experience and get the comics looking the way I always wished they should. I'll admit I'm equal parts excited and exhausted, being the perfectionist I am, I really wanted to pour everything I could into the launch and doing that solely after hours and weekends can be challenging, but today it all paid off."
Fast forward another four years and Pizza Man: The Supreme Collection is ready for delivery. Through his company Shanamation, Damien has taken the project to Kickstarter with some pretty cool packages available; with the book in soft and hardcover formats, T-shirts, trading cards and even an adorable custom hand-painted Funko POP! figurine. Oh and did we mention the rad prints from some of Australia's finest comic artists; Ben Templesmith
Damien says,"It’s the only time ever that pizza has been better reheated!".
You can check out the Pizza Man: The Supreme Collection kickstarter campaign HERE, Facebook page HERE or the official Pizza Man website that includes original comic
pages HERE.
