Double whammy today, as new issues of both WASTELAND and DEAD SPACE go on sale.
WASTELAND #17 is “Ride the Lightning”, in which Jakob gets some unexpected help from ex-Primate Heddor, and the Newbegin council’s politics take a deadly turn.
The Diamond code is FEB083946, and here’s the solicit text:
The Harvey Award-nominated series’ third startling story arc continues, as Heddor and Jakob must protect the city of Newbegin from the onslaught of the sandies! Find out why Independent Propaganda says, “WASTELAND is an epic in the making, and one of the few pieces of new fiction - in any medium - worthy of that label.”
DEAD SPACE #3, meanwhile, looks deeper into the madness afflicting the Aegis VII colony, as a shocking moment forces Neumann to re-evaluate his position…
The Diamond code is MAR082092. Here’s the solicit text:
The mysterious artifact is finally excavated at the Aegis VII mining colony. Theories about its true purpose spread like wildfire, and hint of a terrible fate for the colonists!
Both titles are available from all good comic stores. You know what to do.
At last weekend’s New York Comic-Con, Dallas Middaugh of Del Rey Manga announced Wilson Tortosa (TOMB RAIDER, BATTLE OF THE PLANETS) as the artist for my upcoming Wolverine manga.
Dallas also showed off some character designs for the book, which you can see at this Newsarama post. (Yes, new characters. No, no more details at this time. There’ll be plenty of PR as we get closer to the publication date, I promise you.)
I’ve never worked with Wilson before, but I couldn’t be happier with the pages he’s turning in. They’re dynamic, exciting and energetic, and he has some great storytelling chops. I have a good feeling about this one.
You can see more of Wilson’s sketches and work at his DeviantArt page.
I’m away for a family get-together this weekend, so let’s have a news round-up before I go:
THREE DAYS IN HOLLYWOOD
As reported by Variety, Jennifer Garner has signed a first-look deal at Warner Bros and one of the movies on her slate is THREE DAYS IN EUROPE—starring Garner and Hugh Jackman (!). Yes, I’m quite happy about this; no, it doesn’t mean a movie will actually get made any time soon. But here’s hoping, because that’s some pretty awesome casting.
SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD
Over on the DEAD SPACE blog, Senior Producer and game story guru Chuck Beaver appears to have let the cat out of the bag on one of those left-field projects I mentioned at the start of the year:
We did a master timeline so the Comic and Animated Feature could see the events, referencing and riffing on whatever sounded cool. Antony Johnston did the writing for the Comics and the game dialogue, so the consistency was locked up there (plus we bought him coffee during WonderCon).
Yes, it’s true; Chuck bought me far too many Grande Lattes at WonderCon.
No, wait, that’s not it… Oh, yes; I also wrote the dialogue script for the game. Which was exceedingly cool.
(You may think it’s not much to shout about, but remember all those hundreds of pages of script unaccounted for in my Q1 roundup? Yeah. There’s a lot of story and dialogue in DEAD SPACE.)
DEAD CITIES
Still with DEAD SPACE, I’ll be attending Sci-Fi London 2008 alongside EA’s Glen Schofield, the game’s Executive Producer and all-round walking injury. No idea what the schedule is yet, but I know there’s a press event or two involved, and talk of a signing at Forbidden Planet. More details when I have them.
NO TORI US*
You may have seen the blitz of news stories concerning COMIC BOOK TATTOO, the Tori Amos-themed anthology to be published this summer through Image, with a veritable plethora of quality creators contributing. Sadly, despite previous news (and my name being in the PR) I won’t be a part of the book after all. I wanted to, as I’ve been a Tori fan all the way back from CRUCIFY, but circumstances beyond my control threw a spanner in the works, and it wasn’t to be. You should buy CBT anyway, of course, because it looks bloody ace.
*Sorry.
WASTELAND #16, “Hail And Kill”, goes on sale tomorrow across North America (Thursday in Europe).
After last issue’s peek into the lives and legends of Sand-Eaters, this one takes us back inside the walls of Newbegin. Here’s the solicit text:
The Sand-Eater assault on Newbegin continues! With the slaves escaping, the Disciples are all that stand between the Sandies and chaos as they rampage through the marketplace. Jakob and Heddor fall back to Sultan Ameer’s caravan for a desparate last stand, while Skot confronts the Lord Founder and Dexus!
The issue order code is JAN083823.
As always, The Big Wet website will also be updated with the latest availability and solicitation info, plus a brand new Walking The Dust… which is, appropriately enough, all about Sand-Eaters. Funny how things work out.
Issue #2 of DEAD SPACE goes on sale today across North America, tomorrow in Europe.
Many people (well, reviewers anyway) seem to have been a bit confused by DEAD SPACE #1, because they think it’s going to turn into a big battle with Neumann, RAMBO-like, single-handedly taking on an alien invasion and whupping lots of xenomorph ass.
Clearly, these people have never read one of my books before.
DEAD SPACE #2 is published by Image Comics and weighs in at 32pp, $2.99 US, Diamond order code FEB082150.
(By the way: yesterday’s post wasn’t an April Fools’ joke. The title was a pun, see, because I’m the fool for… oh, never mind.)
Matt Fraction made an interesting post on Twitter today. He’s started keeping a work journal this year, see. To me, that sounds like a recipe for depression, self-loathing and cardiac arrest, but hey, he’s younger than me. He can take it.
I couldn’t resist knocking up a similar tally of my work for “Q1 2008″, though, and the result knocked my socks off.
470 script pages, 9000 prose words, 1 con, many interviews/podcasts.
Script:
3 issues of WASTELAND (66pp), 4 issues of DEAD SPACE (88pp), 73pp of WOLVERINE Vol. 1, and literally hundreds of pages of script for, um, something else. That I can’t talk about yet. Move along.
Prose:
3 instalments of WALKING THE DUST (1000 each) and 6000 words of BLACKGUARD (yes I’m still working on it, no it isn’t done yet, see above for why).
Cons:
WonderCon, as detailed previously.
Interviews/podcasts:
In addition to a bunch of text interviews, mostly for DEAD SPACE, I’ve also done four audio interviews, three of them at WonderCon, and two of which haven’t been posted yet - no idea when or if they will be.
The above doesn’t count the outline/plot work I’ve also done this year, by the way.
As Gruber would say: jiminy.
Whoops, this one slipped through the cracks: a new DEAD SPACE interview at Anime Sentinel.
Yeah, yeah, yet another, blah, blah. However, this one is with Ben as well as me. So it’s a lot funnier than most of the others, at least…
Also, I gather DEAD SPACE #2 is due to go on sale next week. Not confirmed yet, but it’s on the advance lists, so I’ll let you all know.
It was inevitable, I suppose - some Thai linkspammer has registered my old mostlyblack.com domain, and filled it with an AdWords feedripper site.
What’s particularly unusual is that they also appear to have nicked a (very) old site design of mine, perhaps from the Wayback Machine, and populated it with… entries from this journal dating from 2004 backwards. WTF?
Anyway, point being, please update your links to point only to antonyjohnston.com. And if you see another site that still has the old mostlyblack domain listed, please ask them to update it.
(It’s not like I didn’t contact every single person in my address book with this information almost a year ago, but whaddyagonnado?)
WASTELAND #15, “Dawnrazor”, goes on sale today across North America (tomorrow in Europe). This is the all-Sand-Eater, all-the-time issue, showing their march on Newbegin, and the Sand-Eater creation story in their own words. Plus, learn how to swear in Sandie-speak. Nice!
Still with WASTELAND, The Big Wet has also been updated, not only with the usual availability and solicitation info, but with three new bonus features this month:
First is a new instalment of Walking The Dust, in which Ankya Ofsteen shares her experiences of Newbegin. Second is a brand new character bio for Artisian Neelan, he of the sick daughter and mysterious friendship with Michael. And finally, an all-new song for the Official Soundtrack—Artisian Heart, a dark ambient mood piece that may surprise you…
Meanwhile, jumping back across to DEAD SPACE for a moment, there’s a new interview with me up at Broken Frontier, talking about my experience with the series, the challenges we face in getting it out there, and so on. Good stuff.
The guys from new podcast on the block Going Train were at WonderCon, and interviewed both Ben and myself for their second episode. Ostensibly we were there to talk about DEAD SPACE, of course, but both interviews got that swiftly over with before moving on to more… esoteric realms.
Short and sweet, you can either get the episode through iTunes, or just download it directly from the website.
Oh, and it also turns out host Ryan, the one who interviewed me, is a big fan of WASTELAND. Nice!
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