It’s been a wild year for me as a comic creator and editor, so, unsurprisingly, my Substack posts have been pretty minimal. Just last month, I took over the editing of Titan’s Star Trek Explorer magazine, the latest iteration of Star Trek Magazine, that I first edited back in 1995, 27 years ago(!), with #5 working its way through the system.
I’m also fine tuning pages on B7 Comics graphic album Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page, running my comic news site downthetubes.net - and working with the team on the Lakes International Comic Art Festival to promote our annual weekend of comics craziness, taking place in Bowness-on-Windermere, 14th -16th October.
Needless to say, writing a newsletter on top of all that has been a bit of a low priority - but since I have another project to announce, Pilgrim - Secrets and Lies, an SF comic mini-series I’ve written, drawn by Neil Edwards, I thought this was a good time to dip my toe back into delivering some updates.
PILGRIM 2121: SECRETS AND LIES
Earlier today, B7 Media launched the Kickstarter for its SF thriller mini-series, Pilgrim 2121: Secrets and Lies, the first project in a new line of its B7 Comics line, written by me, with art by New York Times bestselling artist, Neil Edwards (Fantastic Four, Farscape), coloured by Martin Baines (Thunderbirds) and lettered by Jim Campbell (2000AD). I hope some of you can give it your support.
We “road tested” this Kickstarter with a number of people ahead of launch, and in particular I’d like to thank Tom Ward, co-creator of Merrick: The Sensational Elephantman, the team at The77 Publications and Steve Tanner at Time Bomb Comics, for valuable advice when it came to fine tuning this crowdfunder.
For those of you who haven’t seen previous items on this, Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies – based on the universe created by Bev Doyle, Richard Kurti and Andrew Mark Sewell – digs deep into the millennia old strata of our planet and unearths something… completely unknown. Dormant since long before the dinosaurs, it’s incomprehensible, ancient – and alien.
With the world transformed by environmental disaster, tensions rising between the Western Alliance and the Eastern Coalition and space colonisation beyond our solar system now within easy reach, the discovery lying beneath the Antarctic ice promises to be a threat we have never faced before.
Some will go to extreme lengths to expose the deadly enigma’s secrets. And others will go even further to protect them…
B7 Comics is a brand-new comics imprint from UK indie B7 Media, the company best known for a new wave of cinematic sounding audio drama, including I, Robot, Blake’s 7, Dan Dare: The Audio Adventures, Venna’s Planet and dramas for the BBC and Audible, including The Effect, The Martian Chronicles, The Space Race and Mahabharata Now.
We’re launching the new imprint with this four-issue SF mini-series, and this Kickstarter is raising funds for the completion of the mini-series.
The first 36-page issue, featuring 22 pages of comic strip, is already complete and ready to print and the second issue is scripted, with art underway. Series covers will be by Alex Ronald, with variant covers on #1 by Alex and Neil Edwards.
Please head over to Kickstarter now and give the series your support – and thank you in advance!
OTHER PROJECTS…
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Since I’ve mentioned the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, you’ll hopefully be pleased to hear this year’s Lakes Festival Focus guest interviews has just started running on downthetubes, launching with a quick chat with Jaime Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame. You can read it here. Coming up will be interviews with, among others, Bryan Hitch, Mike Perkins and Jacob Phillips.
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The Hancock: The Lad Himself graphic album by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page, another B7 Comics project, is coming together nicely, designed by Robert Hammond. We’re on course for publication soon. More about that here on downthetubes, rather than blather on!
Thanks for reading this far! Take care out there.
John Freeman
Lancaster, England, 1st September 2022
• Please head over to Kickstarter now and give the series your support – and thank you in advance!
Oh - the Pilgrim comic project kicked off last year, with a special teaser story exclusively published in SHIFT Magazine, drawn by Wam Nick and available to read on the Pilgrim2121.com web site. Do give it a read!
• Sign up for news about Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies on the Pilgrim2121 official site