The Wrong Way
Firstly, as many of you know, Beautiful Canvas #1 came out this week from Black Mask Studios. The book was written by Ryan K Lindsay with art by Sami Kivela, colours by Triona Farrell, letters by Ryan Ferrier, and edited by myself.
It’s been extremely gratifying to watch Ryan and the team get the love they deserve for this book when it hit the shelves on Wednesday. As it stands it’s sitting on a fantastic rating of 9.1 on Comic Book Roundup based on 12 reviews. One of my favourites was this review at Multiversity Comics, a particularly incisive and in-depth look at the first issue.
Speaking of…I hope you all picked up the first issue of Panel X Panel that I mentioned in the last newsletter. I’ve only just begun to dig in, but I’m already enjoying it. Hassane has brought together a great set of critics and voices. I’m looking forward to where it goes next!
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For those who got the last newsletter, I finished my deep dive on the Lemire/Smallwood/Bellaire run on Moon Knight. That can be found here. The previous two parts can be found there too.
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Disconnect continues to come along art-wise. The aim is to have it all wrapped and ready for September.
I’ve spoken about it briefly before, but a loose trilogy has begun to form. If Go Home served as the ‘past’ of this loose ‘war trilogy’ then Disconnect is very much the present, focusing on drone warfare and its consequences (both physical and mental). I completed a draft of what will be the ‘future’, and concluding, part of the trilogy last week. I’ve had a week away from it to loosen my empathy. This week the knives come out and it’s all about getting it to be the best version of the story it can be.
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Some links to finish things up:
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In writing the aforementioned final part of the ‘war trilogy’ I have tried to avoid these tropes.
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Kim Morgan is the critic who writes the excellent movie essays in the back of Brubaker & Phillips’ Kill or be Killed. Here she is on the awesome Long Good Friday.
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The Ringer asks the question - Is Bong Joon-ho the next Spielberg?
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Surprising no-one, Facebook’s censorship rules protect white men from hate speech.
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Hey, remember BitCoin? Ethereum is the potential, world-changing, next step.
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A bit of a curtailed edition this week. I’ve driven approximately 200 miles in the last two days. On Friday I hauled ass up the motorway to catch up with Disconnect artist Gav Heryng and attend a concert in Sheffield. The British transport network had other ideas though and a two-hour journey turned into a four-hour epic complete with roasting sun and the frayed, dying temperaments of other drivers.
But, it was all worth it and served as a nice bit of social respite before I cocoon myself back into the ‘head down, writing now’ phase of a new project.
An idea I have at the moment is to have the newsletter serve as a kind of running work journal for this new project, a kind of warts and all look. We’ll see.
Until then…