...Hello 2024

Business as usual

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

First and foremost: Happy New Year!

Like I mentioned in our previous newsletter, the arrival of the New Year didn’t really come with any substantial change, given that I remain heavily focused on finishing the third volume of Phenomena.

The first few weeks of 2024 will be pretty much business as usual.

However…

…the next thing is approaching fast and right now it feels pretty weird to think that next month I might already find myself working on a different book. A very different book at that.

But for now

2024 picked up exactly where 2023 ended: with ink.

It was easy to go back to work as I was literally in the middle of a page. It’s a trick I use to make it easier to pick things up again without having to think or prepare too much. You leave something started from the night/week before and when you grab the nib/pencil again you don’t even have to think, you just go.

I finished, scanned and adjusted everything up to page 103 during the week and then spent my Saturday planning the following 20 pages.

Brian wrote a sequence, that prompted a lot of ideas in me, we then talked and now I’m combining everything into a cohesive piece of storytelling. A pretty important one, given this is the big battle to end all battles.

For now, I’ve drawn some quick layouts and wrote numerous notes next to Brian’s original script:

Next week will be devoted to turn these scribbles into actual thumbnails and add grey tones the inks I just wrapped.

Other bits

I’ve mailed a couple more Righteous Thirst Deluxe editions this week for some lovely folks. One went to northern France and the other to New Jersey. I added Sonny on both and even went with screen tones on one that was for a special person.

First recommendation of the year goes to…

The Last Duel! By now it shouldn’t be a surprise my love to all things Ridley Scott. His latest medieval film is one of the many I missed in theaters - when you have three kids that’s how it goes - and one I was especially dying to see.

It did not disappoint as it’s another Scott masterpiece. It has superb acting, for starters. Driver and Damon and Affleck are no surprise, but Jodie Comer was a revelation. It also has a great script (courtesy of the dynamic duo Affleck + Damon) with a wonderfully crafted structure. If you don’t know, it’s about a woman who accuses a squire of raping her. We then see the events through her husband’s eyes, the squire’s eyes and finally, her own point of view. It’s never repetitive and never boring, with each turn showing things differently and adding entire new bits.

A small SPOILER, but it’s so good that I’ve got to talk about it. Before each main segment, the words The truth according to ……….. appear on the screen. When it comes to Comer’s character, the words The Truth are left hanging, signaling to the audience that this is, indeed, how it happened. Simple, effective and utterly brilliant.

The movie has clear allusions to the Me Too movement, but it’s done with care and though and never in a patronizing way, so it feels especially relevant.

The movie is also the start of a new trend for me: to buy more physical media.

Streaming services are very convenient, but you never really own anything or control for how long they are available. Besides, in a Blu-Ray you get a more optimized experience and extras. This one in particular has a lovely making of included, where you can see Scott's permanent concern/obsession with story on every scene and detail.

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See you next week!

André