January 2024 - THE YEAR IN (P)REVIEW
Every year around this time, I do a sort of "year in review" except since it's about the twelve months to come, it's really more not a review at all... IT IS LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE. Beyond just giving my loyal readers some updates and hints about things I'm doing, it's useful for me to lay out in black and white the various mountains I'm expecting to climb as the year rolls on. Nothing like visualizing a Mount Everest made of ideas you haven't had and words you haven't written to put the mind at ease!
What that in mind, let's start with...
THE BLOODY DOZEN (and THE SHROUDED COLLEGE in general!)
THE BLOODY DOZEN #2 hits shelves (and... digital shelves?) today - the second installment of the six-issue second tale set in the Shrouded College universe Will Sliney and I have been building since HELL TO PAY debuted in late 2022. Three covers, and they look like this:
I am loving those cover Cs, by the way - Will Sliney's homaging Soviet Space Age propaganda posters, and they're all super cool. (Cover C is the one-in-ten variant, so they're pretty rare - if you wanted one I hope you got it.)
As the next few months roll on, you'll see the rest of our space vampire prison break story unfold. Alberto Jimenez Alburquerque is working on Issue 4 as we speak, and his art looks just fantastic.
To celebrate the continuing rollout of the book, I've put a number of copies of Issue #1 of THE BLOODY DOZEN up on my webstore, including extremely limited numbers of the very very rare 1:50 "coin" cover that includes an individually-numbered coin created specifically for the series (which pairs up nicely with the similar one we did for HELL TO PAY (and the others we intend to make for the five other stories in the Shrouded College cycle.)) Click here to get yours, or on either of the images below.
Moving forward into 2024, THE BLOODY DOZEN will run monthly through May. After that, we'll take a brief break to get the trade collection out (which I think is scheduled for July or August?) Then, the third series, featuring my Shrouded College co-creator Will Sliney back on art duties, will kick off in the fall, probably September or October. I know exactly what that one is - I know what all the stories are - but I don't want to say too much about it right now. It's kind of my take on John Wick meets the USSR... like a magical spy thriller. It's very cool. And of course, in the background, the TV adaptation keeps rolling, from our friends at Seth MacFarlane's Fuzzy Door Productions and Universal.
For now, just get THE BLOODY DOZEN and HELL TO PAY! You'll love them!
STAR WARS!
I'm going to bullet-point this one for you, since there's a lot going on with me in the Star Wars world. AS USUAL. <insert lightsaber gif> <insert cool TIE fighter noise SFX>
I am ankle-deep in TRIALS OF THE JEDI, the final novel in the High Republic saga I kicked off with LIGHT OF THE JEDI back in 2021. It's been three years since THR launched, and will have been over four by the time TRIALS lands. I'll have been working on High Republic stuff for almost six years when it's all said and done. Not a bad way to spend my time. TRIALS is pretty well outlined. I've built it to feel like a cyclone. You, as a reader, will fall into the top, get spun around, then get closer and closer to the bottom with everything getting faster and more intense (natch) and then... well, we'll see. It's designed to work for people who haven't read anything since LIGHT OF THE JEDI, but also for people who have read every single THR tale we've put out. I'll be working hard on this over the rest of the winter and spring. Wish me luck.
Star Wars comics at Marvel will remain a big part of my workload - I just turned in Issue 47 (which concludes THE TRIAL OF LANDO CALRISSIAN.) 48 is next up, and then a very cool surprise thing we're doing for Issue 50. I'll have much more to say about my time on the main title once we hit #50 (which is really like #70 of my run if you include Dark Droids and the Qi'ra Trilogy, which I very much do.) You might be thinking there can't be too many stories left that we can legitimately tell set between Empire and Jedi... stay tuned, oh ye of little faith. We've got some tibanna in the tank yet.
I should start an all-new Star Wars title around April-ish. This is one I've wanted to do for a long time, which I think you folks (at least the fans of my SW comics) have wanted me to do for a long time too. It's all approved-ish, and I really, really want to do it, but sometimes things fall apart. Cross your fingers.
Probably a few bits and bobs in THR beyond TRIALS OF THE JEDI. I know there's a very important one-or-two-shot comic that needs to be done that I *think* I'm writing. This is a story along the lines of EYE OF THE STORM, THE BLADE or SHADOWS OF STARLIGHT - an essential piece of the puzzle that wouldn't work as well in another format.
I'm still consulting at Lucasfilm, which means talking about a wide variety of projects. I love that gig.
There's potentially another thing, but I don't even want to say more about it yet than that. There's potentially another thing.
Yep. The galaxy far, far away has a lot for me to do in 2024.
PROJECTS IN THE EVER-EXPANDING SILENT E PRODUCTIONS LINE OF PRODUCTIONS
SILENT E PRODUCTIONS is the name of my company with Ryan Browne (Charles SoulE... Ryan BrownE... get it?) It's the fertile creative collaboration that has brought you such legendary comic works as CURSE WORDS and EIGHT BILLION GENIES. We've got a lot of stuff cooking for 2024. The list:
Ryan and I have a new comic which we expect to debut in late summer. It's an Image book, it's (currently) another limited-maxi-series like 8BG, it's got a supernatural theme and an extremely hooky premise. It is our conscious effort to follow up the amazing success of EIGHT BILLION GENIES with another very cool setup that lets us do anything we want. If you like our stuff, you'll love it. The first issue is 29 incredible pages, and Ryan is doing astonishing work on it. Expect more news on it around April-ish.
THE CURSE WORDS CONCEPT ALBUM, aka the albatross on my workflow's neck that has been taunting me with its unfinished status since the summer of 2020... is making real progress toward completion! I made a concerted effort to give myself August and September of 2023 to focus on it, which really bore fruit. You could listen to the whole record now, pretty much. It sounds like a rock opera, like something written to be performed on a Broadway-style stage, and actually tells the story of CURSE WORDS pretty well. I got way too ambitious on it (I'm playing all the instruments except non-sequenced drums and singing all the lines), and I need to get into the studio to finish some things on it, but my intention is to not let the sun set on 2024 without this goddamn thing being in the world. If, for some reason, you are interested in pre-ordering a full-length album from me, someone whose music you have almost certainly never heard, about a weird comic about an evil wizard that you may or may not have read... just click here!
More in the EIGHT BILLION GENIES world! While Ryan and I created a single new issue of what we're calling WISHWORLD in 2023 (think of that like an ongoing series set in the genies world exploring different people's wishes) which you can only get from us, perhaps by clicking here, we're still working on other things in that universe while we prep the new series I mentioned a few bullet points up. Merch, primarily. You've already seen the plush genies we created... we're thinking about more toys, maybe a t-shirt or two, and even a few other more ambitious projects. We'll see. We have discovered that merch is hard!
The EIGHT BILLION GENIES movie. A lot of very good news here. This will come as no surprise, but I can't talk about what that news might be. Hopefully by year-end you'll know some of the great things Ryan and I do about this particular project. For now, let's just say that Amazon Studios seem incredibly serious about bringing an 8BG film to life, and we would be beyond thrilled if they do.
OTHER THINGS! LIGHTNING ROUND!
I have another project for Marvel that I'm sure I talked about in the update I did in January 2023. It's been slowly inching to the finish line, and we actually made a ton of progress on it this year. It's almost two-thirds done. I think there's a reasonable possibility you could see it in 2024, but I wouldn't be shocked if it slipped to 2025. It's a superhero thing.
Yes, I've heard the rumors about the Daredevil:Born Again TV show featuring Muse (the serial killer artist villain Ron Garney and I created in our run) and the idea of Kingpin becoming the mayor of New York (a plot point that I created for my run, which Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto really ran with in theirs). The Mayor thing feels pretty solid, based on the way the ECHO series ends (and what I've heard.) Muse... we'll see. It'd be groovy, though!
I ran a Kickstarter last spring for Chronicles of the Lazarene, a companion novel to my latest original novel The Endless Vessel, which was released last June. While it just takes forever to get books printed and shipped, I have literally held copies of the book in my hand, and it will be going out to all the patient backers very soon. If you missed the Kickstarter and still want to get a copy of the book, you can order it here. I feel confident in saying that it will ship pretty imminently.
I'm testing the waters on my next original novel, which I would commence after finishing TRIALS OF THE JEDI. I have two ideas competing with each other in my head... we'll see which one wins.
I've expanded my convention schedule back to something approximating its pre-pandemic levels; I'm doing something like nine shows this year. I'm excited about it. The first one on the calendar is MegaCon in Orlando in just a few weeks, and then I'll do Puerto Rico Comicon at the end of March. Best place to keep up with all of that is on my website's Appearances page. (Which, if it's not updated, I'll get someone right on that.)
I'M ALREADY TIRED.
Whoosh - that's a lot. I didn't even include logistical things I want to spend time on, like figuring out how better to connect with you lovely readers. I'll get there. In the meantime, I just want to finish that damn album!
Replies are open if you have questions or comments. Thank you for reading and following my work. I might complain about the workload on occasion, but this is everything I've ever wanted. I am very grateful - to you, and just for the fact that I can do this for a living at all. Hooray!
See you next month,
Charles