Author: Lee Ferguson

MALICENT BLACK, OAX, a NEW PROJECT and ART FOR SALE

Hey everyone!

How’s it going..? Uh … yeah, I know…

Well, rather than me going off on a tangent about everything let’s just play a bit of catch up…

First, MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE is at the printer! Here are the hard proofs we’ve been looking over:

More so than the first book, Mundicide really sets up a lot of things for the future. We can’t talk about what those things are yet, but once you guys get the chance to read this issue (and the backup story) I think you’ll start to understand why Drew and I are so excited about the third Malicent Black book, which we’re planning to launch later this year…

In the meantime, I’m working on a project with Matt Garvey, and that project is live on Kickstarter right now!

NIGHT MOVERS

A Psychological Thriller About Love, Obsession, and How Far You’d Go to Find the Person You Love

How far would you go to find the person you love?

Night Movers is a psychological thriller set in modern-day Japan, where a young English woman living abroad wakes up one morning to discover that her boyfriend has vanished.

Not just missing…Erased.

No note.
No struggle.
No explanation.
An apartment stripped bare, like he was never there at all.

A woman alone in a foreign country, chasing the last trace of the man she loves.

What begins as a search for answers becomes a one-way fall.

This isn’t a loud, explosive thriller. It’s a quiet spiral into obsession that drags Stacy into the shadowed backstreets of the city, forcing her to become someone she never thought she’d be. Urban legends blur with reality. Hidden subcultures operate in plain sight. Neon streets give way to alleys no one talks about. Every door she opens leads somewhere darker.

This is a story about crossing invisible lines.

About love turning into fixation.
About grief mutating into resolve.
And about what happens when you chase the truth far enough that it starts chasing you back.

A slow-burn journey into Japan’s unseen underbelly, where hope becomes a liability, trust is a currency, and some discoveries change you forever.

By the end, you won’t just question what happened to him.
You’ll question every choice she made to find him.

From the creator of multiple award-winning indie comics, Night Movers is a complete 72-page, one-and-done graphic novel, told in stark black and white, designed to be read in one sitting.

No sequels required.
No cliffhangers. 
Just a gut punch ending you won’t see coming, one that will leave you thinking about what you just read for days afterwards.

Stacy has built a life in Japan. She has friends. She has routines. Most importantly, she has Aoto. Then one morning, he’s gone. Not just missing. Gone. Refusing to accept the easy answers, Stacy begins searching on her own, pushing deeper into unfamiliar parts of the city, chasing leads that may or may not exist. And the further she goes, the more everything starts to blur.

Night Movers is a psychological thriller about love turning into obsession, grief warping perception, isolation in a foreign country, and the quiet horror of not knowing what’s real anymore. It pulls on the heartstrings… then leaves you with a gut punch that will stay with you long after you finish the final page.

If you love the creeping dread of Gideon Falls, the self-destructive obsession of Kill or Be Killed, the noir fatalism of Fatale, the claustrophobic paranoia of The Nice House on the Lake, or the bleak psychological horror of A Walk Through Hell and films like Gone Girl, Prisoners, Black Swan, orOldboy, then Night Movers was made for you.

This is not a superhero book.
It’s not a quippy caper.

It’s a psychological thriller about ordinary people making extraordinary decisions under emotional pressure.

We’d love your support on this, so if you’d like to back our campaign, here’s the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mattgarvey/night-movers

My wife and I also had the chance to go to the Original Art Expo a couple of weeks ago, and I gotta say … it was a great time. I wasn’t setting up, I mostly went to see some amazing art and finally meet Chris Ryall in person. We’ve known each other professionally for close to 20 years, as Chris was the head honcho at IDW when I worked on some GI Joe stuff, as well as Dungeons and Dragons, and then we’ve worked together even more recently on the Dread the Halls books. We also have plans to do more together, but it’s not time to talk about that yet…

Anyway, Chris has a great write up about OAX and the Kirby Awards here, and his newsletter is, as always worth the read:

https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisryall/p/tales-of-syzpense-102?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Not only did I have a great time hanging with Chris, soaking in the art and seeing some pals that I don’t get to see nearly often enough, I also got the chance to chat with Kevin Nowlan again (yeah, the same Kevin Nowlan I gushed about in my Heroes Con newsletter last year – he’s STILL far too kind and far too humble), I met Phil Hester in person for the first time, watched Stephane Roux do his thing with no small amount of awe, and I also finally met Walter and Louise Simonson. Not only are they both incredibly kind, but Walt … he’s a force of nature! The man was meeting fans and blasting out signatures and sketches at a pace that was honestly awe inspiring. And speaking of sketches, I made one purchase over the weekend…

I’m pretty sure the first time I ever came across the best villain in the DCU was also the first time I came across Walt Simonson’s work. Yeah, you know the book:

I have several copies of this thing around my house, because … well hell, why not? It’s one of my absolute favorite superhero comics ever. And it’s definitely where I became a Walt Simonson fan. So yeah, when it came time to get a sketch from Mr Simonson, Darkseid seemed like the perfect fit…

Okay, that catches things up (a bit, at least.) One last thing … I’m going to be (finally) putting a proper store on the website. I keep meaning to get it ready, but … deadlines, you know? However … seeing as how I’ve had this site going for ten months now, I thought maybe I’d do a sale. There’s a lot of original art (from Chamber, Black Canary’s Wedding Planner, Dungeons and Dragons, etc), as well as a bunch of Artist’s Proof prints for the pages I’ve done digitally (like Blade, Predator vs Black Panther, Giant Size X-Men, etc) that need a home. My office is kinda getting crowded, so maybe I can sell some art and make a bit of room…

So hey, til the end of March, everything on the website is 15% off, yeah? Just email me with the page(s) you want, I’ll let you know how to pay for it, and then I can get it sent your way. How’s that sound..? Just make sure to mention you saw the sale in my newsletter, and we’ll take care of it.

Alright, I gotta go get back to work. Please don’t forget to check out our Kickstarter 🙂

Best,

LF

This One’s About Sal

As a really little kid, my comicbook reading was a bit haphazard … I lived with my grandparents most of those early years, and both of my uncles would have comics lying around the house. Thus, I don’t really remember ‘buying’ comics when I was little (or having them bought for me, I guess) … comics were just always around! Mostly Spider-man stuff, with some Hulks thrown in for good measure…

Anyway, the first Sal Buscema-drawn comic I remember coming across was PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #19…

And just barely! Looking back, it appears THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #181 came out that very same month, and checking the publication dates, THE INCREDIBLE HULK #225, which is the first Hulk comic I remember ever reading was apparently already out and heck, may have even been in our house, waiting for me to find it…

I was really young and dumb, and these comics just appeared around our home. I had no idea how you got a comicbook. Maybe Stan Lee came in the night, dropping off issues of MARVEL TALES to the good little boys and girls? That would explain why I didn’t wake up to find comics of my own…

But I own all three of these, now. Coverless, beat to pieces, re-read a million times. They may have belonged to one of my uncles, but they stayed with me.

And yeah, this issue of Spidey really stuck with me … I still smile when I go back and look at it. Sure, Sal’s later Spidey stuff was spectacular (sorry), but I loved even his first go round with the web-head…

So over the years, as I fell further and further into the brain-rotting world of comicbooks, Sal was everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Not only was he a staple on THE INCREDIBLE HULK…

But he was prolific enough that he might appear anywhere else along with his regular duties on ol’ greenskin.

Oh, hey … weird fact. I LOVE the U-Foes. Because of these comics.

So yeah … Sal was there from the beginning. When I fell in love with comics, he was at ground zero.

It was pretty wild then, years and years later, when Chris Ryall asked if I would be interested in penciling a DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS series…

With Sal Buscema inking.

I mean, OF COURSE I said yes! I have NO IDEA why Chris thought of me for this one … I’d done some IDW stuff before, like the SNAKE EYES miniseries that came out around the first GI JOE movie, but really … there had to be plenty of guys interested in drawing D&D, and especially if it meant they’d get to work with Sal, right? So I don’t know how I ended up with the book, but I do know Chris was maybe just as excited as I was to have Sal on the project…

(And yes, Chris has turned me onto ROM. I missed it when it originally came out, but I’ve been reading the collected editions recently…)

Not long after, I got the script and set to work…

Doing my best (which wasn’t good enough), trying to make D&D fans happy and show Chris that he made the right call. I was pretty excited to see what the inks were going to look like…

And then a few weeks later, I got an email from Chris. He passed along a phone number and told me that Sal wanted me to call him.

My heart sank. Was I about to get ripped a new one by one of my heroes..? I was pretty sure I was. I hadn’t done a ton of stuff yet, but I’d been in comics long enough to know that sometimes you’re better off dealing with people via email … or not at all. It seemed like people usually got on the phone for the bad news.

And let’s face it. I was working hard, but I knew damn well Sal could pencil AND ink this thing on his own and it’d look 100% better. Maybe he was just gonna make sure I was aware of that fact.

“Kid, you suck, and even I can’t save this sorry excuse for a comic!”

But I called him, prepared for the worst.

And now, when I look back on the books I’ve worked on, the places we’ve gotten to visit, the people I’ve met in this crazy business … those phone calls with Sal are one of the very BEST things about my time in comics. Because that first call was just that … the first one. We’d end up talking pretty regularly throughout our time on D&D. He’d give me a call, ostensibly to talk over the newest pages I’d sent him, but really … our calls went all over the place. From art to Marvel in the 70’s and 80’s to bowling to never retiring because why stop doing something you love just to sit around..?

Oh, and the reason he’d asked me to call him that first time? I was using some crappy paper that wouldn’t take his quill very well. He was having a rough time with it, and asked if I could switch to another brand of paper. I’d only really been penciling up to that point, so I had no idea I’d drawn that first batch of D&D pages on something half a step up from toilet paper and then sent it to a legend.

Anyway … since he had a ton of other responsibilities, Chris wasn’t able to stay on D&D for long and had to pass the editorial reigns along to somebody else. Then soon after that, it apparently became a thing where I could no longer just FedEx pages to Sal for him to ink … he had to get set up with a printer so he could take the scans and print those out to ink the final couple of issues over blue lines. He didn’t really want to do that, and at one point told me he was going to just go ahead and leave the book … but I managed to talk him out of that in one of our marathon phone calls. I hated the thought of Sal feeling pushed off a project over shipping costs. Eventually, one of his sons helped him get set up. It worked out alright in the end … and it meant we had reason to keep giving each other a call. And anybody who knows me is probably laughing right now, because they know how much I hate to get on the phone for any reason!

But all I can say in my defense is … this was Sal Buscema 🙂

On one of those calls, I remember being really frustrated with something in the script … not that there was anything wrong with the script per se, just that I wasn’t figuring out how to set up the page or scene properly. How to tell the story. Sal told me to stop being so hard on myself, and to trust my gut. He said that I was really good at this, and that I needed to have more faith in myself. Now … I don’t even remember what part of the story I was struggling with at that time, but I remember Sal saying THAT. When Sal Buscema tells you that you belong … well, you gotta believe the man, right?

Eventually, we wrapped up the D&D thing. We talked a few times after that, but I tried not to bother him with too many random phone calls. I mean, between his other projects, his family, the bowling, the dozens of other things he filled his time with, the last thing I wanted to do was pester the guy. I’d drop him emails on his birthday or when I came across something I thought he’d get a kick out of, and then about, I dunno, eight or ten years ago or so, he agreed to ink me on the covers for a series I was going to be doing. I was pretty excited to reunite with him, but then it turned out … while I was drawing the interiors, I wasn’t going to be doing the covers…

Ah, comics.

Anyway … last spring, I think I shared this thing:

It’s a beast of a book, collecting all of the Spider-man stuff Sal did with JM DeMatteis, one of my favorite writers. Another creator I’d love to work with someday. It’s a great book, and in my opinion, it’s the best work of Sal’s career…

Think about that for a minute. This collects the run from 1991 through 1994. Sal was in his late fifties when he was doing this. He’d already drawn a million comics. He could have been coasting.

But he was doing the best work of his life instead.

That’s inspiring, right? I think so.

So when the news came that Sal had passed just a few days short of his 90th, like everyone else … I was sad. Hell, I was heartbroken. Whether we had talked recently or not, I hate the thought of a world without Sal.

But as I went and started reading through some of his work that evening, I found myself smiling. That’s the thing, I guess. Whether it was through those phone calls or all the work he left us, I think about Sal … and I smile.

Best,

LF

Happy New Year…

Welcome to 2026…

“So what’s it like, trying to promote your work, your art, that thing you love, as society crumbles around us?”

Oh, it’s great. Thanks for asking.

Anyway…

I happened to spot a copy of ULTIMATE UNIVERSE: TWO YEARS IN #1 at a comic shop last week … that was kinda weird, honestly. With the holidays, the continued work on Malicent Black, and Dread the Halls … I actually forgot this book was out. I saw the cover on the shelf and was like “why does that look familiar?” Yeah, well, there you go … sometimes it gets hard to keep track of this stuff 🙂

If you’re interested, here’s the final art for my chapter … fantastic colors by Erick Arciniega!

Funny thing … speaking of Erick, he also colored my pages in PREDATOR vs BLACK PANTHER last year! The guy is money.

And speaking of PREDATOR vs BLACK PANTHER … hey, there’s a trade paperback out. I guess I forgot about that…

Meanwhile, MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE is just about ready to go off to the printer! Matty turned in the letters last week, and everything looked great. No surprise there 😉

So we’re trying to wrap up the digital art book, the trading card, the stickers … and I am probably going to do a few illustrations to go with the prose story I wrote for the back of this issue. I thought about it way back, but then decided I wasn’t going to … and now I’m thinking that actually I will, because I love drawing Malicent and her world every chance I get…

Outside of making comics…

Well, I finally finished Alan Wake 2 on the ol’ PS5 a few days ago. It took awhile, what with work and the holidays, but I got there … and I’m glad I did. It’s not just one of my favorite games ever, but it’s one of my favorite pieces of fiction. I’m glad I played it and I’m glad I finished it, but man … I wish I could wipe my memory and start it all over again. I doubt very much that I’ll ever have another experience like this.

I also finished King Sorrow a week or so ago, and speaking of experiences … wow. I’m a big fan of Joe Hill, and this? This is right at the top of the list for me. It’s thoughtful, ambitious, and surprising. Just a wonderful book. And the story is told in a way that … well, I guess would never have occurred to me. And I mean that in the best way.

I could go on and on about both King Sorrow and Alan Wake 2 at length (and probably would in person), but really … the only thing I can do is diminish them by talking about ’em too much.

Alright, I guess that’s all for this one … as always, thanks for reading. 🙂

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

― Kurt Vonnegut

From my coal black heart…

Well, here we are…

The end of another year. This is my last newsletter of 2025, and I thought I’d send it out early since things only get busier for everyone as we close in on the New Year…

I don’t know how this year has been for you, but for me … well, I dunno. There’s been some good, been some bad. I’m not exactly sad to see 2025 go, but I’m also not really filled with a lot of hope for 2026, so … eh? It’s not the best time to be navigating the world as an artist who tries to be about the right things. The scrooges of the world seem to have the upper hand … even more so than usual, I mean.

BUT. Ya gotta keep going, right? One foot in front of the other and all that.

Anyway, I do want to thank everyone for the kind words on this year’s DREAD THE HALLS one shot. Chris and I figured out what our story was going to be about back in June, and while we were excited to tell this tale, I had no idea how it might land with others. I’m glad it seems to have hit the way we’d hoped. I imagine you can still find copies around, so if you haven’t gotten your hands on one yet…

And finally … I wrapped up the colors for MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE this morning. The book … well, it took awhile. MALICENT BLACK is a labor of love. So far, on each campaign we’ve basically made enough to cover the cost of printing, shipping, and lettering these, so Drew and I have to make the books around our ‘day jobs.’ It’s not always ideal … sometimes, you just want to curl up with a book, or watch something with your wife, or hell, sometimes you just want to be lazy, alright?

But Malicent is a living, breathing person at this point. If we don’t tell her stories, who will?

Anyway, I hope your holidays are great, and I truly hope that the new year is a good one. Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support … see you soon;)

-LF

2025 is heading for the door…

Seriously, how can this year be almost over already?

Anyway … I hope everyone picked up a copy of DREAD THE HALLS last week! Christmas and horror is a combo that I just love, so working on these giant one shots has been a blast. Not only that, but the books are FILLED with a ton of great stuff from a bunch of creators I admire! If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, you might still be able to find ’em at your local comic shop…

Meanwhile, I’m finishing up the colors for MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE, as well as working on the stickers, trading cards and digital artbook rewards, while also digging into a project that I can’t talk about yet … and I’m also honestly trying to keep my schedule a bit more under control for a little while here. Things REALLY got away from me over the past few months … I had way too many things to work on, while also trying to run a Kickstarter campaign, and (haha) have a life. I failed at the life part pretty miserably, I gotta admit.

You can learn to draw, you can learn to write … but it’s REALLY important to learn how to manage your time and HOW TO SAY NO. It’s so tough, as a freelancer, turning down work … but man, I’m telling ya. You gotta understand when you simply have too much work on your plate. No matter how fast you might be, there are limits…

Let’s see, I promised a peek at some more Malicent Black art this time, didn’t I? Hmmmm … the thing is, I don’t want to show much more. I want people to hold the book, to read it, to experience it..! But a promise is a promise, I guess…

Here are the flats for page 12 … if you know me, you know things could change quite a bit as I get into the rendering, but at the moment … at THIS VERY MOMENT … here’s what this particular page looks like 🙂

Yeah, Mal vomited up an inky looking little beastie which then went and jumped into a flame geyser. It’s really not that weird, considering all the other things that happen in these books.

Okay, I gotta get back to it. I’m still working my way through KING SORROW (wow does this book go places I did not expect and I love it) and I’m also stacking up quite a few Junji Ito books here (because my office needs more piles of books) and … uh, yeah, that’s about it. I mean, I might be trying to have a little bit better work/life balance, but I still have a lot to do =)

Best,

LF

Back into the swing of things…

Well, here we are … a couple of weeks since wrapping up another successful Kickstarter campaign for MALICENT BLACK. Drew and I are well into the planning for the next book, and I’m also into drawing a new project that I can’t really talk about yet, as well as writing a new thing that’ll probably be a surprise for some people once it gets to a point where I can talk about it and show it off a bit…

Also putting the finishing touches on MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE, of course…

But really, after having spent last week away from my desk, exploring the keys with my amazing wife while we celebrated our anniversary, it’s just kind of nice to ease my way back into a normal routine.

So aside from a lot of work that I can’t share right now, what else is going on..?

Well, I read GYO by Junji Ito over the weekend, and now it’s my mission to read everything else by the man. I loved it. The pacing, the storytelling. If you’ve read any of these newsletters, you know I’m a sucker for horror, so … yeah. Much more Junji Ito ahead for me.

Still working my way through KING SORROW by Joe Hill. Joe is a favorite, and this book has been great. It’s been slow progress for me, simply because I didn’t read a thing while we were on our trip (I had expected to read quite a bit, honestly), but I don’t mind … I have a feeling I’ll be sad when this one is over.

What else? I’m looking forward to this year’s DREAD THE HALLS one shot, of course. It comes out on December 3rd (so soon!) and if you’re interested in a preview of the story I did with Chris Ryall, Daily Dead has you covered:

https://dailydead.com/

I think that’s all for this week … I’ll bring some peeks at art for MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE next time 😉

Best,
LF

The FINAL STRETCH for MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE!

Just a quick note to let you know … if you haven’t backed it yet, our campaign for the newest MALICENT BLACK book ends on Thursday, November 6! If you’re planning to swoop in at the last minute, your time is here! 🙂

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2119707413/malicent-black-mundicide

AND … if you didn’t manage to get your hands on our FIRST book, never fear … it’s listed in the ADD-ONS for this campaign!

Really hope you’ll join us … if all goes as planned, our NEXT campaign will launch in the spring! You’ve been warned!

Okay, that’s it for now … I’ve gotta go get Gary’s newest cover colored…

Best,

LF

SHORT AND SWEET…(?)

Hey everyone!

Thanks for checking this out. In this day of doom scrolling, I always appreciate it when somebody takes a bit of time to read something I’ve put out into the void.

This newsletter is going to be a bit shorter than usual, just because of the bad combo that’s been kicking my butt lately … I have too much to do, and I’ m pretty run down. It’s been a busy few months, and that’s nice…

But sometimes it catches up to ya, that’s all.

Part of the reason I’ve been so busy is because the MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE KICKSARTER is live! We’ve hit he magic number we need to fund this book, and are working on our stretch goals right now. The first of those is a custom trading card, and it’s something Drew and I are really excited to get to do, so I’m hoping we make it. If you haven’t checked it out yet, here’s the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2119707413/malicent-black-mundicide

Speaking of Malicent, Matty has lettered the first half of the book, and I’m plugging away on the colors (along with everything else I have to do) … here’s a peek at a new page-in-progress.

Sometime soon, I’ll start coloring Gary Frank’s variant cover. I find it, uh, pretty intimidating to color the work of somebody like Gary … I never worry about messing up my own stuff when I start coloring it, but look at this…

Dammit, Gary.

Still, it’s also pretty exciting, you know? I mean, it’s a gorgeous illustration of a character wholly created by Drew and I by one of the very best in the biz. You step up to bat and take your swing, y’know? Despite some nerves, I’m looking forward to starting in on this.

That said … I’m really glad Colin colored his own cover. If you haven’t read The Ballad of Gordon Barleycorn yet, do yourself a favor and do so. Drew told me about this book when it came out, and as soon as I read it, Drew and I agreed that we wanted Colin to do a cover for Malicent at some point…

Oh, and while we’re approaching my favorite time of year (it’s always Halloween deep in my black heart) I should remind you that you can preorder our new DREAD THE HALLS comic right now! I got to look over the entire book in PDF form the other day, and it really is a treat.

https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/7681974/dread-the-halls-2025-1

Meanwhile, I’ve been TRYING to take a little time for myself here lately, to kind of reset from a pretty tough deadline grind. Part of that always involves me getting away from my drawing table for at least a little bit and reading, watching or playing something that kinda recharges the batteries. After pouring so much out, I always feel like I need to pull in some new creative energy, if that makes sense? It probably doesn’t. I’m weird.

But! Drew and I went to see The Black Phone 2 a few nights ago, and we both really enjoyed it. While I liked the first one well enough, I preferred the short story to the movie. But the sequel takes some of the added threads from the first movie and gives them a payoff that, personally, worked for me.

Speaking of Joe Hill … I started King Sorrow. About a hundred pages in. Man, have I missed having a new Joe Hill novel to crack open. And this one … whew. It’s off to a great start. I really want to just take days off to read this thing and not do anything else. Alas…

Okay, that’s all for now … thanks again for taking the time to read this. If you haven’t yet, please take a look at the new Malicent Black campaign, and have a Happy Halloween!

Best,

LF

MALICENT BLACK DEALS ONLY IN DEATH

A newsletter??? In THIS economy?!

Hey, nice to have you back. Hope everyone had a great time at NYCC … I kinda felt like Robert Nevelle here, holding down the fort while almost everyone else…

Disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Anyway, in case I haven’t mentioned it, we have a Kickstarter going! I’ve probably mentioned that. The second issue of MALICENT BLACK, officially called MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE is off to a great start. One week in and we’re at 80%!

Considering that NYCC took up so much bandwidth on our first weekend, I couldn’t be happier. And to be fair, we knew this first weekend would be a tough one in terms of getting eyeballs, but our other option, with the holidays approaching and other things planned, was to wait until January to launch. We didn’t want to do that because first of all, Drew and I are dying to get this book out there … and second, hey, who knows what things will be like by the time January rolls around?

Here’s the link to our campaign … if you’ve backed it, we thank you. It means a TON to us. If you can’t back it, hey, we understand. All we ask is, if you could, please share this link around. This sort of book only happens when people spread the word and support it, and we need your help for that:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2119707413/malicent-black-mundicide

Now would be a GREAT time to check out our campaign, since Drew’s update just went live…

We’re also joined by my pal Matty Ryan this time … Matty and I have known each other for a long time. I honestly can’t remember how we initially met … maybe on the Event Comics Boards back in the day? That might be it. Pretty sure Matty reminded me at HeroesCon and here I am, forgetting again. (My brain is fried, back off.) I do know we actually met in person on my first and only trip (so far) to New York City, when he took me to a great little Irish pub for lunch on one of the days I was spending at the old Marvel Bullpen, meeting editors and working on my craft. Since then, Matty has lettered and designed FREAK at Image Comics (where he coached me through so many production obstacles – I had decided I was writing, drawing and coloring a book on my own and had QUITE the learning curve in front of me 🙂 as well as THE MANY ADVENTURES OF MIRANDA MERCURY, so it’s been very cool to get to work with him again.

And speaking of Matty, how about a peek at the first lettered page of MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE..?

I think Matty is going to beat me to the finish line, here … I’m still coloring this issue of Malicent, along with this year’s DREAD THE HALLS story with Chris Ryall. It’s been a pretty, uh, intense few weeks around here. I have a week off planned for November, and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to that week 😉

I DID finish off the pages I had as part of the ULTIMATE UNIVERSE: TWO YEARS IN #1 story I worked on … did I show anything from that, yet? I don’t think so. Here, a tiny peek … don’t tell Marvel.

Okay, I think I also mentioned getting back to sharing some of the art I’m lucky enough to hang in my studio awhile back … how about this one?

Yeah, that’s obviously by the amazing Amanda Conner (inked by the also amazing Jimmy Palmiotti) on the Power Girl story they did for JSA Classified back in the day. This was another gift, and I love this page. Amanda’s characters never seem like drawings … they’re just people, you know? And I mean that in the very best way.

I’m afraid I don’t have any new books to share with you this time … I’m trying to work my way through THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT and it’s been great, but man, most nights I am too tired to make much progress. Maybe I’ll finish it up in that week off in November 😉

Thanks again for your time, and if you haven’t yet, please take a look at our Kickstarter campaign!

Best,

LF

MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE IS HERE!!!

Hey, I know it’s the ‘off’ week for this newsletter, but I figured you’d want to know…

MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE is now LIVE ON KICKSTARTER!

Drew and I are really excited about this one, and there are some limited items (including original art rewards) in this campaign, so it seemed like a good idea to send out this quick heads-up to everyone.

Here’s the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2119707413/malicent-black-mundicide

Not only do we have two stories that we’re really proud of in this one, but we’ve got covers by Gary Frank and Colin McHugh that we love, all kinds of cool add-ons (like Sam and his Talking Gun and an ancient book from the before times called Freak) and ideas for plenty of Stretch Goals!

I really hope you’ll check this out and support our creator-owned book 🙂

Best,

LF