Phenomena Book 2 is real!

I just got the first copy

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

This week was one of those that any artist look forward to. After all the work that we poured into Phenomena Book 2, the first two copies arrived at Abrams and our editor Charlie Kochman quickly sent them to me and Brian. Seeing all the hard work, sweat, blood and tears in such a magnificent package is an amazing feeling.

I’ll remind you that the book will be out in April 23 and that you can preorder it right now. Trust me, you won’t regret it. Just scroll down to see what I mean.

The Book

Just like Book 1, the second volume is a work of art of printing. The quality is outstanding, the colors of the cover, all the tiny dots in the interior, each line, each word, all perfectly reproduced. Abrams really does top notch quality work (and not only in ours - our editor Charlie sent us a few other books from the catalog and it’s all as good as it gets).

But enough words, more pictures. The cover, with colors by Chris O’Halloran, looks just stunning with that orange sky and blue logo.

If you take the wraparound cover, you’ll get the black and white original artwork for the cover (just like in the first book):

Inside you have a map for this story, like in the previous volume. In the beginning it’s just the drawing, but in the back of the book you get the same map + notations. They spoil some of the plot, so I won’t post the second one here.

And below you have a sample of the interior, where you can see just how good the printing quality is:

Finally, a side by side of the two books. The colors look perfect together:

It’s funny that this book arrived right when we’re finishing the third one. It truly enhances the feeling of impending closure and makes everything feel worthwhile. And the best part will be receiving the third volume, one year from now.

Speaking about it…

…I have it in my hands. The entire script for book 3. And after delivering 21 pages more this week I’m now working on the last 13. In less than three weeks the entire Phenomena trilogy will done and I’ll be working on something new.

My entire focus is on bringing it home without rushing or allowing the quality to dip, which should allow me to draw the last bit without feeling weird/depressed/down because of how near it is to the end.

Here’s a glimpse of the last chunk of script Brian sent me:

Covers

Also this week, two covers that I did were revealed. One was drawn months ago and it’s for Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev‘s excellent new book, Masterpiece:

The other one is the first of a six part connected cover for the amazing Void Rivals (go read it), by Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici. At this point, I already delivered covers for #8 and #9 as well:

Both with colors by Chris O’Halloran. And I’ll definitely do a step by step with some or all of the covers I’ve been doing in the last few months. There are quite a few.

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It truly was a blast of a week. Now back to these last 13 pages. See you next week!

André