When first working on the story with Ron Marz and Darryl Banks, we ran into a challenge. Harken's guys are paratroopers so we needed a way to get them into Nazi occupied territories without getting them killed.
Typically, paratroopers did missions in some type of unarmed cargo plane. They would send out sorties of twenty to forty planes and drop tons of soldiers. Our guys are with the Special Operations Executive, so they needed a way to take a small group on secret missions. From that challenge, Athena was born.
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| Darryl Banks' design for Athena's nose art |
We decided on a modified British AVRO Lancaster MKII bomber. It makes a bit of sense, the Lancaster is a big plane with a crew of seven, it's heavily armed and can travel long distances.
However, I did say modified. First we had to add seats for the team. We couldn't have them standing around in a plane for several hours. Then we had to add jump lights so the pilot can signal the team when they are over the drop site. We also upgraded the guns in the rear and middle with good old American Browning .50 caliber machine guns.
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| Athena in flight |
The biggest modification we made to Athena was to take out her bomb housing and cradle. This did two things for us, it lightened the total weight of the plane and gave us a way to load large cargo on the plane through the bomb bay doors. You know, stuff like reconnaissance equipment, maybe a motorcycle or two, possibly a small horse (ok, no horses), you get the idea.
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| The team inside Athena with a view of the bomb bay |
So, now we have a plane that is faster, more powerful and has bigger guns. Those Nazis won't know what hit 'em.
The next character you meet is the flight crew's mascot, Alfie. Alfie is a 3 year old male English Bulldog who proudly stands vigilant in the cockpit on each mission. Ok, he mostly sleeps and snores. Still, he provides a very valuable service to the crew, he is the official good luck charm. Athena has made it back after every mission that Alfie has been on, so that's worth something.
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| Alfie in the cockpit |
So join us on http://www.Vanbreed.com on January 17th and we will be dropping the first three pages of Harken's Raiders #1 for Free.
See ya in the funny papers,
Allen
