Colin Rankine was raised in New York City, where his family was so poor they only had one knife, one fork and one spoon. While Colin ate soup, his father ate salad and his mother slashed her wrists. Colin has been writing for his own amusement since childhood, including three unpublished novels in the horror & high fantasy genres, video games, comics, and numerous short stories and short short stories. He lives in San Francisco. The Unprofessionals is his first graphic novel.
Alexis Cruz enjoys mud and obstacle courses, having completed Tough Mudder twice. Besides his career as an actor, he's directed numerous theatre shows, companies, workshops, projects, and other shananigans -- if you count the homemade 'choose your own adventure' game he hustled in 3rd grade, he's been at this for over 25 years.
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Alexis Cruz and Colin Rankine grew up together on what used to be the Mean Streets of New York, NY, the city so nice it'll only mug you twice. They went to the same high school, where Alexis studied acting and Colin studied fine arts. They were besties! Even if they sometimes hated each others' guts. To paraphrase Chris Rock, if you've never tried to choke someone out in Math class... you've never had a true friend.
Alexis got really good at being professionally creative--all the behind-the-scenes stuff of meeting people, winning over skeptics, and communicating vision. Colin got really good at breaking rocks and at reading books. He's read thousands and totally understood them.
So Alexis and Colin teamed up again to produce the Unprofessionals, a tale of two misfits who sometimes disagree but always have each others' backs, and who decide to strike out on their own in a perilous industry...
So, why are they doing a comic? There are a lot of reasons, but the main one is that they both love comics. Most of the time, they are used to tell different kinds of stories about Green Lantern punching someone in the face very hard, but it's a powerful narrative form that's capable of so much more. There are plenty of examples of engaging, unusual, and artistically successful comics that have nothing to do with men in leotards, and The Unprofessionals - A Sociopathic Bromance, is one of them.
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| A Sociopathic Bromance |
