Today I’m hyped to announce Team Beats, a brand-new comic venture with my good friend and artist Steve Gregson.

What is Team Beats?

It’s our new Patreon-funded, fully independent comic imprint which will see us working with colourists, letterers and other guest collaborators on a range of fun new comics that tap into the heart of retro culture – from classic video games, old-school movies and all the things that make us feel warm and nostalgic inside.

Our first comic release as Team Beats will be BPM: Beatdowns Per Minute, which is our 140-page tribute to retro beat ’em up games and cheesy action movies, such as Streets of Rage, Final Fight and Double Dragon.

The plot follows a pair of martial arts cops – Maya Wickburn and Rick Diavola – who fight to save Stone City from an evil criminal syndicate and ‘BPM,’ the dangerous new drug they’ve introduced to the streets. Along the way, they’ll rumble with street punks, ancient ninja orders, biker gangs and more baddies from beat ’em up history.

Here’s the cover, featuring Maya and Rick:

The book is in development now, my script is finished, and we’re busy cranking out pages with colourist Matt Herms (of Sonic the Hedgehog comic fame) and letterer Robin Jones (who has lettered a slew of brilliant comics from across the indie scene).

We also have our second and third books planned, so there’s lots of great stories to come.

How our Patreon will work

Our Patreon page will launch on Friday October 1, 2021. From then, we’ll be launching BPM: Beatdowns Per Minute as a weekly comic. Subscribers at all levels will get a new page of the story exclusively on Patreon every Friday. This will be the only way people can read the comic until it’s collected as a print version.

Patreon helps us continue making fun comics outside of the publisher system, where we can tell fun stories inspired by our favourite games, movies and pop culture things that we love. Steve and I are massive game collectors, b-movie fans and big kids at heart, so if you’re anything like us you’ll find lots to love in our stories.

Here’s a page of BPM, so you can get a feel for the Saturday morning cartoon vibe we’re trying to re-capture from when we were kids:

That’s not all!

We’ll also be printing the collected BPM: Beatdowns Per Minute book when it’s all done, and subscribers will get a big discount on it at release. In fact, we’ll be doing this for all Team Beats comics.

If you subscribe at the £5 or £7 tier, you’ll get lots more content and features that let you get properly involved in everything we do, such as:

• Weekly timelapse videos of Steve drawing each comic page
• Discounts on all Team Beats collected books and merchandise
• Bi-weekly blogs by Dave about retro gaming and action movies
• An exclusive vote on what Steve draws next as part of his regular art drops
• Access to our Discord server, where you can chat with us, take part in polls and more
• Early access to our monthly video hangout, where we chat about games and more (£7 tier)
• Early access to mini one-shot comics (£7 tier)

Lastly, BPM isn’t the only comic we have in the works. Once our next stories begin, all Patreon members will start getting their pages each week on top of BPM pages at no extra cost. Think of it like a subscription service for every comic we make as Team Beats, and you’re on the right track.

What comes next?

Our Patreon and BPM: Beatdowns Per Minute will launch on Friday, October 1st, 2021.

In the meantime, you can follow our Twitter account (@TeamBeatsComics) to see new BPM art teasers and more information.

We’re also on Instagram and Facebook, where we’ll be posting all the same updates.

Thanks for checking out our introduction blog, we’ll have a lot more information to share between now and our launch.

All the best,

-Dave