My annual update

and some grand plans, eventually

This is becoming a very occasional newsletter, isn’t it? Here are my customary excuses:

• I have a toddler!

• And also a newborn!

• I have a full-time job (on maternity leave, currently, but not usually)!

2024

When last I wrote in October of 2023 (!) I’d shared that the TPB for New Rat City would be in stores on 11/5/2023 from Scout. That didn’t happen, and long story short I terminated my publishing agreement with them and got my rights to the series back. It was disappointing and educational. (I wasn’t alone in that disappointment, either — a silver lining was meeting some other creators who are awesome and had similar experiences.)

I also shared that I had a new series coming out from Zenescope, Holmes and Houdini! Well, all three of those are now available (1, 2, 3 for print), as are two other Zen books I’ve written since I last emailed, Fairy Tale Team-Up: Robyn Hood & Gretel and Hydra #1. I even got to write some Sherlock himself for Holmes & Houdini #3, which was pretty darn cool!

Forward

Now that the update and updated excuses are out of the way, I have two pieces of news to share:

I wrote a five-part story for the Judge Dredd Megazine (!!!) called Riley’s Rebels, about a pair of siblings living in the Cursed Earth under the thumb of some very exploitative old people in mech-suits that are keeping them in their prime past any reasonable, dignified time.

The first part was published in Meg 474, released in the UK on November 20th and in late December in the US! Comicon.com has a preview of part 1, and there was also a little feature in Meg 453 about the story. Parts two and three were published in Megs 475 (December) and 476 (January), and four and five will be in Megs 477 and 478 (February and March, you get the pattern).

This is the longest story I’ve done for 2000 AD/the Meg, and it was a fun exercise in pacing, as it’s 50 pages broken into 10-page sections. Here are a few peeks at it — artwork is by the inimitable Stewart K. Moore, which I’m just delighted about (he’s was very game about all the swamp animals I threw into the script and did truly the coolest job on the character + mech designs).

(And of course there’s a kitty, come on!)

The second of the two pieces of news: Lee Milmore and I are working on a three-parter for the Prog! It’s a continuation of the Future Shock story ‘Relict’ from 2021, about the immortal mouse. This time we find him further in the future, with the other mice he rescued from the past, trying to build a life in a post-nuked Earth. Lee’s trying some new techniques (traditional drawings, watercolor) and from what I’ve seen it will look gorgeous. No release date for that one yet, though Lee is wrapping up the art for part 2.

More in the aether

I have had so little time right now to work on things in the past few months. I had my second kid in December, and it feels like every time I sit down to start something there’s a baby needing something. Of course that means I’m having a lot of ideas for new things I want to be working on, because isn’t that always how it goes? (I do think regularly being forced to access a liminal, bleary state at 3 am might be dragging ideas up from the depths at a faster rate. If I were a different person I would write a very self-satisfied blog post about what a great creative practice I’ve discovered, but I like to think that I am not a hack, and so I will do no such thing.)

You’d think this would be supremely frustrating, but I’m really happy. The babies are very cute, and I know they won’t be in this stage forever. I want to spend as much time soaking them in as I possibly can, so I’ve been staring at them like I’m going to paint their portraits.

So all the ideas go in a note, for later, when I’m no longer on Baby Time. I just hope I remember what I had in mind for each one, because they’re things like “pissy cryogenics lab AI” and “alien overlords force us to put on rodeos” and “cat ghost story but a comic” and “post-apocalypse, the cryptids are all very relieved we’re gone”.

As I slowly come out of the fugue state of New Mom-hood Pt. 2, I do have plans to start picking away at and pitch some of these ideas, to finish up Andraste, and to figure out what’s next for New Rat City. Eventually, as is my new battle cry, eventually!