New thing sneak peek

And a few words on The Three-Body Problem (book)

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

We’re going for it, ladies and gentlemen. We’re all over the new gig and today we’ll get a very sneaky little peek where you’ll learn exactly nothing. But first, yours truly was featured in one of the hottest substacks around the planet.

Exploding Giraffe

Am I overselling it? Perhaps. But

Brian K. Vaughan

is one of my favorites around the world, as talented as he is kind. And it was with all the kindness in his heart that he invited me to answer 10 hilarious questions, centered around the imminent launch of Phenomena Book 2: Matilde’s Quest (preorder preorder preorder).

Read it for yourself here:

SPECTATORS - Part 102

The new thing

So, as I said before, I’m working on a new book with Rick Remender. But before that, I’ll be doing a couple of issues of other thing. And this gig was very much about hitting the ground running, so I did just that, jumping into a new script pretty much right after wrapping Phenomena. I believe soon it should be announced but until then we’ll have to remain secretive and mysterious.

I’m already with 20 pencilled pages (one full issue) and a few of them inked. Enjoy some very tiny and ridiculous details:

I’ve also worked on yet another cover and I’m pleased to say that my cover marathon is now near its end, with two more to go until the end of the month at this point. It was definitely too much but those were some irresistible books to work with - Void Rivals, Transformers, Cyberpunk and more - c’mon, couldn’t say not to any of it.

A sad week in comics

This week in comics was marked by Ed Piskor’s disturbing death. At this point, there isn’t much to add, but two things I believe in (in no particular order): 1. People deserve second chances and shouldn’t feel they have no way out of it. 2. Victims should be taken seriously and have space to prove their accusations.

Neither thing happened. What we got was a tragic death and potential victims with no justice.

Recommendation

I love reading, but with tons of work and tons of kids it has been hard to do it in the last couple of years. To force myself back into it, I bought Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem. I’d been wanting to read it for years and with the Netflix show around the corner I went for it so I could read it before.

And I’m glad I did. The book is a science fiction delight. Set in China, it takes place in two different eras separated by a few decades (Cultural Revolution in the late 60s and the present day), with an intriguing plot that keeps you guessing.

The more I read, the more curious I got as to how they were going to adapt this as a TV show, because the book is very much a novel written with nothing else in mind other than being a book. Its structure is brilliant and it goes back and forth between the two eras to further the plot, going only for as long as needed. Same is true for its setting, characters and crazy scientific concepts: it goes deep, but only as much as the story needs. It’s never boring and the last few chapters are particularly fascinating as Liu Cixin brilliantly tie all the knots together, explaining in detail all the crazy and surreal events up to that point.

By know, we all know that the Netflix show cuts, paste, recreate and reimagine the book to a very different thing - which is no surprise, some kind of work like that was needed to do a successful translation of the material to a different medium. I haven’t seen it yet because apparently it picks up stuff from books 2 and 3 as well and I’m going all in on reading the trilogy before watching it.

I imagine some of you already read it, but if not, go for it.

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See you next week!

André