Kurt Busiek Teams With Fabian Nicieza & Stephen Mooney For New High-Stakes Sci-Fi Series Free Agents This JULY

By Carlos Morales

on April 24, 2024

Bestselling, Eisner Award winning writer Kurt Busiek (Astro City) teams up with self-proclaimed legendary and better-selling writer Fabian Nicieza (Deadpool) and fan-favorite artist Stephen Mooney (Half Past Danger) with colorist Triona Tree Farrell (Harley Quinn, Detective Comics), and letterer Tyler Smith of Comicraft for an all-new ongoing series in, Free Agents. This action-packed, giant-sized, bargain-priced debut will hit shelves from Image Comics in July.

Each issue will also feature a variant-cover character portrait by Kevin Maguire (Justice League), all well as variants by a host of comicdom’s greatest.

“It’s a superhero series with a twist,” said the devastatingly charming, modest and did-we-mention multiple Eisner and Harvey Award winning Busiek. “The Agents were done. They were retired, and had started building new lives, going to college, making themselves a place here on Earth. And then it all starts coming back.”

Free Agents introduces readers to a team of young veterans, survivors of a massive interdimensional war: Salvo, Pike, Katari, Shakti, Ridge, Maraud, and Chalice. They’ve fought every day of their existence and won a terrible victory. Now they’re stranded on Earth, free agents for the first time.

But when relics from their long war appear, threatening their chance at better lives, their greatest battle begins. They’ve fought for a million planets. Can they fight to save their own souls?

“This was an idea that just wouldn’t let itself be ignored,” added Busiek. “It first came up in plans for a crossover project Image Publisher Eric Stephenson and I talked about years ago. The crossover idea died, but the Free Agents wouldn’t. The thought of their series kept resurfacing, saying, ‘Hey, we don’t need any stupid crossover! That’s all backstory! Let us out! Let us exist!’ The thing was, the more I thought about them, the more they felt to me like a series that, much as I liked it, was a very Fabian Nicieza kind of book. So I figured ‘Why not?’ and gave him a call. Besides, this way I can get Fabian to do all the heavy lifting.”

“Whenever Kurt calls and says, ‘Wanna work on something together?’ my answer is always a really fast, ‘yes!’” said Nicieza. “Making Free Agents even more fun is that I’m really proud to produce creator-owned work under the Image banner for the first time.”

“With Fabes suckered—er, recruited,” Busiek went on, “we needed an artist. Luckily, Eric Stephenson suggested Stephen, and his work on Half Past Danger, The Rocketeer, and more, was more than enough to make us delighted to welcome him aboard.”

Mooney added: “It took me all of five seconds to jump aboard Free Agents when Kurt got in touch and asked if I’d like to work on a creator-owned book with him. Learning that Fabian would also be involved was a massive bonus. I grew up (sorry guys) reading so many legendary superhero runs by these two; getting to create my own with them was an opportunity too tempting to pass up.”