about the book
“Fearless” Chuck Fairlane has everything going for him. He’s the best player and the fastest rising star on his professional football team. He is destined to be one of the all time greats. That is, until his degenerate gambling dad, Al, pushes him too far after a match in which he was painfully injured. His father’s taunting causes Fearless to go berserk, and the kid ends up clocking the other team’s mascot right in the chops. The violence escalates and Fearless ends up swinging at everyone! It is the biggest brawl in sports’ history!
He is expelled from the league, ending his career. Far worse, fighting mascots are now referred to as “fairlaining.” The only good outcome from the infamous incident is that his father is sent to prison for fixing games and running a gambling syndicate.
Ten years later, Fearless has made peace with his fate and is now happily coaching high school football. On the day his father is released from prison, a thug dressed in a mascot costume attacks Fearless for no reason! That incident is followed by several more, and Fearless finds himself in a string of continuous fights with big annoying fuzzy characters. Obviously his father is manipulating and setting him up again! It isn’t long before the FBI’s Agent Molly Harrison is checking things out!
Determined to take matters in hand, Fearless begins a cross-country “Brawl Across America” against team mascots. Evading the police, he is determined to put an end to his father’s nation-sweeping conspiracy. But before Fearless can end the matter forever, he finds himself in a rock’em, sock ‘em no-holds-barred conflagration in a stadium full of people. Fearless can’t run away from the past—but he can punch the grins right off the mascots’ fuzzy kissers.
If you are looking for lots of humor, heart-rending childhood flashbacks, slapdash action, and slam-bang violence, this is your book. It also is full of hilarious haymakers and great Vince Lombardi quotes.
about the author
Chris Sims was born in 1969 and grew up in Horsham, West Sussex, England, in a rural area miles from anything else. He is known for his dark twisted stories.
Chris’s interest in this genre started when he was a child. His father, a teacher, took Chris on long camping trips to the darkest, most remote corners of Devon. Sitting around the campfire late at night, he would try to scare the devil out of Chris with bone-chilling ghost stories, often accompanied by the piercing cries of the owls perched nearby. Chris says the short walk to his tent after these ghastly sessions was more often a terrorized sprint!
Chris’s interests in mysteries grew. His favorite childhood books were Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators series and Roahl Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected. As he got older, he was fascinated with books that gave insights into unusual minds such as John Fowles’ The Collector and Graham Greene’s Heart of the Matter.
After graduating from Newcastle University, Chris held a bunch of abysmal jobs including telesales and working on a battery farm. Luckily he travelled a lot. Just after his 30th birthday, he was broken down on the side of the M40 highway in the wee hours of the morn, waiting for a tow truck, when the idea for his first novel struck. Outside the White Lines is about a serial killer who roams the roads in the dead of night, looking for stranded motorists! All of Chris’s novels explore the darker side of the human psyche.
He currently lives in Stockport, Manchester, and writes in a glorified shed near his home. When he isn’t penning his latest novel, he does freelance copywriting. Chris is married and the father of four children. Wonder if he ever takes them camping?
Sources:
Author website
Author biography: Wikipedia
Author spotlight: Chris High
Also by Chris Sims:
Deadpool : Bad Blood by Rob Lieffeld. Marvel Entertainment Group. June 2016
about the co-creator
Chad Bowers has spent most of his life reading comic books. He claims his transition from just a fan to a professional comic book creator is still a work in progress.
Chad cut his teeth on New Mutants and X-Force. Image his thrill when he actually worked on the Secret Wars version of X-Men ’92. His partner on that project was Chris Sims and they have been working together now for more than a couple of decades!
Besides his work on comics and graphic novels, Chad is also the co-founder of Action Age Comics, the creator of the webcomic Monster Plus, and the co-creator of Awesome Hospital, the Hard Ones. In his spare time, he reviews comics and co-hosts the weekly comics game show podcast, The Hour Cosmic.
Chad lives in South Carolina with his wife and son.
Sources:
Author archives: Multiversity Comics
Author biography: Graphic Novel Reporter
Author biography: Monkey Brain Comics
about the illustrator
Scott Kowalchuk has been a Bat-fan ever since he discovered the Super Powers toy collection at an extremely young age. When Batmania broke in the late 1980s, which included reruns of the television series, Scott lived, breathed, and dreamed of the Dark Knights adventures. One of his fondest memories was hearing an ad for the broadcast of the Batman ’66 movie. Until that moment, he didn’t even realize that the movie existed. That Thursday night program was the first real thrill of his life, and he still has the VHS recording!
Here is the secret truth—that Batmania has lasted well into his late twenties and he still pulls out that old VHS tape to watch! Scott even used the Batman character as part of his portfolio at the University of Saskatchewan Alberta College of Art and Design. So imagine Scott’s thrill when he was hired to illustrate several of the DC Comic’s series Batman ’66 comic books, and especially his favorite all time villain King Tut! Scott went on to work with Image Comics and is currently teaching at the Alberta College of Art and Design.
Scott’s inspiration from the Batman television series came from its bold and bright colors. It was one of the first shows to use color and became a definitive event for pop culture. So when Scott was asked to do the illustration for the offbeat graphic novel Down Set Fight, he knew just how he was going to design the panels—big and bright!
Scott lives in Calgary, Alberta, in Canada, and he loves drawing comics. He says it gives him “the freedom to create something, a character, a story, a universe, entirely new and completely mine…”
Sources:
Illusgrator blog: Blogspot
Illustrator profile: Linked In
Illustrator interview: Newsarama
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