A graduate of Battle Ground High School has released his latest comic book, Shuffle.
JD Boucher is a professional comic book writer. He launched pre-order sales for his new book on March 7.
Boucher focused his new book on his love for music.
“Shuffle is an all-ages superhero comic,” said Boucher.
Boucher said the book focuses on the character David, who goes on a walk while holding his older brother’s MP3 player at the start of his summer vacation before he enters into high school.
“He gets pulled into some cosmic nonsense and he gets a super suit,” Boucher said. “But that suit gives him a superpower based on what song plays. However, his suit is stuck on shuffle and he doesn’t know what power he’ll get, and the power only lasts as long as the song does, making it a little more complicated for him.”
Boucher said the idea for the story came to him while he was in high school. He graduated from Battle Ground High School in 2012.
Boucher always had a love for many genres of music like heavy metal and electronic, so he felt compelled to incorporate that as an element in the comic.
“Being able to integrate them into a superhero hadn’t been done before, and I was surprised nobody did, so I was like ‘this is my shot. This is my chance to make a superhero nobody’s seen before,’” Boucher explained.
Near the start of the pandemic, Boucher met George Kambadais, who is the illustrator for Shuffle.
“George was open to commissions and looking for collaborators. I reached out to him and pitched it and he liked it, so then we took it to our publisher, Arledge Comics, and they also really liked it, so we did a worldwide search for musicians to put onto the book,” Boucher said. “Once we had that finished, I used the musicians to write the script based on what songs we had access to. It’s been a long journey, but it’s really cool to see it out there now.”
Boucher greatly admires Kambadais’ art style, calling him “one of the best superhero artists around.” He felt Shuffle would perfectly compliment his art too. Kambadais is located in Greece, so the duo collaborate with each other remotely.
Despite the amount of logistics involved, getting each artist to include their song in the book was not difficult, according to Boucher.
“They knew what they were signing up for when they submitted their songs,” he said.
The artists featured are independent musicians, since it would have been difficult to include bigger artists. Boucher’s publisher told him bigger artists weren’t feasible because of the process of contracts and acquiring permissions for each artist, but Boucher said all the ones he featured were eager to expand the reach of their music. Some examples include “Go Go 2021,” which has surf rock influence, by Stephan Alexander. It’s Shuffle’s main theme song. Another example is “Nightflower” by Sealife, which has more of a pop feel.
Although this will be Boucher’s first full graphic novel, he said he has done small comics as part of anthologies, like “Cthulu is Hard to Spell.” He also co-created the comic “Moonlighters,” which is about werewolves trying to pay rent. It is still currently in development.
Shuffle can be pre-ordered online at zoop.gg/c/shuffle. An official release date will be announced at a later time.
