This weeks Jeff Lemire Newsletter - theres a lot here!
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Happy 2021 Everyone. Thanks for Subscribing and I hope you all had a safe holiday season.
I love the new year, it's always a great time to take stock of where all my projects are at and look ahead to what I want to do in the coming years. This year in particular feels like a clean slate for me as most, if not all of the projects I have been working on over the last several years, are all finishing at the same time leaving me with a totally empty schedule for the first time in fifteen years...
The final 80-page final issue of GIDEON FALLS came out in comic shops last week. ASCENDER will be finishing with a double sized issue 18 later this year and I have finished all the scripts for that series, Dustin is drawing issue 17 now. (32 issues of Descender + 18 issues of Ascender = 50 issues total for the story). FAMILY TREE will end with issue 12, and I wrote the final couple of scripts for that months ago.
BLACK HAMMER continues to roll, with SKULLDIGGER, COLONEL WEIRD: COSMAGOG and BARBALIEN: RED PLANET all coming out now. But the truth is, I have decided it's time to shrink the Black Hammer Universe back down to one core title. All the universe building the last couple of years has been really fun and, I hope, has produced some good comics, but now I want to take all that world building and use it as the foundation for one core Black Hammer title again. That series will be called BLACK HAMMER REBORN and it will launch this Spring/Summer. Hopefully we will announce a few more details on that in the coming month or two.
I also have a new MADAME DRAGONFLY series drawn by my co-creator Dean Ormston and another series drawn by Tyler Crooke that will both build out the supernatural/mystical side of the BHU in 2021. And those will dovetail into Black Hammer Reborn. I have already written 12 issues of Reborn.
I also wrote two new DC Black Label series last year that have not been announced yet, but both are being drawn as we speak. One is being drawn by Doug Mahnke, whom I have wanted to work with for a long long time. I fell in love with Doug's work when he did Frankenstein with Grant Morrison and have been a devoted Mahnke Fanboy ever since. One of the first pieces of original art I ever bought was a page from Doug's Frankenstein when I met him at a Con in Toronto over a decade ago. I had just started Sweet Tooth then and I remember showing early pages to Doug. He and I talked about working together since, but our schedules never lined up. Well, they finally did later last year and now Doug is drawing a new DC Black Label book I wrote. People often ask, "Is there any DC or Marvel characters you still really want to write?" and this is that character. My favourite DC character that I never really got the chance to do the way I wanted. But now I have. Cannot wait for you all to see Doug's work on it too! No idea when DC will announce this project or my other one. But I think both will be worth the wait.
SWEET TOOTH: THE RETURN is all done and issue 3 of 6 comes out this week or next (I can never keep track of release schedules). The Netflix Sweet Tooth TV show recently completed filming and will be releases sometime this year!
I do have another original graphic novel coming this Fall. I drew this one before I did Sweet Tooth: The Return but we decided to hold it until after Sweet Tooth was finished coming out. It's called MAZEBOOK and we will announce some more details in the Spring.
We also recently started teasing SNOW ANGELS, my collaboration with artist JOCK. This book as been gestating in my sketchbooks since 2007 or 2008. I just never got a chance to get to it until now. It was one of those books I wanted to draw myself, but I always had other books on the go. A couple years ago I dusted it off and talked to Jock about it and here we are! The book will be 10-issues and will be published digitally first by Comixology with a print edition to follow. I've written all 10 scripts already and Jock is currently drawing issue 7.
Here is some of the promotional materials that Comixology had been releasing in December...(there are pics in his newsletter but I couldnt paste them here.)
i09 has a preview of the first few pages here....
https://io9.gizmodo.com/jeff-lemire-and-jocks-new-comic-snow-angels-ventures-in-1845925940SNOW ANGELS will start being published digitally in February, but there will be one surprise element to this series that we will be announcing very soon, a first for me. There is also a nifty trailer that Comixology made up that you can find it you do some googling. I have no idea how to put video into this newsletter so I'm not even going to try.
NEW STUFF
So that all brings you up to date on what I have been working in last year and that leads me to 2021 and suddenly having as totally open schedule (aside from the Essex County TV show, which continues to roll into pre-production with the bulk of the scripts written).
I've been thinking a lot about the kind of books I want to do, and what I want my career to look like now that I am 15 years into publishing my comics. One thing I am really trying to do is slow down. I have been doing so many projects over the last decade and working way too much. I want to slow down a little bit and focus on 2 or 3 projects at a time, rather than 5 or 6, which has been my schedule since 2010. I want to always be doing one book that I both write and draw and then only one or two others that I write for other artists.
So, I am starting a new project that I will draw, but it is in it's very beginning stages. Just sketching characters and finding the world right now, but I am in love with the characters already and I think it's going to be something really different for me, yet really familiar too. It's certainly a bit darker than some of my other self-drawn work.
I'm working on three new projects that I will write for other artists, but they will be staggered so I won't be working on them all or releasing them all at the same time. There are two ongoing series and a mini or OGN. Some other writers have taken to giving projects that have not been announced yet codenames so that they can still talk a bit about them in their newsletters. I think that's a good idea, as it allows me to update you all a one those without spoiling too much. So with that, the projects I am starting now are:
PROJECT JACKKNIFE a new ongoing series that will be drawn by the amazing Gabriel Walta. Gabriel and I recently did the Eisner-nominated book SENTIENT together at TKO and he also drew the new Barbalien series with Tate Brombal writing. This new book is pretty ambitious and will be a longer story and series. I spent my holiday break writing a series bible and outlining the first three arcs as well as doing bunch of world-building and I wrote the issue #1 script yesterday. I'll probably write issue #2 this week as I am in the groove with it right now and you gotta strike when the iron is hot. I am hoping this will be a late 2021 or early 2022 launch.
The next project is one I am still in the outlining stage on. It will be drawn by my Ascender/Decsender co-creator and partner in crime Dustin Nguyen. We'll call that one PROJECT PAVEMENT. Dustin is still finishing up Ascender and he and I have another short project after that. So Project Pavement will likely not see the light until 2022.
The third book is an OGN or mini series (still discussing format) drawn by my Gideon Falls co-creator Andrea Sorrentino. Its a completely different genre than Gideon and a real change of pace for us. We'll call that one PROJECT BARK.
So that's it for now. Hope you all stay safe and that we can all have a better 2021.
J
Tales From The Farm by JeffLemire
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