ROUNDUP! UPDATE! ROUNDUPDATE!
get along little kitties
Greetings! Thanks for your patience while The Scorpio Room celebrated the holidays, caught up on scripts post-holidays, and endured some technical difficulties. I had my big work PC setup crash, causing me to spend a month working from my teeny tiny touchscreen laptop for everything from Zoom meetings, script binges, and worst of all - lettering passes.
Since you guys like hearing about the nitty-gritty of making comics, I’ll give you this one for free: get a second monitor. Flip it vertically if you can. It means that as you work, you have a giant digital comic page next to you. That way, when you get sent passes of art, colors, and letters, you don’t have to click back and forth between tabs. You can look at one page and type on another.
Not having this, as you might imagine, really throws off my groove.
But we’re back!
DID YOU DO RESOLUTIONS?
I don’t have any attachment to them one way or another, but seeing as Calendar and Lunar New Year have now passed, it’s a good time to take a look at things. I didn’t make any strict ones, but I did tell myself that after the holidays I’d return to some good habits I missed - like regular long walks, Duolingo practice, and daily word counts. And I’ve actually been doing it? Worst of all, it feels really good. It’s the most annoying thing in the world how good disciplining yourself feels. Because the only thing that feels better than self-discipline is disgusting, libertine indolence of the highest order.
But now I’m working. So here are some work updates and news!
BETSY BRADDOCK: CAPTAIN BRITAIN #1
We’re a month out! I’ve got a signing booked in the Southern California area for release week - I can’t announce where yet but I hope you’ll make time to come out if you’re in the area. I had such a great time last time I visited this shop, I was so happy to be invited back. (You can even come visit me there if you’re a DC fan and don’t read my X-stuff. I won’t tell.)
We’ve just passed final order cutoff for the book (I know, I meant to type this up yesterday and I spent all day soothing my PC and her new parts like a spooked horse waking up from surgery) but you can still make noise! You can order from online shops to show them you’re interested, call your store to ask them to hold a copy when they come in, or just go make noise. We have a lot of amazing fans who make a lot of noise about this book, and I wanted to take a moment today to show off the weird, wild, wonderful creative people we have in Captain Britain fandom.
CAPTAIN BRITAIN: THE TIGER HANDHELD GAME
The amazing Sean made this out of sheer excitement and MADE THAT EXCITEMENT CONTAGIOUS. I grew up obsessed with these handheld games (the Little Mermaid one had me in a chokehold) and the one-two punch of nostalgia and fan-love in this post made me happily dizzy the rest of the day. (He’s done it before, too, with this Excalibur arcade opening.) Thank you so much, Sean, these are such cool labors of love!
The incredible Melanie sent me this snap of her latte at Burbank, CA’s own Red Maple Cafe. I suppose this one’s technically a bit of an off-menu order, but they let you print whatever you want on top of your latte, and Melanie (who is also an amazing Captain Britain Corps cosplayer) chose this iconic Marcus To image of Betsy as Captain. 10/10 choice. I want it to be a raspberry mocha based on the pink, but Betsy’s probably kind of a London Fog girlie, yeah?
Sketchyxmenlegends over on Instagram did it AGAIN, bringing us a beautiful tableau of Rachel and Betsy having a romantic moment in the Krakoan moonlight. Click on over to get a preview of the kind of smooching you can expect in Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #1!
Also—
I’m in the Washington Post.
I’m on TikTok.
I’m on the combination Washington Post TikTok, where I talked to Betsy fan and brilliant newsboy Chris Vasquez about IP law, and the process that goes into getting my gay little hands on someone else’s characters. Give this a watch, you’ll learn something from the smart people in the video and you’ll probably laugh, I sure did.
Lastly, if you want to understand the comments on that Tiktok, you might want to watch this:
Connor of CEREBROcast and I made a little advertisement from the book that got a lot of play on his podcast, and the lovely KrakoaWelcomes made one of their brilliant animatics for it. I laughed, I cried, I submitted to being called ‘Marvel’s Tini Howard’ for the rest of my days because Connor’s voice makes a good earworm.
CATWOMAN #51
by me and the incredible Sami Basri (with a cover shown here by Sway)
Selina begins the long road of payment for the events of Catwoman #50 and sits caged as a new Cat prowls the streets in her absence.
It’s the beginning of a new story here, one that will lead into some major major stuff in Gotham that we’ve got planned for the summer, so if you’re looking for a good place to jump on, this is it. Maybe go back and read #50, but you can come join us here. Get locked up with the Cat. It’s a good time.
PUNCHLINE: THE GOTHAM GAME #4
by Blake Howard, Max Raynor, and myself.
Punchline sells Girl Scout Cookies, helps out at her local soup kitchen, and teaches Sunday school.
Nah, you know that ain’t true. ❌⭕
Coming up this week we’ve got Phenomenocity updates and FINALLY info about getting you all your rewards. Thanks for your patience while we sorted this new stuff during a strange time. Phil’s hard at work on the art for Chapter 3 and your print, and I’m pulling aside books and making forms. We’ll have an address form for your paid folks to submit mailing info to us this week!
Gonna use this return to nice weather here in SoCal to spend some time at the park between writing sprints today, you do something fun too.
Stay weird, talk soon.
-TH 01.24.03 13:45
"like a spooked horse waking up from surgery"
Chef's kiss!