Hey friends! How goes it?
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind here, to be honest. New York Comic Con is done and dusted, and it was a great show. For the first time ever, thanks to the gang at Zestworld, I tabled at a show. It was such a treat to see all the fans and friends, and we did pretty well in terms of sales. I was also a busy bee on the con floor, doing a bunch of signings and panels - including moderating DC’s Superman panel, a Crime Fiction chat, discussing Latinx Comics, and participating in a George Perez Memorial. It was great to see new and familiar faces.
Also! My table was just an aisle away from The Awakened co-creator and artist Dean Kotz! It was a thrill to finally meet him in person, and I managed to snag a piece of original art from our series. Jealous?
Not much else to say, aside from keeping my head down and working for the next few weeks. Next month, I’ll be in Chicago for the Midwest Mystery Conference and in Miami for Miami Book Fair, so keep your eyes peeled for more details on that!
One thing I do want to flag - my upcoming YA Spider-Verse novel, Araña/Spider-Man 2099: Dark Tomorrow, is available for preorder from Marvel Press/Disney Books! Grab it wherever you get your books. Coming next year! Here's that lovely cover again, by Carolina Rodríguez Fuenmayor:
And, if you haven’t subscribed as a paid member to our newsletter, what are you waiting for? We have about 50 pages of The Awakened content waiting to be read. You can get a big chunk of that for free, but if you want to get pages two weeks early, you should consider signing up to the paid tier.
We hope to have some news on the print edition of The Awakened soon, but in the meantime, here’s a little tease - the inks for The Awakened #1 cover by Dean!
Enjoy!
Oh, one more thing- I teased this a bit on Twitter, but it's relevant to all. I know some of you have read my latest crime novel, Secret Identity, which tells the story of a queer, Cuban-American woman trying to break into the comic book industry in the mid-70s. In the novel, she co-creates The Legendary Lynx, a street-level crimefighter that becomes an instant hit for the fledgling comic publisher she works for - Triumph Comics. Unfortunately for her, no one knows she had a hand in the character's creation - because she did it anonymously in tandem with a colleague. When said colleague ends up dead, it's up to Carmen Valdez to solve the crime and reclaim the Lynx. The novel features snippets from the comics Carmen and artist Doug Detmer create. I was blessed to work with artist Sandy Jarrell on the book, and he did a stupendous job on the art, really channeling the time period without imitating it, if that makes sense. And though it only amounted to fourteen pages of comics, we poured our hearts and souls into creating the backstory and visuals for Claudia Calla and her alter ego, the Lynx. One of the ongoing conversations we had while working on those sequences went along the lines of "Wow, this is fun" and "Yeah, we need to keep doing this as a comic."
So, here we are! The Lost Adventures of The Legendary Lynx will debut digitally here on Zestworld in the coming months, as Sandy and I unearth issues that have been out of print for decades, collecting them and curtating them for new readers. (wink, wink)
It'll be very much tongue-in-cheek and meta, as we bring the seminal stories Harvey Stern, Carmen Valdez, and Doug Detmer created back into the conversation for the first time since they were initially released by Triumph in 1975-76. This'll be a nice primer for what's also in the hopper - a modern-day "spiritual" sequel to Secret Identity, starring a new protagonist and a new set of comic book murder problems. That book will also feature a chunk of modern-day Lynx tales that I hope everyone will enjoy. But, anyway - here's an absolutely jaw-dropping piece of art that opens up our "reprint" of The Legendary Lynx #1, featuring art by the dearly departed Doug Detmer. More on the series (and the sort-of sequel!) soon!
That's a lot!
Thanks for reading,
Alex