Frater Mine is now being published through Sean McGrath's OrthoComics starting with issue #5. Check out his BLOG for news and ordering information.
It takes the command of an angel to get Jake, Matt, and Colleen - three former high school friends - in the same room again in over a decade. Magic brought them together in their youth, but conflict and doubt drove them apart. Old hurts and lingering mistrusts are never far from the surface as the trio struggle to answer a divine order when only one of them remembers what it was like to be powerful.
FRATER MINE is a comic about their reunion and the conflicts it reopens. Think "Edgar Allen Poe?s The Big Chill."
The Story...
In Issue One, Jake, a man with a mission from God, makes contact with Matt, hoping to recruit him for this divine-mandated adventure. Jake plans to appeal to Matt's sense of the heroic ideal, the chance to be a good guy again and fight evil where it lives; barring that the angel has also promised a reward for succeeding. Matt is actually more put out by the call than he is excited, but subsequent events lead him to believe that he is meant to help Jake.
Matt and Jake, however, weren't alone in their practicing of magic.
Enter Colleen, the third member of the magical trinity. As Jake tried to drag Matt into his adventure, so does Matt try to convince Colleen to meet him back in their hometown. Signs have been appearing to Matt since Jake?s call, all of which point homewards. Colleen rejects the offer out of hand. She never liked using magic and she never believed in Jake's power. Yet she also finds herself heading home.
By the end of the story, no one will remain unscathed.
The Players...
Jake is the most powerful magician of the trinity. Arrogant but hopelessly deluded by years of immersing himself in magic, he can hardly tell the real from the ethereal from the totally fantastical. His claims to have been granted the knowledge of how to make a lightsaber and can't be dissuaded from that belief).
Matt is a high school teacher and magician, but he uses magic to discipline students (with love, of course) and get laid every once in a while. He is the peacemaker of the group, preferring to keep life sweet and flowing along smoothly like Dairy Queen, but can get righteously pissed off when pressed.
Colleen is a writer and a mother - everything she always wanted to be. Her life is by far the most normal of the three. She denies that the years she and Jake and Matt spent together doing magic ever happened, that the three of them were making it all up. She loves Matt like a brother but avoids contact with him.
Reviews...
Frater Mine #1 - 3: The Gay Comic List
Frater Mine #5: The Gay Comic List
Interviews...
Reports...
2007 San Diego Comic Con Report
Book #1 Info:
Creator & Writer: Sean McGrathDrawn & Inked: Juan Romera
Cover Art: Sean McGrath and Cathy Ann Gouin
Letters: Dave Roth
Editor: Percival Constantine
Synopsis:
"On Signs and Signals" - part one of three. Three high school friends - Matt, Jake and Colleen - now well into adulthood, are brought back together after several years of separation to perform a divine service. Once young and powerful magicians, they are out of practice and unsure if the quest is even real! When you think FRATER MINE, think Edgar Allen Poe's "The Big Chill".
Issue #1 Artwork Previews!
Book #2 Info:
Creator & Writer: Sean McGrathDrawn & Inked: Andres Barrientos
Cover Art: Dan Machold
Letters: Allen Freeman
Editor: Percival Constantine
Additional graphics by Allen Freeman and Sean McGrath
Synopsis:
June 2006 will see the second issue of FRATER MINE published from Making Comics Studios. Creator Sean McGrath and new artist Andres Barrientos continue the story of magicians and estranged friends Matt, Colleen and Jake. At the end of issue one, Matt and Colleen had finally tracked down Jake to his apartment, but upon entering they found him under attack by a demon mosquito-thing. Issue two picks up a moment later, with Matt and Colleen struggling to remember what it was like to have the power to defend themselves and to beat back evil just because they could. They ultimately rescue Jake, who reveals why he has called them back together - Heaven has a mission for them, and the reward for successful completion thereof is whatever they can think of to ask for. But Matt and Colleen have their doubts about how much of what Jake says is fact.
Frater Mine #2 - "Building the Mystery" - will be available through KA-BLAM.
Issue #2 Artwork Previews!
Book #3 Info:
Creator & Writer: Sean McGrathDrawn & Inked: Juan Romera
Cover Art: Dan Machold
Letters: Allen Freeman
Editor: Percival Constantine
Synopsis:
In August 2006, Making Comics Studios will release the third and final issue of the Frater Mine mini-series. Creator Sean McGrath and returning artist Juan Romera finish off the series with our three magicians traveling to the Underworld to find a teacher who can instruct them in the power and control of magic. The price of these lessons may be more than they can pay.
Frater Mine #3 - "The D Crew Looks into the Abyss" - will be available through KA-BLAM.
Issue #3 Artwork Previews!
Book #4 Info:
Here, There and Nowhere
Part One - "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to
Side"
Drawn & Inked: Juan Romera
Cover Art: Scott McGrath
Letters: Ed Brisson
Editor: Scott McGrath
Synopsis:
Six months after the events of "Family Reunion", Matt's life spins violently out of control, and an act of helping a friend sends his life in another unexpected direction. The events of this issue will have repurcussions that span the next nine issues, each asking "How far will someone go to protect their loved ones?"
Issue #4 Artwork Previews!
PLUS, a special preview of another Making Comics Studios comic book, "All Students Must Die!"
Creator & Writer: Sean McGrath
Drawn & Inked: Benjamin Granoff
To achieve order, could one go so far as to sell one's soul in exchange for the power to inflict any punishment one wanted on a high school student body. Watch as the faculty of Downs High School do exactly that..
Frater Mine #4 - "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side" - will be available through KA-BLAM.