Graphic Novel Team / Bio
Ian Tien
Writer and Co-Creator
Ian Tien is a writer, art director, game designer, and co-creator of SpinPunch, the indie studio that created the Mars Frontier and Thunder Run video game business later acquired by Battlehouse, Inc. His work also includes Toronto small-press comics (Bladeimere), the Returning Champions webcomic, and the Mars Frontier comic series and graphic novel now preparing for Kickstarter.
Independent video games
As a co-creator of SpinPunch, Ian helped shape Mars Frontier — the free-to-play HTML5 sci-fi action MMORTS that reached millions of players from 2012 to 2023 — and Thunder Run, a modern-war MMORTS built on the same engine. SpinPunch created that video game business, which was later acquired by Battlehouse, Inc.
That experience now feeds the graphic novel: an original young adult action science-fiction story set in the Mars Frontier universe, written for print and collectible issues heading to Kickstarter.
Independent comics
Ian has worked in indie comics and small press since 1994. That fall in Toronto he took part in a jam session with artists including Chris Bachalo, Jill Thompson, Terry Moore, Alex Ross, and Mike Mignola — a snapshot of the mid-90s small-press and creator community.
In 1994 he published Bladeimere, an ashcan comic series that found its way into Toronto comic shops — a small-press start built on hand-sold copies and local shelves rather than big-house distribution.
From 2015 to 2016 he wrote and drew Returning Champions, a webcomic series about amateur professional poker players — high-stakes tables, big talk, and the thin line between bluff and bust. It was pure indie sequential storytelling for the early webcomic era.