Talk and signing in Spain

Pics and videos from a rather pleasant event

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

Last Saturday I drove to Vigo, in northern Spain, for a very pleasant talk and signing (more akin to a meet a greet, actually) at comic book shop Banda Deseñada. It’s less than an hour from where I live, which makes it the closest comic book store I have, believe it or not.

We took advantage of Phenomena Book 2’s launch in Spain, but I ended up signing an and talking about a lot of different stuff. More on that later, because first…

Quick Updates

• Project Red is on fantastic shape. After finishing a new batch of pages, me and Rick Remender discussed how to organize the rest of issue 1, since we have a lot of stuff prepared and that we know it’s coming - it’s more a question of where it makes more sense in terms of narrative. And let me tell you, the first issue is going to be pretty bombastic. We ended up the talk very excited about building up something very meaty and rewarding right out of the gate.

• Something else not comics related I’ve been writing has gathered some interest and I’ve had a couple of fascinating phone calls this week which will be very helpful moving it forward. I know it’s not super exciting for you if I can’t speak much about it, but having two things you’ve always dreamed of doing happening at the same time is an immense creative experience.

• Did I say two dream projects? Make it three, because this week I also printed all the materials I currently have for a solo comic book project I’ve been working on and off for years and I ended up with a sixty page document of illustrations, concepts, pages, designs and lots and lots of text - from story arches to character descriptions, from bits of scripts to notes I had on my phone. It’s a pretty substantial working bible that I’ll be reading in the next few weeks to see where I’m at with this thing. The reason I decided to gather all the materials is due to copious amounts of notes I’ve been taking recently as my mind keeps going back to it. It’s The Thing I’ll end up doing sooner or later, though not any time soon as I’m fully committed to Project Red. But you know how it is: when the chance comes, I want to be prepared and ready to move forward - so start early.

Talk and Signing

After a lovely lunch with store owner Melo, we went on for the talk moderated by one of his colleagues. Both moderator and attendees came with lots of interesting questions, both generic and specific things regarding the overall process of the work, which is really what all of us creators want to talk about.

After a couple of hours yapping I went to town singing dozens of books, mostly Phenomena and Righteous Thirst For Vengeance, but also a few Marvel things. People had even more questions now that it was just me and them and I always enjoy those one on ones as I sketch something for the person. See below some of the stuff I did:

You can see here two time lapse videos of two sketches as well:

I still signed a couple of dozen books more for clients of the store that couldn’t be present, so I left Vigo feeling very rewarded for the work I do and for the lovely people that go all the way to buy and drag my stuff to have a chat and a signature. I couldn’t ask for more. And shout out to Norma Editorial, our Spanish publisher - not only did they promote this thing to hell and back on social media but they also reached out to the shop to see what was needed. These are the partners you want working with you.

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I’m now working on two covers before getting back to Project Red on Monday, so lots to do this weekend. See you all next week,

André