On October 3rd, 2019 a good man passed away, Keir Knikia Lyles, father to Christian Lyles, husband to Meegan Lyles, and teddy’verse artist for Forrest & Scout, the monster hunters comic strip. At the time Keir was working on another project with Alt World Studios, called Helping Hand, the story of Artie the Teddy Bear, who was protecting his child’s treasure chest from monster skulking in the shadows of this child’s room. Along the way Artie gets a helping hand and manages to keep this child’s treasures safe.

Helping Hand was supposed to be a short for one of the Night Guardian books, Out of the Attic, and Artie was a character created by Jim Madison, based off his old teddy bear. Two pages were created and colored before Keir sadly fell ill. I didn’t want to reassign the project and waited to see what would happen, as Keir’s art gave Artie a fun, dynamic look. Over time, Keir started to feel better and I asked if he wanted to continue the project, which he said yes. Over the next couple of months, as Keir always had an interesting approach to deadlines, two rough inks for the final pages for Helping Hand were created for approval.

The pages were approved, sadly Keir passed away before he could color them. The rough pages were then archived and moved electronically several times over the next two years, to be honest, they were misplaced, lost in some backup folder, leaving Helping Hand unfinished. Until last Saturday, the rough pages were rediscovered, and the writer of the project Nick Davis, had an idea, he sat down and lettered the pages, keeping the roughness of the last two pages as a tribute to Keir the artist.

The entire Helping Hand story was remastered and put together into a short comic, complete with cover, a splash image Keir created as a character piece for Artie, permission was asked and received from Meegan Lyles, with gratitude from all of us here at Alt World, to publish the comic strip on the Alt World Studios website.

Alt World Studios is very proud to present Helping Hand, a tribute to the amazing Keir Knikia Lyles, thank you my friend for all the joy your art has brought – to read Helping Hand click the cover below.