Monday, April 5, 2021

The Return of the Last Mechanical Monster

COMING THIS FALL: 192 pages of full-color Eisner-Award-nominated action and adventure! Plus a robot paper doll you can cut out and glue together yourself! It's THE LAST MECHANICAL MONSTER, in hardcover, from Abrams ComicArts!

I began working on LMM about 10 years ago, after Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? was published. After Mom's Cancer and World of Tomorrow I wanted to do something fun and fictional. This is the project on which I spent about a year writing and penciling more than 100 pages before realizing it wasn't the story I really wanted to tell. I turned all those sheets of paper over and began drawing a new version on their backs. I never regretted that "wasted" time because I figured I had to go through that to find the right story I DID want to tell.

At the time, publishers weren't interested. That's fine! I serialized it as a black-and-white webcomic, and it was nominated for Eisner Awards in 2014 and 2015. GoComics.com later picked it up, and after Editor Charlie and I did A Fire Story it came full-circle back to Abrams ComicArts, where it has found a very happy home.

This is the cover, which was just finalized a few days ago. Charlie and I are doing final edits now (Oxford commas, bah!). We'll put it to bed in a couple of weeks, then it's off to the printer and into your heroic local independent bookstores in September.

My fourth book. I really love this story and hope you will, too.

3 comments:

Bookworm said...

Congratulations! It's a wonderful story. I loved it, and so did my college grandson.

(Yes, Oxford commas!)

Orang Basikal said...

Is this the reason it is no longer visible online?

Brian Fies said...

Yes. With some regret, I've removed it from the Web in advance of publication.