This is the first installment of the re-vamped "Went to Tell Everybody." In the past, this was a place where comic book creators that I admire recommend cool comic book series. Now, it is place where I will spotlight a different cool independent comic book series every week based on submissions from the indie comic book creators themselves. This is an ongoing weekly feature, so there's no time limit or anything like that. So you can submit at any time. It's not a first come/first serve thing, ya know? Click here for the submission guidelines.

There were a ton of great comic book sent in, and if no one else submitted anything else, I'd have enough cool comic books to spotlight for over a year! But hey, it's always nice to have more!

These won't be in any specific order (so the first one posted doesn't mean it is the one I thought was the best - it doesn't mean it wasn't, etc. etc.). I apologize for the minutiae of the introduction. It'll be shorter in the future!

We start off with The Surgeon, from Unlikely Heroes Studios. Their website is here.

The first issue was written by John Pence, penciled by Zack Dolan, inked by Laurie Foster (who also edited the comic) and colored by Everardo Orozco.

The concept behind the series is that something terrible happened to cause a sort of apocalyptic event. The richest people in the world were able to head underground to live in bunkers. The entrance fee to get into the underground was $1 million per person, so it was too pricey for the star of our series, a young surgical resident who was too early in her career to have the money to gain entrance into the underground. 15 years have passed, and Doc Hanover has been traveling the country, offering up her medical skills in exchange for goods and services. The problem, of course, is that since society has collapsed, things are so messed up that Hanover has been forced to become a skilled warrior as well as a skilled surgeon. She has had had to use her sword as much (if not more) than her scalpel and it is clear that it has been a very difficult 15 years for her.

The beginning of the book shows her traveling the country, introducing us to the various new realities of the world (one particularly funny bit is the set up of "Craigs list," a series of watchtowers where people can leave messages and requests for service. So people like Doc Hanover can find out what communities are in need of her service.

Dolan and Foster create an impressive vision of this new world (Orozco's colors are perfectly matched to the mood that the series is going for, giving everything a sort of melancholic feel). I love the statue designed as a "screw you" to the people who ran and hid underground...

The book takes a major twist when Hanover comes across a fort in South Dakota that has somehow managed to create a small functional society in the midst of the chaos around them and suddenly, the emotional armor that she carries with her everywhere begins to be chipped away. She is not prepared to find herself actively caring about people again, but the sheer goodness of the small town makes it impossible for her not to. Not only that, but once you start caring about people, you find yourself concerned about them and Hanover does not trust the security of the town at all. She drunkenly finds herself volunteering to help train their militia and also to help them create weapons out of abandoned cars.

This sets up the key action sequence in the series, as she ventures out into the unknown to collect metal with a couple of the people from the town (including their one experienced military guy) and, naturally enough, they find more than just car parts on their trek outside of the walls of the town...

It is a dangerous place out there and there are some evil people about, and now Hanover has hit the point where she can't just walk away like she normally does - will she start caring about people again just in time to watch a bunch of innocents die? It's a compelling problem for her to deal with and it makes the Surgeon an interesting world to visit.

You can visit the Unlikely Heroes Studios site for links to where you can buy a copy of The Surgeon #1.

Okay, that's it for the first Went to Tell Everybody installment! Everyone feel free to keep submitting your indie comic for spotlight!