It’s a new year, and I’ve got some­thing new to post. Well, tech­ni­cal­ly it’s not real­ly new, but it will be new to you readers.

Meet Clutch Escar­got and his team, all set for hi-octane adven­ture! Com­ing to you straight from the fevered mind of my friend, the love­ly and tal­ent­ed Jim Sten­strum. If you are a long­time comics fan, you may know Jim best as a writer (he wrote a lot of mem­o­rable clas­sic com­ic sto­ries pub­lished by War­ren). But Jim has also had a sec­ond career in ani­ma­tion, where he is known as quite a tal­ent­ed artist and char­ac­ter design­er. Which makes him a dou­ble threat. And we won’t even get into the years in-between those two careers, where he devel­oped quite a rep­u­ta­tion as a two-fist­ed globe-trot­ting mer­ce­nary. No, real­ly; it’s best we don’t talk about that.

The art you see here was pen­ciled by Jim. He asked me to do the hon­ors of ink­ing and col­or­ing it, so that’s what my con­tri­bu­tion was. I’ve worked with Jim many, many times over the years on var­i­ous ani­ma­tion projects, and it’s no exag­ger­a­tion to say I’ve most like­ly inked a thou­sand of his char­ac­ter designs. It’s always a blast. So say­ing “yes” when he invit­ed me to help him out with this was a no-brain­er. I think the end result is fun. I’d buy this comic.

That’s kind of my ver­sion of what this is and how it came to be. But make sure you don’t miss out on read­ing Jim’s ver­sion over here.

Let’s make sure to do the offi­cial stuff too: Clutch Escar­got is ™ and © 2011 Jim Stenstrum.

Hap­py New Year, y’all! Here’s to a great 2013.