Lightning Squirrel takes on Airhead, a robot built by his nemesis, Swimming Lady, in No. 4 of Edison resident Jeff Kipnis’ comic-book series. Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Lightning Squirrel! In Edison resident Jeff Kipnis’ comic books, this caped quadruped flies around, talking in rhyme and ridding suburbia of everything from overzealous utility workers and inattentive drivers to his arch nemesis, Swimming Lady, her cohort, Comic Man, and his robot, Air Head.
Kipnis says he created “The Adventures of Lightning Squirrel” comic miniseries with the hope of recapturing the fun, fantastical and whimsical aspects of the comics he read when he was growing up.
So while Marvel Comic’s angst-ridden antiheroes take time out from fighting each other to get in touch with their feelings, and DC Comics is busy with its apocalypse du jour, and zombies shamble out of the woodwork at Image Comics, the fur is flying in Kipnis’ new issue of “Lightning Squirrel.”
Jeff Kipnis, creator of comic superhero Lightning Squirrel, shows off his most recent cover art, as well as a shirt emblazened with the courageous creature. In the fourth issue, the gray guardian tangles with Air Head in a splash-pagefilled battle royal.
“[The comic] can be read from younger kids all the way up to adults, as far as I’m concerned,” Kipnis said. “I wanted it to be a little less complicated and a little more fun. Yes, I blow a lot of stuff up in my books, and I blow up more with each issue. But to me, it’s a lot more cartoony.”
And maybe that’s why it has developed a cult following since the first issue was released in 2008. Nancy Kipnis dreams that her husband’s comic will follow in the footsteps of independent books-turnedmainstream franchises, such as Hellboy or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
“I’ve seen all the creativity and work he has put into the book, and I think it’s brilliant,” she said.
Then she motions to their kids, Jack and Jenna, and says, “It would be great if it got so well-known that it helps put them through college.”
It turns out Nancy isn’t just Jeff’s biggest fan — she’s also his muse.
When they first started dating, Jeff started to write short stories about Nancy, playing on her fears of lightning and squirrels. The whole thing eventually mushroomed into novels and — at Nancy’s suggestion — comic books.
So, Nancy became the model for the treacherous Swimming Lady, who’s on a mission to eliminate our bushy-tailed buddy. Naturally, Jeff cast himself as Comic Man. While Jeff focuses on secondary ion mass spectroscopy in his work as an analytical scientist with the Evans Analytical Group in East Windsor, Comic Man can whip up a flying robot and program it to destroy. “What I admire most about Jeff is his creativity,” said Victor Cabanelas, the Argentina based artist of the comic. “He has created a whole world of characters, which go from lovable to just plain sick, with every other possibility in the middle of those two.”
In many ways, “The Adventures of Lightning Squirrel” No. 4 is a love letter to the comics that Kipnis grew up with in the early 1980s. On the cover, Lightning Squirrel and Air Head are posed similarly to the way Superman and Spider-Man were on the cover of their groundbreaking crossover comic in 1976. Air Head is modeled after Marvel’s Air Walker, who was a herald of the planeteating being, Galactus.
And the issue is an homage to the Thor comics created in the 1980s by writer/artist Walt Simonson, whose sweeping battle scenes seemed to make the very ground beneath young Kipnis shake and tremble.
“A lot of times in comics now, when you have big battles — whether it’s heroes versus heroes or heroes versus villains — sometimes you look at them and say, ‘That really went so fast,’ ” Kipnis said. “They have so many small panels, even if a lot is going on, it doesn’t feel big, because it seems compressed.
“I wanted this to feel big. I wanted it to have more of an impact. I want people to read this, ideally, and say, ‘Wow, that was really something. I really get that something really big happened here.’ ”
But making “The Adventures of Lightning Squirrel” was a time of mixed emotions for Kipnis. The excitement of creating another comic was tempered by the passing of his dad.
Alvin Kipnis wasn’t much of a comicbook fan, but he supported his son’s passion for them. The most recent issue is dedicated to Kipnis’ father for his contributions to the comic.
The elder Kipnis took photos of everyday people, places and things in and around Clifton, where Jeff grew up and where the comic is set.
“Victor would write and ask me, ‘What do the houses look like?’ or ’What are the building and trees like there?’ ” Jeff said. “Or he’d even ask about what the police cars looked like. He wanted to add some realism into the story.
“So my dad would go around with his camera and take some photos around town, and I’d send them to Victor.”
For more information about “The Adventures of Lightning Squirrel,” go to www.facebook.com/pages/Lightning-Squirrel/155728587869429 or http://indyplanet.com/store.