Publication history
The superteam debuted in The Crusaders #1 (December 1982). The original creative team included three writers: co-creators Henry and Audrey Vogel and co-plotter/letterer David H. Willis. The team was filled out by Jackson Guice on both pencils and inks, though Guice would be penciling only on Southern Knights #2 and gone entirely after that. Guice's original design sketch of the titular superhero team was used as the cover to Southern Knights #2. [7] The series was published quarterly at first by the Guild, a company founded by Willis and Henry Vogel for the sole purpose of publishing the series. Initially artists came and went in quick succession, but with issue #5 penciler Chuck Wojtkiewicz and inker Steve Kent came on as the steady art team. According to Vogel, throughout the Guild era each issue of Southern Knights took in just enough money to fund the printing of the next issue. [8]
Most of the stories were created using the Marvel method: A 3-4 page plot was written for each issue, then the issue was penciled from this plot, and the script was written based on photocopied pages of the penciled art. [9]
Vogel and Willis began to feel out of their depth with comic book publishing and wanted to focus solely on the creative side of Southern Knights, so after issue #6 they began searching for a new publisher for the series. [8] They first submitted Southern Knights to First Comics, which politely rejected it. When Henry Vogel mentioned the situation to David Anthony Kraft, with whom he had struck up a friendship a few years before, Kraft told him that he had been thinking about expanding his company Comics Interview (which had previously only published magazines) into comics, and would like to publish Southern Knights. [8] Following a half-year's hiatus for Southern Knights, issue #8 was released under its new publisher Comics Interview, a new bi-monthly publication schedule, and a new tagline: "The #1 Super Team of the South", which was Kraft's idea. [4]
However, the success of the Knights was mixed with creative turnover. Issue #8 was also the last issue to feature Audrey Vogel as writer (though several later issues of the series credit her as "story consultant"). According to Henry Vogel, she gradually fell out of writing the series due to working a full-time job. [4] Willis left two issues after, leaving Henry Vogel to write the series by himself. Southern Knights gradually became less oriented on long-term plot threads and increasingly consisted of short story arcs and single-issue stories. Wojtkiewicz left after issue #11, and with issue #12 Mark Propst began penciling the Knights. The art for issues #17 through #34 was provided by a number of artists including Propst, Willie Peppers, Marc Lamport, Don Hillsman, Wojtkiewicz, and others.
In the late 80's, the popularity of the team led to the Dragon miniseries (penciled by Peppers) and numerous Southern Knights spin-offs, mostly reprints. For instance, a "Dread Halloween Special" was a reprint of Southern Knights #14, and a three-issue Aramis limited series was a reprinting of select Aramis appearances from issues #5-26, with brief textual segues. The Southern Knights also guest-starred in Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves (vol.2) #1. According to Henry Vogel, this was the Southern Knights' best-selling appearance, since at the time Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time-Traveling Thieves was selling better than Southern Knights. [10]
In 1989 the black-and-white comics market collapsed, and as a result Southern Knights was canceled [11] with issue #33 (June 1989), though a Christmas issue was published at the end of the year as Southern Knights #34.
From 1986 to 1989 Comics Interview released a series of collections of the title. Rather than being comic-sized reprints like the soon-to-be standard trade paperback, these collections were 8 1/2" by 11":
- Southern Knights Graphic Novel (1986): Reprints Crusaders #1 & Southern Knights #2
- Early Days of the Southern Knights #2 (1986): Reprints issues #3-5
- Early Days of the Southern Knights #3 (1986): Reprints issues #6-7
- Early Days of the Southern Knights #4 (1987): (titled Origins of the Southern Knights on the cover) Reprints issues #8 and the Southern Knights: Special Report one-shot
- Early Days of the Southern Knights #5 (1987): Reprints issues #9-11
- Early Days of the Southern Knights #6 (1988): Reprints issues #12-14
- Early Days of the Southern Knights #7 (1988): Reprints issues #15-16
- Early Days of the Southern Knights #8 (1989): Reprints issues #17-19
Revivals
In 1992 the series was revived for a crossover with Heroic Publishing's League of Champions (issues #5-8) and Flare (issues #8 and 9), titled "The Morrigan Wars". Parts two and five were published as Southern Knights #35 and 36, and both the Knights themselves and their supporting cast figured prominently throughout the crossover. Though all the installments are credited as being co-written by Vogel, his role was limited to the crossover's plot; the scripting was done solely by Flare/League of Champions writer/editor Dennis Mallonee, who also co-plotted the crossover with Vogel. [12] Propst, having since become regular artist on Flare, inked most of the crossover. Mallonee expressed hope that Heroic would be able to continue the series beyond the crossover, but interest proved insufficient, and Southern Knights #36 is the final issue to date.
Heroic Publishing again spoke of running new Southern Knights stories during the mid-2000s, with Vogel and Propst as the creative team, but these never materialized. Mallonee later revealed that Vogel had submitted a plot and Propst had produced some art, but the project was not completed for various reasons. [13] In 2010, Heroic reprinted "The Morrigan Wars", with color added, in Champions #47-50 and Flare Adventures #27-28. This was the first time any of the Southern Knights' adventures were published in color.
In an August 3, 2024 interview, Henry Vogel said that he would like to do more Southern Knights stories, but lack of funds with which to hire artists prevented him from doing so. [14] Vogel is writing prose Southern Knights stories, the first of which will appear in Legends of Indie Comics - Words Only, edited by Robert T. Jeschonek.
In December of 2024 Critical Blast Publishing released Southern Knights: Almost Complete Collection, a hardcover book reprinting the entire series and the Dragon limited series. It includes previously unpublished artwork, including 11 pages from an issue of Southern Knights which was in mid-production when the series was cancelled. [15] They reprinted "The Morrigan Wars" as a separate volume with two variant covers, one for Southern Knights and one for League of Champions. [16]
