Phenomena Book 2 status report

I can see the end from here

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

For the last two weeks, I’ve focused almost all my working attention to Phenomena Book 2. This is because since I diverted some resources for that short story I told you about a couple of weeks ago, now I wanted to make sure nothing got left behind Phenomena-wise.

Some developments

We had a great chat with our editor last week and everyone is very happy with how the book is proceeding. I’m up to page 93 and the next section I’ll be working on will be longer but will take me all the way to end of the book. Hence why I can see the end from here.

While I draw the remaining pages and Brian reworks the script, our letterer Josh will begin his work as well. The cover, already discussed by us, will also be prepared to be presented to the publisher.

On the stuff I’m currently working on, we show a new group of characters whose leader will help shed a lot of light over what happened to our world and turn the book towards its climatic conclusion. All while setting the ground for book 3. See below a few exclusive sneak peeks of what I was inking:

You may have noticed some weird things popping around. A food truck? And was that a space shuttle? As I said, this sequence is fundamental to the world building that we’re doing and I’m really happy with how it’s coming along. I can’t wait for people to go through it. I’ll be scanning these tomorrow and prepare the files for the grey tones next week.

41 Comic Barcelona

Next week will be cut short work-wise as I’ll be traveling to the 41 Comic Barcelona. I was invited alongside Rick Remender and some of the other artists that worked with him. We’ll be speaking in group and separately and will all have quite a few signing sessions. Our Spanish publisher Norma Editorial made a great effort to have translations of both Righteous Thirst For Vengeance and Phenomena ready for the convention, which should make for a really good show. If you can make it there, it will be lovely to see you, I can’t wait to hang out with Rick, the gang and the readers.

Tribute

Finally, something that was both very surprising and satisfying, I was presented with a tribute dinner by the local Rotary Club in honor of my career a couple of weeks ago. They usually give this award to people in later stages of their career, so this was fairly unexpected. I was very honored and moved by the whole affair, which I was lucky to attend with my family (wife, older daughter and parents). There were lots of speeches and hand shakes and everything was rather lovely. Here are some pictures of the award and the ceremony:

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Since I’ll be gone for a good chunk of next week, I’m unsure how and when the next newsletter is gonna happen. But you can expect to hear all about the 41 Comic Barcelona on this space, that you can rest assured.

Until the next one!

André