Jason Neulander | Treasure Island Reimagined | Comic Crusaders Podcast #750

Jason Neulander Sets Sail With Treasure Island Reimagined: Jane Hawkins and the Pirate’s Gold

WEPA, Crusaders! The Comic Crusaders Podcast is heading into pirate territory as Al Mega welcomes award-winning author, filmmaker, and theater artist Jason Neulander for a deep dive into Treasure Island Reimagined: Jane Hawkins and the Pirate’s Gold, his original graphic novel and spectacular new live theatrical event inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s immortal adventure.

Neulander has spent decades pushing stories beyond the boundaries of a single medium. He founded Austin’s Salvage Vanguard Theater and served as its artistic director from 1994 to 2008, directing and producing more than 50 world-premiere plays, musicals, and operas. His live-action graphic novel The Intergalactic Nemesis toured to more than 200 venues around the world, reached Broadway and the Kennedy Center, appeared on CONAN, and was adapted for PBS. He later carried his theatrical instincts into cinema with the award-winning feature Fugitive Dreams.

Treasure Island Reimagined brings Neulander back to the live-action graphic novel form with a production built for maximum adventure. Three performers create more than two dozen character voices and hundreds of sound effects live while over 1,200 original comic-book panels are projected sequentially across a huge screen. The result fuses the energy of theater, the visual rhythm of comics, the precision of film, and the playful magic of old-school radio drama into one seriously ambitious storytelling machine.

The adventure begins in 1754 with twelve-year-old Jane Hawkins working at a sleepy seaside inn. When a sinister stranger arrives carrying a mysterious trunk, Jane’s ordinary life gets blasted off course. Recasting Stevenson’s Jim Hawkins as Jane does more than change a name. It transforms the meaning of freedom in a world where a girl could never expect to captain a ship unless she stepped outside the law and became a pirate.

Jane’s creation also carries a personal connection. Neulander read Treasure Island to his daughter Scarlett when she was nine years old. A decade later, when he asked which story he should adapt for his next production, she immediately sent him back to Stevenson’s voyage. That family spark became a full creative fleet featuring art direction and illustration by Johnny Dombrowski, coloring by Lee Duhig, music by Sam Lipman, Foley sound design by Buzz Moran, lettering by David Hutchison for the graphic novel, and production by Chemistry Laboratories and Shaw Entertainment Group.

In this episode, Al and Jason explore the responsibility of reimagining a literary landmark, the freedom and danger built into Jane Hawkins, the moral magnetism of Long John Silver, the influence of 1950s horror comics on the visual identity, and the brutal precision required to synchronize voices, music, Foley, and more than a thousand projected images in front of a live audience.

They also dig into the lessons Neulander carried from The Intergalactic Nemesis and Fugitive Dreams, the push and pull between authorship and collaboration, and the different discoveries waiting inside the printed graphic novel and the theatrical experience.

Treasure Island Reimagined: Jane Hawkins and the Pirate’s Gold makes its world premiere at the State Theatre in Austin, Texas, September 18 through 20, 2026, before embarking on a nineteen-venue tour across the United States. Follow Jason Neulander on Instagram at @jasonneulander and visit TreasureIslandReimagined.com for performance dates, tickets, videos, and project updates.

Hit play, subscribe to Comic Crusaders World, and share the episode with the comic readers, theater fans, filmmakers, educators, and adventure junkies in your crew. This voyage has danger, imagination, live theatrical wizardry, and enough pirate energy to make your algorithm yell, “Shiver me metrics!”

The Crusade Never Ends!

🏴‍☠️ Follow Jason Neulander:
Instagram.: jasonneulander

🗺️ Official Project Website:
https://www.treasureislandreimagined.com/

🎟️ Austin Premiere and Tickets:
https://tickets.austintheatre.org/13799

📺 Subscribe to Comic Crusaders World, hit the Like button, share this episode with your crew, and remember:

The Crusade Never Ends!

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Host: Al Mega

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Edited/Produced/Directed by Al Mega