And then this happened.

This is a work-in-progress, so it’s worth checking back before hitting the show. I’ll almost certainly be adding more signing slots, probably at either the Avatar Press booth or the Titan (Doctor Who) booth. Or both.

Preamble: I’m attending this year primarily as a guest of Boom! Studios - presently celebrating their 10th year of publishing comics - who of course are responsible for my (recently reprinted!) book The Spire (with Jeff Stokely), and last year’s Six-Gun Gorilla. I am however also popping up here and there wearing the hats of other publishers. All details below.  

THURSDAY 8TH OCTOBER: 

11am - 12 midday - Room #1A06 - Panel: BOOM! 1O YEARS / PUSH COMICS FORWARD

7pm - 9pm - MASS SIGNING: FORBIDDEN PLANET

This is the main event for me this year: a big signing party for a whole bunch of Boom! Studio alumni over in the East Village. Note that a NYCC badge is NOT required. Expect to find, amongst the signature-scribblers:

Brooke Allen (Lumberjanes) Frank Barbiere (Broken World, Black Market) Matthew Daley (Lantern City) Michael Dialynas (The Woods) Eryk Donovan (Cognetic, Memetic) Brian Joines (Imagine Agents) Simon Spurrier (The Spire, Six-Gun Gorilla) S.M. Vidaurri (Iscariot, Iron: Or, the War After) Shannon Watters (Lumberjanes)

Forbidden Planet is located at 832 Broadway, between 12th and 13th St.  (212-473-1576, fpnyc.com)

FRIDAY 9TH OCTOBER:

5.30pm - 6.30pm - Room #1A18 - Panel: AVATAR PRESS, CREATIVITY UNLEASHED

SUNDAY 11TH OCTOBER:

Four years ago I was as close to rock bottom as I’ve ever been.

I spent something like two solid months sitting in coffee shops in and around the City of London (which is not the same as London City), broken but breathing, mostly failing to work.  Watching and listening.

Unusual Concentrations is a novella. It’s not about me, per se, but it is about that time. Or at least, it’s about some of the things I saw and heard and daydreamed during those dark days, and what I wish I’d done about them.  

I think it’s funny. And sweet. And dark. And extremely odd.

It’s about crime, coffee and careless talk.

I’ve been meaning to work back round to prose for several years, and there are in fact a few (more conventional) irons in that fire right now, about which more soon. But this peculiar little story felt like the perfect artefact with which to experiment in self publishing.

So that’s what I’m doing. Later this week (or possibly next, because life) it’ll be online in .mobi, .epub and .pdf formats, for a ridiculously low price.  Couple of bucks, probably. I’ll let you know.

We couldn’t make it to the Image Expo to announce this project, so we got Si to monotone down a camera lens. It’s his special talent.

Fullly lettered preview of the new Marvel Zombies series, featuring the splendid Elsa Bloodstone. Wrap your squints round this:

PAGE ONE

PAGE TWO

PAGES THREE & FOUR

PAGE FIVE

In stores Wednesday June 10th, with a cover a little something like this:

Got asked recently to put together a quick essay about my approach to the Marvel Zombies franchise. Instead I went ahead and wrote about undead history, revenant culture and the shambling metaphor that is the zombi.

A new interview just went live over at Comicbookresources. 

A lot of fun waffle about the rules of zombiedom, genre, my career at Marvel and the inexpressible joy of working with Kev Walker, one of my comics heroes.

CBR also has the great honour of giving us our first look at Kev’s interior artwork. I include three pieces herein:

Marvel Zombies hits stores on June 10th. Remember to reserve your copy at your LCS. 

…is a question I asked over on Twitter earlier today.

Previews solicitation-text is one of the eccentric little curiosities unique to comics, and the subject of no little debate and contemplation amongst publishers, editors and creators. Ostensibly intended as a guide to help retailers make purchasing decisions about forthcoming comics, the Gestalt Age has seen the humble solicit take on a far more visible and pervasive role.

…Or so we suppose. And that’s rather the point. There’s no unanimity about just how important these little 80-word splats really are, nor how best to tool or aim them. Some books scrupulously use them as descriptors of content (analogous to the blurb on the back of a prose novel, I guess). Some take a less formal approach, playing with voice and brand in (ideally) eye-catching ways, often at the expense of content detail. Some pay them the merest and most grudging lip-service possible, presumably regarding them as pointless.

So I thought I’d conduct a little unofficial brainsieving. Please please pass this along, and stick your own preferences and thoughts into the mix as it goes. How important are solicits to you? Which are the most successful? 

(I’ve been fascinated to learn, for instance, how many readers regard fun and energy as infinitely more important than story points. I wonder if retailers feel the same way? And I wonder how the current crop of snappy solicits would play if applied to a darker spectrum of genres?)

Those interested in the answers given earlier via twitter will find an assortment of views from The Morning Contingent and The Afternoon Contingent by making clicky on the bold bits.

This is all in preparation for a forthcoming creator-owned gig, by the way, with some enormous talent aboard, which I’ll be writing more about very soon.

Splurge me with your wisdom.

This week I did my bit to drag said enthusiasm, wit and charm into the mud by joining them on-air to talk about my run on X-Men Legacy. With multifarious asides on such cogent topics as the NHS, mental health, bacon sandwiches and the ineffable nature of reality.

NEW-VELLA - your publishing opinions, please.

So… it’s now official. Within the next few months I’m going to self-publish a prose novella. [To those who didn’t know: I was a crime author long before I was a comicist.]  I could use your thoughts on the matter.

This new piece is something of an experiment on my part, as is the self-publication process. There are elements to this story which make it almost impossible to publish in a more conventional way, not to mention a lot of very personal content. After a great deal of uhmming and ahhing I’ve decided I want to be in sole control of its destiny. 

My aim is to price-point the thing around $2, which is a steal for a 40k word novella. That’s - what? - a week’s worth of commuter-journeys, or a couple of really long sessions in the bath. 

Worth every cent and every wrinkled patch of skin.

In the wake of recent “VATMOSS” legislation here in the UK the choice of digital outlets has become a rather more thorny issue - I won’t bore my American readers with that just now. The upshot is that I have to think long and hard about point-of-sale. I’ve been doing some straw-polling about this over on Twitter (very interesting results) and I’d really appreciate your thoughts and comments on the topic too.  It’s essentially this:

Would you be more inclined to buy digital fiction if *not* released via Amazon, or does the ubiquity of the Kindle reign supreme?

And:

Is the option to “pay whatever you like” a turn on or a turn off?

Do please let me know how you feel about that - it’ll be a great help.

Anyway… I’ll write more about this project over the coming weeks as things take better shape…  All I’ll say for now is that it’s essentially a story about empty lives, populist fiction, indecent smugness and high-quality coffee.

Axis Revolutions #1, out today. Featuring a fun little oneshot, with Tan Eng Huat on art, in which Doctor Strange gets hits by a hate ray (because comics) and glory ensues.

Fulfilled a lifelong ambition and got to write some Doctor Strange. Artist is my inestimable X-Men Legacy buddy Tan Eng Huat.  

This is from AXIS: REVOLUTIONS #1, apparently that’s out on the 29th October. Full solicit HERE. 

Incidentally, while I’m here, here’s the cover for X-Force #10, out next week (Wednesday 8th October). Art by Rock-He Kim. It’s rather lovely, no?  A clear and fitting tribute to the covers of X-Men Legacy's Mike Del Mundo, since it's drawn by regular Legacy artist Tan Eng Huat, and guest-stars one of my favourite Legacy characters: ForgetMeNot - the man with the uncanny mutant power of being Impossible To Remember. 

As Doc Nemesis puts it: “He’s literally written out of the story, over and over.”

ForgetMeNot, and the tale he appeared in (X-Men Legacy #300) is one of the favourite things I’ve created with Marvel (the latter being all the sweeter for the collaboration of Mike Carey and Christos Gage). So it feels right that this episode of X-Force should - I think - be the best one yet.