Amazing Adventures Coming Soon!

The unboxing this morning. Always a thrill to open a package and find newly published books that you had something to do with.

Life Achievement Unlocked! I wrote about this back when I did the work, and soon it will be out in the world: a six-page Avengers story I wrote and drew is part of MARVEL SUPER STORIES: AMAZING ADVENTURES, the second anthology featuring superhero stories by people who don't normally do them, aimed at middle-grade readers. A short stack of books arrived on my step this morning and will be available to everyone else in November.

As I told Editor Charlie when I pitched my story, this really was a bucket list item for me. I collected Avengers comic books for years, and at one point had every issue ever published. I am inordinately proud and excited that my story is one of 15 in this book, including ones by much more renown authors like Jarrett Krosoczka, Judd Winnick, Dean Haspiel, and John Jennings. As far as I'm concerned, my story is Avengers canon. It really happened.

I plan to attend one book launch event in the Bay Area in early November that I'll announce when it's announcin' time. A couple of other contributors are scheduled to be there. If more events get set up, I'll let you know!

WOO HOO! 

The title spread of my little contribution. I drew the picture on the left, which is of the Beast, a founding X-Man and long-time Avenger, who stars in my story. I didn't write the intro text on the right but it's swell. One of the challenges we faced with my story is that my knowledge of Avengers lore--who's a member, where their HQ is--is out of date, so we framed my story as an adventure from their past.

I thought a few process junkies might enjoy seeing my original art compared to the published page. This is what I mean about my knowledge being out of date: when I was young, the Avengers HQ was the Stark family mansion in Manhattan. Not anymore. But I really wanted to draw the mansion, and honestly I drew the heck out of it. For this job, lettering and coloring were done in Photoshop (letters are a typeface I made of my own hand printing).