The Marauders Live!

I am a nostalgic fool.

I'm not sure if that's something that happens to everyone at a certain age, but nostalgia has become central to both my drawing and my storytelling. I find myself constantly returning to ideas I first dreamed up as a kid with an overactive imagination.

Whenever my family drove to the Jersey Shore, we'd take the back roads through tiny New Jersey towns. Old, rickety houses lined gravelly, cracked roads full of potholes. If I wasn't filling a sketchbook with drawings, I was making up stories about monsters hiding in half-collapsed barns or inside the abandoned Root Cellar Tavern. (That particular monster was, naturally, made of roots and vines.)

Another place that fueled my imagination was Pennypack Park in my Philadelphia neighborhood. We'd spend entire days wandering the woods, shooting BB guns, fishing in the "crick," or knocking over the occasional dead tree. City parks always seemed to hide forgotten corners full of old junk and strange places to explore. Spots like Devil's Canyon immediately set my imagination racing. Was it really a place where devil worshippers gathered? Had strange rituals taken place there? My mind invented dozens of stories before I even got home.

One afternoon, while wading through the creek near the waterfalls, the idea for The Marauders first appeared. That idea has been quietly growing in the back of my mind ever since.

You've already met the Crimson Marauder, the primary antagonist of The Summer We Started a Robot War. But he's really just a scout and enforcer for a much larger threat, The Marauders.

In Book One, they remain almost entirely unseen.

They're part urban legend, part cautionary tale.

Sometimes you'll find graffiti spray-painted on the rocks near Devil's Canyon that reads, "MARAUDERS LIVE!" or "THEY ARE WATCHING," accompanied by the image of an eye inside a broken mechanical gear. Other times, you'll stumble across a campfire that's still warm, even though there are no footprints leading away from it.

The Marauders are nomads who live deep within the Pennypack Forest, always on the move and always out of sight. After all, you can't attack what you can't find. Cities, towns, and settlements are vulnerable. Constant movement has allowed them to survive for generations.

Safe from what?

That's a question the series will answer.

Most Buckleburg residents either don't know the Marauders exist or choose not to believe the stories. But they are very real.

For decades, they have searched the ancient battlefields surrounding Buckleburg, scavenging for forgotten technology buried beneath the ruins of the Great Robot War. They believe this is a sacred duty, not simply to recover lost machines, but to honor technology that humanity failed to respect. Where everyone else sees broken junk, they see inheritance.

Imagine a cross between archaeologists, treasure hunters, and cult members.

No one knows exactly when the Marauders were founded or how many members remain. But one thing is certain.

They have been waiting.

Waiting for decades.

Waiting for something like W72A to emerge from the ruins of the Great Robot War.