A recap of 2022...

...And what 2023 has in store.

Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter.

As promised, let’s go through everything that happened in 2022 to gather some perspective over last year’s. We’ll also peek at the near future and see what awaits us this year.

My achievement of 2022

My biggest achievement of 2022 (and a perfect way to celebrate 10 years of my career) was seeing two full blown creator owned works being published. Original comics have always been my biggest passion creatively speaking (either by myself or with a writing partner). And being always so keen on creating as much original material as possible made it very frustrating to hold Phenomena from the world when we changed publishers (from DC to Abrams). The result, however, was having the privilege of seeing both original books I’ve been working since 2019 being fully published in the same year.

For context, I finished my work on Phenomena Book 1 in the end of 2020 (after roughly a year of work), having moved over almost immediately to A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance. I spent the entirety of 2021 plus the first 7 months of 2022 working on it, with Vol. 1 and 2 being published in March and November of last year, respectively. Phenomena Book 1 saw the light of day in October.

It was a massive satisfaction to suddenly have two more original books being bought and read by people, receiving numerous messages about it and seeing my name next to two of the biggest writers in comics today, while enjoying a great creative relationship with each creative team.

Breaking it down

As written above, the first 7 months of the year were spent drawing Righteous Thirst, leaving the last 5 months for Phenomena Book 2.

A look into my files reveals that I had inked most of issue 7 of Righteous Thirst by January 1st of 2022, but I still had to finish it and then add all of the grey tones. I then did issues 8, 9, 10 and 11 until mid-July, managing to finish it just before I stopped for my summer break.

I resumed work in August, beginning Phenomena Book 2. First month was spent going over the story and places, doing design work, reading the first chunk of script and doing layouts, but on September I was already drawing pages for it, creating 54 of them until December 31st.

So this means around 160 pages of work, plus all the covers for every issue and collection of both books. I did a lot of other smaller gigs throughout the year as well:

• a few variant covers

• a bunch of commissions

• conceptual art for a video game

• conceptual art for movies

• created a TV show (in development at the moment but still in very early stages - meaning no guarantees of anything)

• worked on a various things and new ideas still in development (so stuff that hasn’t been shown or proposed anywhere yet)

So a very fulfilling year, doing exactly what I wanted to do - which is a massive privilege that I wish for everyone. Ever since I began Phenomena in late 2019 I feel I’m exactly where I wanted to be: working with the best people creating original things we own. As a creator, it doesn’t get any better than this.

What’s coming up in 2023

Well, despite the calendar year changing, things kept going pretty much the same at the office - thankfully. In the first week of January, Brian Bendis sent me a new chunk of Phenomena script. I’ve already done a lot of work on it, laying it all out and I’m currently sitting on 10 fully pencilled pages. I’ll do a big push next week to try to finish penciling this batch so I can move to inks as soon as possible - always the best part of the work.

As stated on previous newsletters, we’ll be working on Books 2 and 3 for Phenomena back to back, which should cover most of the year. But before 2024 comes in I should be working on something new - always an exciting prospect.

I’ve began talks to sort it out and this week it kinda fell in place - but you’ll have to wait for those news.

I’ll also be doing more smaller gigs (two of them are already lined up for the next couple of months + a new commission) which will help keep things spicy and creative.

So broadly you’ll know what’s coming. Now, let’s get to work and make it all happen.

Recommendations

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been watching the HBO series Watchmen, based on the comic book by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I know, I’m late to the party, but let me tell you: that’s one hell of an adaptation.

You gotta be pretty brave to go and do something like this. Because if it fails, it’s gonna be messy. On one side, they’re adapting a book against the wishes of one of its creators, making the thing right away very sensitive. Then they’re using the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 as one of its cornerstones for the entire story, so it has the courage of (not just mentioning, but completely) embracing the historical event with its full relevance.

Well, it didn’t fail. It’s incredibly well done in all aspects. The idea for adapting is genius: half sequel, half remix of the first book. The plot is extraordinarily tight, growing and expanding with every episode, with each new revelation giving new meanings to past scenes. The casting and acting is phenomenal, the music outstanding. It’s a bullet proof package overall. And they had the guts to do one season and go away. Which on this day and age is almost unheard of. My admiration goes to Damon Lindelof and the entire team.

One detail I loved to see was Dave Gibbons providing some illustrations that were used in certain scenes in the series. What a nice touch.

If you haven’t seen it, give it a try. Made me want to reread the book, which I haven’t done in ages.

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Back to work it is, these Phenomena pages ain’t gonna pencil themselves. We’ll talk again soon!

André