This past weekend in San Diego, Mazda, Top Cow and Spacedog (a “branded entertainment and interactive marketing agency”) announced Revved, a series of graphic novels and a Fox television series that Mazda is hoping will sell cars. MotorTrend reports:
Revved, to be published by Top Cow Productions and developed into a television series by Fox Television Studios, is truly ground-breaking due to the level of integration and collaboration from concept to execution between Spacedog, Top Cow and Mazda.
The series of Revved graphic novels “stars” four special vehicles, all of which are made with a piece of the same magical metal found in the Holy Grail, Joan of Arc’s armor and King Arthur’s Excalibur, among other legendary icons. Imbued with the same powers as those great symbols, the cars’ drivers embark on a series of dangerous missions.
The Mazda RX-8 four-door sports car will serve as the hero car in Revved and will be driven by the main character, Jack James. With its edgy styling, precise handling and 232-horsepower RENESIS rotary engine, the RX-8 complement’s Jack James’ personality and perfectly integrates itself into the story line.
Cars made from the Holy Grail and Excalibur? That’s actually kind of a cool idea, especially for a comic that’s a marketing vehicle. You can check out a preview on the Mazda site, where you can also find details on how to win a Mazda RX-8 from Top Cow.
Mazda, of course, isn’t the first car company to use comics for marketing; DC released Pontiac’s Rush City last Wednesday, while Dark Horse published BMW’s The Hire in 2004.
July 26th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
“These cars are great, but we’re just not reaching that key 18-24 demo. We need something that’ll really wow the kids.”
“Kids like comic books, right?”
“They do. I’m thinking some kind of ‘Bad Boy’ main character. The car can save him in the knick of time.”
“Like Knight Rider.”
“Yeah but we need something that will set it apart from Knight Rider. Let’s have the cars be made with a piece of the same magical metal found in the Holy Grail, Joan of Arc’s armor and King Arthur’s Excalibur, among other legendary icons.”
“…”
“Kids still love Joan of Arc and the Holy Grail, right?”
July 26th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Wait, so someone melted down Excalibur and the holy grail to make CARS?!?
July 26th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
“Wait, so someone melted down Excalibur and the holy grail to make CARS?!?”
Sorry, Graeme. We couldn’t have used them in story any other way.
July 26th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
It was that or make bullets to mow down the Vampire Invasion from Pluto, but we figured that we needed the tourist dollars…
July 26th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
The upside is that they’re making cars out of metal again…
July 26th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
This is officially a trend, then. A trend that is so very, very, wrong.
Looks like the last great artform to refuse to suck Satan’s c##k just dropped to its knees and opened wide.
August 18th, 2011 at 8:17 am
Hey this is kinda of off topic but I was wondering if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding knowledge so I wanted to get guidance from someone with experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated!