I spent some time discussing the approach to the first of twelve scripts I’ll be doing for my GREAT AND SECRET SHOW adaptation, and I intended to delve into that quite a bit more. But since last I pecked away at this column, I heard resounding approval from Clive Barker on the artwork, and I got in all the colored pages for issue one. They’ll be lettered this week. And later this week, I’ll be interviewing Clive about the project for comics news site Newsarama. The interview will run alongside a five-page preview of the finished, lettered pages. But no worries about catching it there, if you don’t see it. I’ll also run it here, only in this space, I’ll run a longer interview than Newsarama will get. You’ll get the unfiltered discussion, and probably new artwork, too.

It’s about eight weeks before the first issue goes on sale, so we’ve done a bit of hype for the book in various places. In all of IDW’s February titles, a three-page behind-the-scenes look at the book, featuring many of the sketches that I ran here, will appear, as will a full-page ad for the book (two of them, actually, using both covers for issue one in the different ads). And for those regular comic buyers, the first issue is in the current issue of Previews magazine, ready for pre-order. I know everyone says this about their own book, but on a non-superhero title like this, it really does make a difference if you pre-order it or let your retailer know you want to see it. Those phone book-sized order forms they have to use are pretty daunting, so the more information a retailer has, the more like they are to actually order it, especially in the case of us small publishers.

Anyway, this wasn’t meant to be a pitch for the book; rather, I wanted to say that as the book gets closer to sending off to the printer, it seems much more entertaining for me to just show you a lot of the finished art, rather than ramble on more about the scripting process at this point. Plus, these pages just look too good to keep to myself. I know I’ve only got maybe a dozen published comics to my name thus far, but I feel that this first issue is far above and beyond anything I’ve done before, both in terms of what I did with the script and the visuals, too, and I really want to share that. So let me step aside now and just show you the work of Gabriel Rodriguez and colorist Jay Fotos (the team on my LAND OF THE DEAD book, too). As things stand now, on January 20, we’ve sent solicitation copy and cover images off for issues two and three, and Gabriel is into issue two’s art. I’m working on outlining issue three. So there’s lots more to come, but for now, enjoy:

First, to show off the finished versions of the first three pages that were discussed and shown in their script form and also the black-and-white pages:

Page 10:

Page 13:

Page 15:

Page 17:

To show any more, and more in sequence, would reveal some things in the story that I'd just as soon keep under wraps until the issue itself. But that gives a good taste of what the look and feel of the book will be like. Now I just want to see the printed version.

Next Time on The (Hopefully) Great and (Not-So) Secret Show: We move ahead in the timeline a bit with covers for issues two and three, and discuss how 70+ pages of text becomes 22 pages of comic art

/chris

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