SO HOW WAS HEROESCON 2026..?

Well, let’s get the suspense out of the way right off:

It was a GREAT weekend.

Aren’t you glad you signed up for this thing? For that kind of deep insight..?

Okay, I can do better…

It’s kind of a funny thing, because by the end of the third day, I was REALLY ready to be back home, sleeping in my own bed, taking it easy after the sensory overload that comes from being around a big crowd for so long…

But I also didn’t really want it to end. I saw SO MANY people over the weekend … but there were so many more I wanted to visit with and just ran out of time. I’m not sure I could have gotten to everyone I wanted to talk to even with two more days … it’s just such a huge con.

And it’s about the comics! I don’t have anything against celebrities or cosplayers, but it’s really cool to have a show that’s all about the comics and the art. Every con has it’s own personality, and this one suits me perfectly.

It’s always great to see my old pals Marc Deering and Matty Ryan in person. We trade emails and messages, but that’s not the same as getting to hang out together. And then Drew Moss. We’re not friends. We don’t even like each other. He just crashes this picture every year, I guess.

(Kidding! Drew is actually great 🙂

((It’s Marc you have to watch out for.))

Big thanks to Ron Randall, who took the time to walk me through some Kickstarter-related things over breakfast. As you’re probably aware, Ron regularly kills it with his Trekker series, and he not only knows how to make great comics, but how to sell them! Those talents don’t always go hand in hand. Ron, though, he can do it all, and is also kind and generous … if you don’t already have the full series, go buy some Trekker comics and thank me in the comments 🙂

https://trekkercomic.com

So many other creators that I got to see at least briefly (TOO briefly in most cases), and then there were all of the people who came to the table. Whether it was signing books they brought to the show, doing a sketch or more complicated bit of art, selling some books, getting pictures … everyone was so great and so friendly. Heroes just has an amazing crowd.

I also brought home (ahem) … a few too many books from Heroes. Uh … some of them were hardcovers. Big hardcovers. Okay, seriously … I was being stubborn and putting them ALL in my con backpack and I almost killed myself trucking that thing through the Westin lobby. A wheelbarrow would have been a better idea! See, when we fly, it limits what I can bring home with me, but when I know we’ve got a car we can fill … well…

So far, the only book of the bunch I’ve gotten a start on is COPRA vol 1 (the master collection) and boy do I wish I’d started reading this series sooner! I guess on the flipside, I have a lot of great comics ahead for me. Michel Fiffe … my god, man!

“Okay … you sound like the guy who wants to show off EVERY picture from his vacation. Besides HeroesCon, what else is going on with you, Lee?”

Oof … I don’t even know where to begin.

Let’s see…

I’m working away on NIGHT MOVERS, the graphic novel I’m doing with the way-too-nice-for-his-own-good Matt Garvey, and having a great time…

Also starting to work out the thumbnails for the next issue of MALICENT BLACK. If you’ve read book two (MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE), and if you’re somebody who knows me from way back … well, you’ve got a pretty good idea what’s coming in this third book. The story is something special, and I can’t wait to get further into it.

We just added the perfect colorist to the mysterious project Marc Deering, Top-Secret-Writer and I are putting together, and … yeah. He’s a good one. This project is coming along nicely, and I think people are going to be REALLY surprised by it.

I’m also trying to find the time to write and draw a sword and sorcery/horror book that I’m really excited about, AND finish the script for a sequel to FREAK that I kind of accidently started writing awhile back, but there are only so many hours in the day…

A couple of other things came up at Heroes (or on the way home thanks to “guy-with-the-cryptic-texts” CHRIS RYALL) that I can’t talk about yet, but when I can…

Oh, and I will have some news about original art sales and commissions in the not-too-distant-future! There are plans.

Whew! I think that about covers it? I mean … it really doesn’t.

But hey, it’s at least an overview of the past weekend and what I’m up to … now I gotta get back to work 🙂

-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 90^th, 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,

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,

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,

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,

MALICENT BLACK: MUNDICIDE! DREAD THE HALLS! ULTIMATE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY! COFFEE AND DANGEROUS HEART RATES!

Whew … it’s been a week 🙂

Since the last newsletter, I’ve been … busy. Last week, I signed a contract for a 72-page black and white thriller that I’m really excited about (but can’t talk about yet.)

And in the last few days, I added three pages to my workload while losing a week on another deadline that was already tight enough. Comics! I do ’em right.

Anyway … the thing is, I’m really into all of the various things I’m working on. Remember last time, when I said that I need to focus a bit more on the stories I want to tell, and not go from one job to the next like some kind of comic-making shark? Okay, I didn’t phrase it quite that way, but you get me…

So let’s talk about some of this stuff! First … no, your eyes are not deceiving you. The prelaunch page for the next MALICENT BLACK Kickstarter is LIVE. If you want to be notified of the launch, go here and click that ‘notify me on launch’ button:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2119707413/malicent-black-mundicide?tab=prelaunch-story

Drew and I are so excited to get this thing out there. He’s had the script done for awhile (heck, he’s on to the next script), but I’ve had to draw and color this around the work for hire jobs, so it hasn’t gone as quickly as I’d have liked … but now I’m well into the coloring, lettering is in progress … this will be ready to go to the printer as soon as the campaign ends and Kickstarter releases those funds!

Also … there are some limited tiers on this, featuring original art. If you’re interested in these, then it’s even more important you sign up to be notified on launch. I have no idea how those tiers will go, so don’t miss out, okay?

Meanwhile … I’m also about to start inking this year’s DREAD THE HALLS one shot! Chris and I started trading emails about this story while I was at Heroes Con, and I’m proud of what we came up with. It’s funny, it’s dark, and it speaks to the world we find ourselves in. It also plays a riff on A CHRISTMAS CAROL, which is one of my favorite stories. This is up for preorders now, so if you want to check this thing out (and I’d highly recommend it) then please let your retailer know. It’s been a pretty tumultuous time for retailers (well, for everyone, really) so preorders are more important now than ever for anything that doesn’t involve Batman or Spider-Man…

Dread the Halls 2025 #1

Arriving: December 3, 2025
Lunar Code: 1025IM0283
Page Count: 72

Cover price: $6.99

Dread the Halls returns to haunt another Christmas season with a 72-page gift of all-new tales of holiday horrors for only $6.99! This time out, Jordan Hart and Luana Vecchio deliver a seasonal blend of Hallmark movie and brutal revenge flick; Chris Ryall and Keithan Jones turn Mars red when “The Martians Conquer Santa Claus!”; Walter Pax and Fábio Veras return to the series rendering festive terror; and Ryall and Lee Ferguson close things out with an even darker Christmas Carol!

_______________________________________________

Finally, here’s the OTHER thing I’m working on and can share:

‘Ultimate Universe: Two Years In’ Sets the Stage for ‘Ultimate Endgame’

This December, ‘Ultimate Universe: Two Years In,’ a one-shot by Deniz Camp, Alex Paknadel, and more, sets up the future of the Ultimate Universe, including ‘Ultimate Endgame’ and the debut of Ultimate Daredevil.

by Marvel

Before ULTIMATE ENDGAME begins, behold the current state of the Ultimate Universe and discover its final secrets in ULTIMATE UNIVERSE: TWO YEARS IN #1, a special one-shot hitting stands in December by Deniz Camp, Alex Paknadel, and superstar artists from every corner of the Marvel Universe.

Like last year’s ULTIMATE UNIVERSE: ONE YEAR IN, which introduced Nick Fury and revealed crucial intel on the Maker’s Council, ULTIMATE UNIVERSE: TWO YEARS IN #1 will be an essential chapter in the overall Ultimate Universe narrative. The saga will see the return of the Ultimate Guardians, revealing their key role in ULTIMATE ENDGAME, and debut all new players as the countdown to the Maker’s return comes to an explosive end!

All paths lead to ENDGAME! In preparation for the Maker’s return in ULTIMATE ENDGAME, the Ultimate Guardians have been traveling all across time and space, recruiting members new and old… Travel across all the corners of the Ultimate Universe! Don’t miss the dawn of many new characters, including Ultimate Daredevil!

ULTIMATE UNIVERSE: TWO YEARS IN #1
Written by DENIZ CAMP & ALEX PAKNADEL
Art by SUPERSTARS FROM ACROSS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE
Cover by RYAN STEGMAN
On Sale 12/3

“For me, each of these year-ending Ultimates specials are an opportunity to reveal more about the universe’s history, and set the path of its future,” Camp explained. “ULTIMATE UNIVERSE: ONE YEAR IN was about the recent past and near future, but ULTIMATE UNIVERSE: TWO YEARS IN is more ambitious; we’ll take you from the birth of humanity to 2000 years into the future where everything has gone wrong. It’s bold, it’s heartfelt, it’s filled with big new ideas and surprising twists on old characters—it’s just what you’ve come to expect from the Ultimate Universe!”

“Getting to write in the Ultimate Universe—especially as it reaches its climax—is so fun, it should be illegal,” Paknadel shared. “It’s a license to rethink and reinvent your favorite characters, and Deniz and I have certainly done that here. Like all the best Ultimate versions of these characters, our Daredevil retains the essence of the original—he’s still a something without fear—but he’s been scaled up to a cosmic-level hero. I can’t wait for readers to meet him.”

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When my editor dropped me an email to see if I’d be interested in being a part of this, I looked at my calendar, thought about how much coffee a human can reasonably drink in a month, and said “sure!”

Honestly, just seeing Deniz Camp and Alex Paknadel listed as the writers made this a no-brainer, but then I read the script and it’s awesome. I like big, cosmic tales, stuff that pushes the boundaries of what stories we can tell and how we tell them … and boy does this one do that. I’m drawing a telepathic dog, for crying out loud. I don’t think that was actually on my bucket list, but it should have been.

It’s also up for preorders right now, so again … just let your retailer know you want it!

Okay, I typically try not to use these for so much promotion … you can get that sort of thing anywhere. But my word count is creeping up there, I’m buried, I’m tired, and I feel like I have to get the word out on this stuff, eh? At least the first two … I’m sure that Ultimates book will sell just fine without my efforts 😉

Oh, wait! Word count be damned. THIS arrived last week…

I can’t begin to tell you how much I love the work of both JM DeMatteis and Sal Buscema. Actually, if you’ve read previous newsletters … you know 🙂

But this run on Spidey is an all-time favorite of mine. I learned so much about storytelling from the comics included here. Pacing, emotional beats, subtlety, when to let the art do the lifting … ugh. It’s SO GOOD.

And I’ve barely gotten a look at this since it arrived. Ah, comics. 🙂

Sooner or later I’ll get to dive in.

Okay … now I’m really heading out!

I may drop an extra newsletter when the Kickstarter goes live, but in case I don’t … when I see you in two weeks, the campaign will be fully underway! I’ll share some behind the scenes bits on this issue of Mal, and try to get back to sharing some of the art on my wall, too.

Alright, I gotta go find some coffee.

-LF

So … how much time ya got?

Here we are again … glad to have you back! I know I say this a lot … but thanks for reading these. There are weeks where I’m really excited to get started on the newsletter, and other weeks where I’m busy, run down, or simply unmotivated … but I’m always happy I put one of these things together in the end.

First … hey, now that the story from DR STRANGE #450 has been out for a bit, I’ve added the black and white art to the gallery here on the site. And if you want to check out the unlettered pages with Carlos Lopez’s fantastic colors … here you go!

Meanwhile, I’m getting into the colors for the next issue of MALICENT BLACK. I’m not showing anything quite yet, but in future newsletters? Sure 🙂 I’ll also be able to share a bit of news on a couple of variant covers we’ll have on this one. Right now the campaign is planned to start at the beginning of October and end on my favorite day … Halloween. It’s a bit later than I had hoped for, but sometimes life gets in the way, and my insistence on having the colors almost finished before hitting that launch button … well, here we are. It’s important to me to have the book ready to go to the printer as soon as we receive those funds from Kickstarter. We’ll keep you posted and share that prelaunch page soon.

At the moment, aside from the colors for the next MALICENT BLACK, I’m laying out the short story I’m doing with Chris Ryall for this year’s DREAD THE HALLS special, doing a bit of writing on something brand new, and thinking a lot about the stories I want to tell over the next few years. Long story short, I did a podcast last week (it’s not out yet but I’ll warn you when it’s time 😉 and the podcaster noted what a wide variety of projects I’ve worked on. And I don’t tend to think back on what I’ve done too much … I generally think ahead, to what’s next.

But…

Yeah.

I mean, I have done a really wide variety of stuff. And I guess in some ways that’s kinda cool? I dunno. I always – always – try to find my way into a character or book. I always want to find something, some connective tissue, that I can work with. I try to make even the most commercial stuff have a bit of a personal hook if I possibly can. So it feels less like mercenary work. It doesn’t always work out.

But there’s also the fact that … man, drawing comics is how I pay the bills. So while I might have some stories that grab me more than others, the fact is I’ve done a lot of comics and looking back … some of them, I’d probably turn down if I could do it all again. Okay, scratch that. There are a few that I’d definitely turn down if given a do-over.

I’m only going to get to draw a certain number of pages in this life. I can only tell a finite amount of stories in the time I’m given. If we don’t manage to burn this planet down too soon (I remain skeptical) then the stories you tell will outlive you. That’s one of the cool and sad things about telling stories. So your choices matter. The stories you CHOOSE to tell … matter.

I guess all of this is just a way to say I think I’m getting pickier and pickier about what I do as the time goes by. It’s a big part of why MALICENT BLACK is so important to me. This series, despite all of the monsters and ghosts and spaceships, is about the things that matter to me. And I think the world is a better place when creative people find ways to tell the stories they care about, rather than just cashing the checks for remixing the same stuff we’ve seen a million times. It’s also another in a long list of reasons why AI sucks and will never replace art, but hey … you’re reading this, you know that too.

Anyway … before I go, I’ll drop one last thing here. It’s the process for page one of the DR STRANGE story above. I’m happy with how it came together, but it didn’t start with the same shot … panel one was a different view:

I really liked the idea of starting with that shot you can see in the thumbnail, and again in the pencils … this story is about the origin of Doc Strange’s cloak, so I thought having it be the focus of the very first shot, before the reader even knew what this story was about, was kinda sneaky. I like doing things like that.

But I also knew that with this being the first shot of Doc Strange in this story, there was the chance my editor would want a cleaner shot of the guy whose name is on the front of the book. So I went ahead and laid it out with the cloak dominating the first panel, but prepared to go to Plan B if I needed to…

And as you know by looking at the final art, I needed to 🙂 And I totally get it. Heck, not only is this the first shot of Dr Strange in this story, this is the first story in the book, so it’s the first time the reader lays eyes on Strange in this, his big anniversary issue. So I penciled a new shot of Strange on a different sheet of paper, scanned and digitally dropped it into the page for the inks. The one complaint I have is that I think the first pass had better depth … it felt like Dr Strange was going someplace, while the new version feels more like he’s arriving at his destination. It’s a small thing, and probably only bothers me, but I’d adjust that background now if I could.

Anyway, I tend to not save the various scraps of paper or layers that go unused in the course of making a comic, but since I actually have this one, I thought I’d share 😉

Alright, that’s it for this week. Be nice to each other.

See you again soon!

-LF

A milestone for MALICENT BLACK, DOCTOR STRANGE #450, a little bit of DREAD, some DROME, and Mark Gruenwald…

Another one of these things??? Why won’t he stop..? Because he loves you…

Or likes the sound of his own voice. Pick one.

Alright, so this past week I finished the interior inks for our second issue of MALICENT BLACK! I’m pretty excited to hit this point, because it feels like I’ve been working on this book forever. I think maybe I have? I know I started penciling it last fall, before getting too far into DREAD THE HALLS … then had to work around not only DREAD, but FLASH GORDON QUARTERLY #3, DOCTOR STRANGE #450, RUNAWAYS #4 … and some other stuff that I can’t talk much about yet.

So yeah, I kinda HAVE been working on this forever, but not because I’m slow or lazy (he said, super defensively.)

But now I have to ink this second cover … yeah, second cover. Did I mention this already? See, I did one way back, inked it, colored it … and I like it. It fits the book really nicely in some ways. But I’m not sure it’s the ‘right’ cover for a Kickstarter campaign, y’know? That cover has to do a lot of heavy lifting. With luck, it will be everywhere. So … I have to ink this new cover. We’ll have two covers for this thing, and you can pick one or the other or … best of all … both! THEN I get to start coloring this book. I’m not a fast colorist, but I don’t expect it to take too long on this … I feel like I’ve had enough time to think about it all, obviously 🙂

It’s pretty exciting to hit this stage, though. NOW is when this second book finally feels “real” to me. You’d think – since I’ve penciled and inked 22 pages, penciled, inked and colored one cover, penciled another, and also wrote a short prose story, that it would have felt real long before this, eh? I don’t know what to tell you. Artists, man. AI doesn’t have to deal with this stuff, it just craps out garbage that a few people pretend matters in some sad way and the world burns.

Meanwhile … this week, DOCTOR STRANGE #450 is in comic shops everywhere! I know I’ve discussed the good doctor previously, so I won’t ramble too much this time … but I gotta say again, I really enjoyed this one. It’s probably my favorite bit of Marvel work. It’s definitely the most “me” I’ve ever gotten into one of these. I loved the script by JMS, and Carlos Lopez KILLED it on the colors. Doctor Strange is a character I’d love to get back to … someday.

Beyond working, I’ve read a few cool new things lately … first off is DREAD THE HALL H, by my pal Chris Ryall, along with a whole host of other talented creators like Jordan Hart, Chris Anderson, Nelson Daniel, Piotr Kowalski, and Jimmy Kucaj. It’s a TON of fun. Seriously. I don’t know what possessed them to do this, but I want more.

Drome by Jesse Lonergan came out recently, too, and I blasted through this thing (all 300+ pages) in one night. I kept thinking that I’d take a break at the NEXT chapter … well, maybe the NEXT one … before finally giving up and just going for it. It’s so good. Jesse is doing a ton of stuff that I find really interesting right now, and this might be my favorite so far.

And finally, the other comic-related thing I’ve been reading lately … is this big beast of a book.

I remember really loving Gruenwald’s Cap back in the day. I’m pretty sure my grandparents meant to get me a subscription to either Amazing Spider-Man or GI Joe, but somehow I ended up with Captain America. And I started with the last couple of Mike Carlin-written issues, with Cap across the pond, teaming up with Captain Britain against Mordred. Mark Gruenwald took over soon after, and man … I was hooked.

*A side note … the OTHER Mark Gruenwald-written series that completely blew my fuses back in my formative years was SQUADRON SUPREME. I say this with no exaggeration … I don’t know if you’ll ever find somebody who loves that SQUADRON SUPREME series more than I do.

Anyway…

I didn’t always get Cap once my subscription ran out. I actually missed a lot of the issues between #317-#349, though I was lucky enough to find the big Scourge issue and of course the one where John Walker is handed the shield. But I had some stretches as a kid there where getting comics could be tough. However, once my brothers and I discovered our first comic shop (shout out to The Book Nook, a place I dearly loved and miss) I found myself picking up Cap again. I was there for The Bloodstone Hunt and Streets of Poison, though I sadly missed the Cap-wolf stuff…

So yesterday this giant omnibus arrived. I had read or re-read almost everything up through #350, so I was ready. But man, these comics are just a blast. Sure, some of the dialogue … eh, it doesn’t hold up. Fair. But Cap, John Walker, Battlestar, Diamondback, the Serpent Society … these are just some really fun superhero comics. I’m amazed at how Gruenwald juggled so many storylines, and I honestly want to know what happens next in these comics from … ugh, far too many years ago. I read the first 250 pages or so last night, getting past The Bloodstone Hunt, and something really hit me while reading that…

Kieron Dwyer and Danny Bulanadi kicked royal ass on this stuff. I remembered LIKING their work, but coming back to this … they were awesome. Handling such a big cast of characters, so many various settings, so much action … this was not an easy series to draw, and this is really great work. I’m up to issue #363 now, and honestly just wanna wrap this newsletter up so I can go read some more…

*But hey, since you made it this far … here’s a peek at that new cover. Between writing this on Sunday morning and hitting ‘publish’ I had time to get this thing inked 😉

Bye!

-LF