An (over)abundance of news

The benefit of sending newsletters pretty infrequently is that a lot of news builds up between missives! See previous sentence for the drawback of sending newsletters pretty infrequently.

New Rat City…

Progress on the second half of New Rat City is pitter pattering along: George is on to Issue 4 of inks and Lucas will begin lettering Issue 3 next week! I’m also working on a special short story that will only be printed in the KS version of Part 2 (and to that end I’m attempting to determine how a large melee between geese and raccoons would go.)

New Rat City Part 2 will be on Kickstarter with some exclusive covers and other rat-related goodies in about a month (and you’ll be able to grab Part 1 if you missed it). Sign up to get notified when the campaign goes live here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/honorvincent/new-rat-city-parts-1-and-2

…at Scout!

I am very excited to share that Scout Comics (! !! !!!!) will be publishing New Rat City! They’ll be releasing Issue 1 as a standalone single issue, and shortly after that they’ll release a trade paperback collecting the whole series. Not sure on release dates, but I will be shouting ‘em from the rooftops when I am.

You might be wondering: why crowdfund if you have a publishing deal, you double-dipping scoundrel? Scout publishes creator-owned comics, which means that they provide the support of a publisher (editorial, marketing, printing, publishing, distribution, and so on!), but the up-front production costs, which crowdfunding helps to offset, are on the creators. Kickstarter also lets me do things like write folks little personal notes until 2 am, and send iron-on patches with rat faces to people.

The Kickstarter and Scout books will be in different formats with different covers, but if you’d like to forgo the Kickstarter version of the book and wait to pick up the Scout release at your friendly local comic book store, I will be equally delighted! I’m hoping to do some covers that are NYC-shop exclusive, and they’ve got some other honestly fantastic ideas for extras that I can’t wait to be able to talk about.

Anyway, here’s a little peek at Issue #3, which is a really calm, quiet part of the story overall (art by George Quadros, colors by DC Alonso):

Andraste

I’ve gotten some kind messages about Andraste from folks who bought it at Comic Con and via the New Rat City Kickstarter campaign, which I appreciate more than I can say. Production on Andraste has slowed down considerably, though now that New Rat City is mostly out of my hands I’m planning to pick up the pace again. Unai finished inking Issue 4 a while ago, and I’d like to get started on the artwork for Issue 5 early this summer!

2000 AD

Last November I won the Thought Bubble/2000 AD Future Shock writing contest with a pitch about a vengeful, immortal, time-traveling mouse. That story, ‘Relict’ will appear in Prog 2279, which goes on sale April 27th! I can’t wait.

Future Shocks are 4-page comics that require a twist, and are surprisingly challenging to write. You’d think shorter would be simpler, but in order to get to the purest, most condensed version of a story you often need to write a much longer version of the thing to figure out what it is you’re trying to say, do that three more times, pull out some hair, and repeat.

I apparently did not bungle the job, though, as I was asked to write another Future Shock for one of 2000 AD’s all-ages books! (I was told ‘minimal violence and fairly light in tone,’ which was an additional challenge, but I did get 5 pages to do it this time.) I’m not sure of a release date and issue for that story yet, but it was delightful to write, and I’m pretty proud of it.

Ahoy Comics

A short story of mine about a very disastrous will-reading was picked up by Ahoy Comics! They, be still my beating heart, print prose alongside their (wonderful) comics. No release date on that yet, but I’ll be sure to share it when I know.

---

Alright, that’s enough for now, I think!