Last one of 2024

I'll see you in 2025

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

This will be the last message of 2024 (bar some emergency) as I rush to wrap all the work before the end of the year while trying to guarantee some free time with the family. With that in mind, let’s cap it off with a bit of an overview of what’s happening at my desk and where things are going.

Project Red

My new book with Rick Remender remains under tight wraps for now, but we’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting to get it properly going. After lots of ideas and designs were solidified, we moved into scripting, pages and covers, setting the beginning of what we hope is gonna be quite an epic story.

Currently we have a a few dozen pages and three covers done, a fully fleshed out first issue script-wise plus many bits already written and I’ve penciled 20 pages more in the last couple of weeks - which I hope to ink before December runs out of days.

It’s gonna be a while before some sort of announcement, but things are moving to great satisfaction. We’ll leave this year with a very solid foundation and hit the ground running for next year. My goal is to leave 2024 with a fully produced issue 1 in terms of artwork.

Cover for Medieval Novel

You might recall a recent newsletter with a a step-by-step of a new cover for a novel my mom wrote. If not, find it right here:

Well, now we have it colored by none other than master Chris O’Halloran:

Don’t you immediately wanna visit the places? Such lively colors.

I already have a couple of covers and commissions lined up for next year, so that side of things keeps moving as well.

Signing

Last week I did a signing and a talk at a very nice comic book shop here in Portugal, called Mundo Fantasma (literally, Ghost World).

If you’re from around, I signed a lot of books from all stages of my career for them to sell. Marvel and DC stuff, Generation Gone, Man Plus, Phenomena Book 1 and 2, Righteous Thirst vol. 1 and 2, Sacrificers and more.

I also did plenty of sketches, see some examples below. I always find it funny what requests people come up with, often asking for characters I’ve drawn once, years ago.

But thankfully we have smartphones and the books themselves to use as reference.

I also did a very large Spike from Phenomena for a charity auction. See pen for scale:

Ultimately, it is a lot of fun to do these things. You get to meet the readers of your books, with lots of very interesting and different people from all walks of life. And after a few years doing this, you notice how some of those readers keep coming back and buying all of your books through the years. And that, let me tell you, is priceless.

Recommendation

As a quick last hurrah for this year, I’ll recommend you to watch The Penguin. The show is very good overall but for me the highlight so far is episode 1. I was blown away by how clever it was in establishing EVERYTHING right from the start. First scene you see immediately what the Penguin is and is about, it then establishes his relationship with his protégé, with Sofia (the other main character), the two crime families and how they relate to the main characters and between themselves and sets up the conflict brilliantly. All in under one hour.

A writing masterclass, setting up a pretty complex situation in an incredibly clear manner.

Also, Colin Farrell.

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So have a nice Christmas, happy holidays, and I’ll see you in 2025!

André