In comics it's hard sometimes to get authenticity -- where are you going to find a real superhero with superpowers? -- but a recent release in the burgeoning biker genre has done that.

Lucifer's Sword MC: Life and Death in an Outlaw Motorcycle Club is a graphic novel written by Phil Cross, a 46-year veteran of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. Published by Motorbooks, which specializes in books about the biker lifestyle, Lucifer's Sword MC rides on the success of FX's Sons of Anarchy (both in television and the BOOM! Studios' licensed comic), but offers a more raw, and less glitzy, look at the "one percenters."

Illustrated by Ronn Sutton, Lucifer's Sword MC follows a fictional 1960s motorcycle club that runs afoul of rival gang Satanas Hermanos. It's a street war on the blacktop and atop various kinds of motorbikes. In a press release, Sutton hints that this fictional story is based on real-life events but changed to avoid controversy.

Published with black-and-white artwork but with colored captions and sound effects, the presentation takes a little getting used to but as a complete package it's an intriguing story, perhaps inspired by true events, by someone who was there.

Here is a preview:

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