Gears of War developer Cliff Bleszinski moves into comics with sci-fi adventure Scrapper

Two dogs, a raccoon, some rats and pigeons look up. — (Image credit: Image Comics)

Cliff Bleszinski is a name that you may be familiar with from other parts of GamesRadar+. He's an acclaimed video games developer, best known for his work on the bestselling Gears of War series, the Unreal games, Jazz Jackrabbit, and more. He retired from games in 2012, before returning two years later to launch Boss Key Productions, which closed in 2018. Since then he's written a book about his experiences (Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games), teased that he's making a new video game, and moved into theater work. Now he has a career in comics in his sights.

Scrapper is a new science fiction adventure series co-written by Bleszinski and Alex de Campi, described as "a mix between Brian K. Vaughan’s Pride of Baghdad and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner." The six issue series, published by Image, follows stray dog Scrapper and his friend Tank as they take on the totalitarian forces of SMITE (the Special Monopoly for Industrial Tech and Engineering) in the post-apocalyptic domed city of New Verona.

We've got a preview of the opening pages from Scrapper #1 below, which shows our plucky canine hero leaping into action.

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Scrapper interior pages: a dog looks at a sci-fi city. — (Image credit: Image Comics)

Bleszinski, who describes himself as a lifelong comics fan, says the series was inspired in part by the loss of one of his beloved pet dogs. "Scrapper comes from the heart; first, the loss of my Aussie Teddy and then finding puppy love again with our Pomsky Lady. I truly hope everyone enjoys this deeply personal work."

Alex de Campi said of the project, "It's been a joy to get back to full-bore, edge-of-your seat action writing in a monthly comic, even more so when I get to base it around such a wonderful cast of urban animals as we've created in Scrapper...If you have pets you love, or you’ve ever just wanted to pet the dog in a video game, this is the book for you." Who hasn't wanted to pet the dog in a video game?

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At the top of the picture two dogs look on proudly. In the bottom half a dog stands on a flying car. — (Image credit: Image Comics)

Scrapper #1 is published by Image Comics on July 19.

Gears of War is expanding into movies and animation.

Will Salmon is the Streaming Editor for GamesRadar+. He has been writing about film, TV, comics, and music for more than 15 years, which is quite a long time if you stop and think about it. At Future he launched the scary movie magazine Horrorville, relaunched Comic Heroes, and has written for every issue of SFX magazine for well over a decade. His music writing has appeared in The Quietus, MOJO, Electronic Sound, Clash, and loads of other places too.