May/June/July 2023: Scout Announcements Take Over the Internet
May/June/July 2023: Scout Announcements Take Over the Internet
Three new Scout titles, FCBD, the Road Trip to Hell trade, a new writing project, and a bunch of other updates!
We have a triple-month update this time! Why? …because I saw it was already July 25th, and I’d yet to fit my bi-monthly update into my schedule! Apologies for the wait, but I certainly hope it was worth it because I have plenty of announcements. Most of these are Scout-centric, but I also have another writing project I’ve been dying to announce and more fun updates!
FCBD and the Grantie Awards
My second time tabling since the pandemic started!
Having not tabled since Halloween Comic Fest in October, I was excited to be able to greatly expand my Road Trip to Hell section. This included finally getting to display the gorgeous Golden Foil Tarot Variants by Marco Fontanili.
While I am very proud to have worked on the adaptation for Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir, it is very satisfying to say that my best seller was easily Road Trip to Hell this time around! A huge thank you to everyone who stopped by. Hopefully, I’ll be able to table again next year so we can hang out some more! Although if you did miss out on the Road Trip to Hell goodies, you can always check them out on Scout’s website.
Favorite editor in the Grantie Awards
I also want to send another huge thank you to the 2023 Grantie™ Awards (aka Grant Stoye) for listing me among their favorite editors! I have some wonderful company in that category too, so please consider checking out the full list of awardees.
What I’m Writing
Collect the First Arc of Road Trip to Hell
Road Trip to Hell #1-3 are being collected for the first time in a trade paperback published by Scout Comics! It’s tentatively scheduled for September, though it may be subject to change (which I’ll keep you updated about). You can pre-order it now on Previewsworld and Lunar. For a brief recap of what the series is about:
A dark comedy filled with action, adventure, and the worst the world had to offer, Road Trip to Hell follows Francis Rhoades, a young man who can see horrible things in a person's future just by touching them. His life has been full of hardship, but things get even worse when the demon Baphomet informs him that his father is Satan, and he's been destroyed. Now, Francis has been designated the new king of Hell. The catch? All the damned have escaped from Hell, and if one of them can kill Francis before he can reach the netherworld himself, they will become the new leader of Hell! With the help of his sister Star and his literal guardian angel Joan of Arc, Francis needs to survive his trip to hell... hopefully without losing his own soul in the process!
I want to thank everyone once again—from the backers who supported the book when it first premiered on Kickstarter to the people who bought an issue in a comic book store or other merch on Scout’s website—all of the support means the world to me. The book would not exist without an audience to read it!
My Two Salty Roos Stories Are Coming to Kickstarter
This has been kept under wraps for some time—while I’ve been editing the Salty Roos comic book series since the beginning, now, I’ve also written two issues (and could more be on the way…?)! These aren’t available yet, but you can get a tease when you check out Erick Anderson’s Kickstarter update.
Interviews
Kickstarting your weekend with an intergalactic space explorer
It’s been getting harder and harder to fit interviews with Kickstarter creators into my schedule (the last one before this was one with Russell Nohelty about Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter), but I do like being able to showcase crowdfunding efforts. So, I interviewed Zackary Marois about his sci-fi anthology Voyage back in May. Unfortunately, the project did not reach its funding goal on Kickstarter, but it is relaunching on Indiegogo!
What I’m Editing
Scout Comics
All good things come in threes, and between May and July, three of the new series I’ve been editing for Scout became available for pre-order!
Comic Books Kill #1: What could be deadlier than the mob? Falling for the wrong woman! Taking place in 1939, Comic Books Kill follows the comic-creating career of Jack Levi, who risks it all when he dates the femme fatale lover of his mafia boss publisher. This crime noir written by Shane Berryhill with artwork by Hoyt Silva and letters by Micah Myers will woo fans of Kirby, Brubaker, and Phillips. (Note, this is a NONSTOP! book, Scout’s imprint that releases only one issue of a series, which will be out in August; then the entire arc is published in trade paperback form. The date for the trade is still TBA!) Learn more about the series on PopCultHQ!
M.O.M. Breaks the Internet #1: “What happens when tech-savvy mothers take the Internet hostage to build a better world?” That’s the question posed in M.O.M. Breaks the Internet. Barbie Reed and her fellow tech-savvy friends team up to fight back against the world in this thrilling tale that’s not afraid to get political and is scarily relevant right now. The creative team includes writer Jay Sandlin, artist Patrick Mulholland, and letterer Cynna Ael. The first issue will be out this September!
Howie the Hellhound #1: Who wouldn’t love a dog, even if they came from Hell? Fall in love with Howie, a hellhound who escapes the pits of Hell to New York. He meets a struggling actress, Louise, and the two form a bond that’s impossible to break…unless the legions of Hell have anything to say about it! This supernatural dramedy written by Jared Prestwidge with artwork by Carlos Trigo, colors by Simon Robins, and letters by Lucas Gattoni, will be out this spooky season in October.
Breaking the trend of new titles, one series that I’ve been editing for Scout since 2021, Impossible Jones (a hero and a thief rolled into one), had another release.
Impossible Team-Up: Impossible Jones and Captain Lightning #1: In this standalone one-shot, Impossible Jones teams up with Captain Lightning! The special also features a crossover with IMP writer Karl Kesel’s (and Tom Grummett’s) investigators of the unknown, Section Zero! Plus, enjoy the interior artwork by David Hahn.
Tapas
There were two season finales for webcomics I’ve been editing for Tapas!
Villainess' Reprisal Boutique: The first season of this romance/fantasy webcomic ends with episode 50, “Giving Up”. Will one of the men vying for Allena’s attention finally make a move and risk it all?
Comedown Machine: Season two of Comedown Machine continued the rollercoaster of emotions from the previous season of this romance/drama webcomic. Are Keith and Tommy endgame? The second season came to a close with episode 95, making it the longest (in terms of episodes) webcomic I’ve ever worked on!
And if you’re looking for a webcomic to read while these two series say farewell to their current seasons, there is one ongoing webcomic that I’m currently editing!
North & East: The romance between North & East continues in the third season of this Boy’s Love romance webcomic. The latest episodes have been showcasing the superstar Diva, one of the major supporting characters, exploring her backstory. Get ready to cry. New episodes come out every two weeks on Mondays!
J-Novel
The penultimate tenth volume of the light novel series Culinary Chronicles of the Court Flower is now available on various digital platforms, including Amazon. In this installment of the China-inspired fantasy romance, tensions reach an all-time high as Shusei demands Emperor Shohi give up the throne or else he’ll start a civil war!
Independent Projects
A couple of the projects I’ve been editing recently appeared on Kickstarter.
Ruination Volume 1: The first trade for the fantasy adventure comic book series Ruination recently completed its Kickstarter, successfully raising over $8,000. Soldiers from different sides walking extraordinarily different paths in life must fight together to obtain magic crystals and journey through portals to strange post-apocalyptic worlds. The trade is a whopping 300 pages, collecting Ruination #1-6, the one-shot story Tales of Ruination #1, as well as a bunch of supplemental pages that are well worth the price of admission.
If you didn’t back this, please consider following Ryan Bis and be on the lookout for future Ruination Kickstarters. I was also part of a Ruination interview alongside Ryan and colorist Kaytee Brown on Cryptid Creator Corner from Comic Book Yeti.
How I Slept My Way Through College and Other Tales from Freshman Year #1-2: More colloquially known as HISMWTC, I jumped on this series starting with the second issue. The Kickstarter will end on August 9th, and it’s already skyrocketed past its goal, currently sitting at over $17,000. HISMWTC is about a college freshman who discovers a high-end escort service run by a professor using students as call girls. It’s described as “House of Cards having a three-way with How To Get Away With Murder and The Girlfriend Experience.”
This is my third time working with the wonderful Charlie Stickney (The Game, White Ash), whose talent for Kickstarter is known far and wide. The comic is illustrated by Emiliana Pinna with colors by Dearbhla Kelly and letters by Conor Hughes.
Lastly (for this update, at least), taking a departure from my comic book editing, I was the (uncredited) editor for Judith Harris’ The Poetry of Loss: Romantic and Contemporary Elegies, which was published by Routledge. This scholarly work analyzes the literature of loss through elegy written by prolific poets like Wordsworth, Keats, and Plath. So, if you’re interested in learning more about psychoanalytic concepts surrounding the poetics of loss, this may be a worthwhile work for you to check out.
(Although editing scholarship is not a huge departure for me—if you’ve been reading the scholarly journal Clio’s Psyche, then you know I regularly edit that psychohistorical journal, which releases about three times each year.)
Snow or sunshine, rain or shine, enjoy your summertime!
This year feels like it’s going by unbelievably fast, so I hope you’ve been enjoying the summertime while it’s still here. Honestly, the weather has been so humid for me that I’ve mostly been hiding out in my house and trying to stay productive (while also trying to remember to stay social by participating in virtual DND). But if you have some fun summer stories or projects to share, please do so in the comments below. And consider subscribing to stay in the loop on my latest projects and other updates. They’ll be sent out bi- (or tri-?) monthly.
Stay cool—or better yet, stay geeky!
Thanks for another great newsletter! Nothing to apologize for, you’re clearly very busy. So many great comics coming out! I’m especially intrigued by Comic Books Kill, and Scout’s Nonstop! imprint. Comics distribution could use some innovation, and that sounds like a great idea.