Poverty Pack (Comic)

Poverty Pack is a humorous, satirical comic book series developed by creators Ted Shambaris (Writer) and Derek Lipscomb (Artist). The series features the exploits in which a group of misfit heroes struggle to make a living during a great recession that has crippled the city of Golden Megalopolis.

Publication History
The first issue Poverty Pack #1 (May 2011) was published by Ka-blam, and is currently available on it's sister site indyplanet.com. In addition to Poverty Pack, the collaborative duo (under the studio name Afrostache) has a 2nd title Poverty Thrill Adventures, that focuses on the individual characters, rather than the ensemble cast. Issue #1 of that series prominently features the team member Street Sweepah.

Development History
First created in 2008, Poverty Pack features several childhood comic characters that both creators created in their youth, as well as newly collaborated ones. The idea was spawned from a string of ridiculous stories that the two developed during a boring work day at their separate jobs to help pass the time. The story ideas had entertained them so much, that they decided to proceed with the book.

Prior to Poverty Pack, both writer and artist had collaborated on various, but failed comic projects over the course of 11 years. These projects ranged from various genres such as superheroes, mythology and horror. "I was burned-out from too many failed starts, and felt a little bit restricted in our subject matter" said Derek " I think we both wanted a concept where anything goes." While a fan of the Marvel/DC characters, Derek wanted to try spoofiing the golden/silver age of popular comics. The often goofy concepts that were rampant in many mainstream titles of that day influenced him to dig up two ridiculous characters he came up with when he was 4: Whistle Man and Beebles. He presented the idea to Ted, who also had two characters from his days in school: Superfluous Sleuth (then, just "Super Sleuth" and Super Fabulous Frog ("Super Frog"). More characters immediately came to life; Black Pigeon was originally a jab at the popular Hanna Barbara character "Blue Falcon", only very afrocentric and inner-city. Street Sweepah was a comment on various laughable personalities, such as rapper Snow, Brian Austin Green and among them Kevin Federline who proclaimed themselves serious hip hop artists. Cookie Brown came out of the love of the blaxplotation era of film. Captain Commander was the template leader archetype (then called "Captain Generica") who would be the face of the group. Finally, Brown Wristband was a last addition to add more females and sex-appeal to the team (despite Cookie's already voluptuous frame). Wristband was a parody of Green Lantern, just a lot less cool. The book's title (as well as the team's name) had been bounced around on and off a few years prior when both collaborators were trying to generate a new idea.

After the formation of the team, the ideas began writing themselves, and concepts for over 10 storylines were quickly summarized and vaulted, while the initial story arc "Kneading Dough", began its development.