Press Release
The Summer of Scout continues, featuring the seventh of eight new upcoming Scout comic book properties!!
This week, Scout is proud to announce FIREWATER by Ken Kristensen and M.K. Perker!
Award-winning writer Ken Kristensen (Netflix/Marvel’s The Punisher, Indestructible) and Eisner-nominated artist M.K. Perker (Todd, The Ugliest Kid on Earth, Air) take inspiration from one the darkest chapters of American criminal history with FIREWATER, a gritty and disturbing crime series from Scout Comics.
“Terrorizing and murdering Indians – let’s face it – was a disgustingly profitable business for centuries,” says Kristensen. “But never more disgusting or more profitable than during what was called the Osage Reign of Terror. This series is a dramatic interpretation of that long period of horror and the epic struggle to bring justice to one of the most corrupt places on earth. I have unique connection to this story because my wife and son are Osage.”
FIREWATER is centered around the FBI’s first deep-cover investigation, an effort that attempted to unravel a genocidal conspiracy perpetrated by some of the most powerful people in the state and some of the most notorious outlaws of the day.
The story is set in Osage County, Oklahoma in the 1920s – a time when the Osage were the richest people on earth, thanks to the largest oil field in the world being discovered on their reservation. The reservation was a criminal playground because of its “sovereign nation” status – state cops had no jurisdiction. Kidnappers, drug dealers, bootleggers, con artists, pimps, bank robbers -- every conceivable criminal flocked to this lawless reservation that was generating billions of dollars.
And soon the Osage went from “wealthiest people on earth” to “most murdered people on earth.”
“We’re talking about killing on an immense scale – hundreds of murders,” says Kristensen, “made even more egregious because so often it involved a white man marrying an Indian woman and then murdering her to inherit her oil rights.”
FIREWATER immerses the reader in a full ensemble of cops, criminals, activist citizens, and everyone caught in the crossfire.
“This story is as relevant today as when it happened,” says Kristensen. “This singular time and place was a heightened microcosm of America’s social schism -- income inequality, ethnic persecution, racism, gender inequality, institutional corruption, and environmental issues. It was a reflection of the nation’s material success and spiritual failure.”
FIREWATER #1 will feature this amazing variant cover by Taylan Kurtulus.