Back at it in September…
Where I discuss upcoming events in Ottawa & Toronto, my latest podcast interview, latest releases, and new free comics!
September events
Ottawa ComicCon is this weekend, from September 8th to the 10th. After taking a break from shows in August, I’m excited for this one. Always a fun show and I’ll have a slew of new books on hand - ThunderBoom, the special anniversary edition of Growing Up Enchanted Volume 1 (now in colour and hardback), and limited copies of Exciting Comics 36-38.
I will also be part of a Canadian indie comics panel on Saturday with Gisele Lagace and Marco Rudy. Looking forward to that one. Nice to see OCC doing some comics-centric panels this year…this one is sponsored by Sequential Magazine.
Later in September, om September 30th, I’ll be back in Toronto to attend the Toronto International Festival of Authors. Claudia Davila and I will be doing a ThunderBoom inspired reading/drawing panel there called - “If I Were A Superhero”. It should be a lot of fun!
Interview with Words, Images and Worlds
I did another podcast this month, this time with Jason DeHart and his Words, Images & Worlds podcast. I talk here about my career, collaboration, the kind of stories I enjoy to read and write, and my latest projects.
Exciting Comics 38
Last week, a new issue of Exciting Comics came out in comic shops and it featured the first Dominion Jack story I did with Hugh Rookwood. This is the first part of the Heroic Us serial and it’s never been in print before, only digital. So now’s your chance to check it out. This story runs through issues 39 and 40 of the series.
Think I showed this before in a previous newsletter, but as a reminder, here’s page 1 of Heroic Us, by yours truly, Hugh Rookwood, Steven Legge and Marvin Mariano. Chapter 1 is in this issue. Chapter 2-4 in Exciting Comics #39 and the finale in Exciting Comics #40.
Books available to order…
This reminds me…here are the links to order all my latest books…comic shops, book stores, library (for ThunderBoom), online…wherever you see fit. :)
Growing Up Enchanted: Fighting Bullies, Hunting Dragons - Special Edition - Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can preorder now but the release date is imminent…September 13th.
Floyd the Ferocious Fly - Pages 1-4
New free comics to share! I’ll start with an all-ages short story that Alex Serra and I worked on together. One of our first collaborations right before Growing Up Enchanted. I actually wanted this series to be epic…I had Cerebus-like plans to write 300 issues around Floyd and his ferocious life. That never came to pass…we did 8 pages. :) It’s a fun 8 pages…so here’s the first few pages from it. Colours are by Stefan Grambart. Only 3 of the 8 pages were coloured.
SuperIcons - Pages 1-3
Back in the early to mid 2010s, I was invited to pitch for DC Comics’ Dial H For Hero. This was after the New 52 Dial H series, if I recall correctly. Love that concept…and I thought it could be modernized with today’s mobile devices versus a HERO dial. I wanted to do a YA version of the series (not the Vertigo-style pseudo-horror series that Dial H was) and called it Text H For Hero and sent it really confident this would go somewhere and beat any other competing pitch. And after a bit of back and forth, it was well-received. But I was told to wait because of some changes going on at DC at the time. So I did.
I waited a long time. And when I heard back, it was bad news. They were cutting back on series and not looking to proceed with a new Dial H For Hero series at this time. Well, disappointed as I was, I didn’t want to waste my idea either so I worked on developing my own version of the concept. And SuperIcons was born. I developed a pitch and had some pages completed as a teaser for proposals to send out to indie presses. Here are the first few pages of that teaser. Art by Tom Syzc and letters by Rachel Deering.
That’s it for this week. Until next time…