However — in case you missed it — things have changed in the last decade. The print book market has been becoming less viable, and the digital becoming more so. Also the e-book reading experience is becoming more and more comparable to the print one. At a personal level, I’m reading as much on my phone as I am on the page.

So: I’ve decided to charge something for them now. But how much?

That’s up to you. Whatever you think is fair and whatever you’re happy to pay. If you’re looking for examples, read on.

• No stable income and are a bit hesitant to buy anything, but think you would give my writing a try if — say — you found it for cheap at a garage sale? Chuck in a buck or two.
• Read a book of mine already and think you’ll like another? Maybe a $5-10 donation depending on if you have a day job.
• If you like the DIY articles on the site, want to support the approach I have to creative work, or even previous writing I’ve done — $10-20? People who donate in this range will get a free lo-fi sci-fi DVD!
• And I won’t turn away $20 or more, though I will offer to mail you a No Media Kings t-shirt for your support.

Click the donate button on the book you want on the sidebar. Go with your gut — don’t get hung up on how much exactly, you can always come back and donate more if the book changes your life or something.

I’m hoping this will be a way for people to express their support, rather than an onerous paywall. For people who are put off, there’s always the library, or you could poke around on the web (even on this site) for places that’ll continue to give it away for free.

Prose Book Formats: EPUB, MOBI, PDF, RTF. Comics: PDF, CBZ, CBR.

When you donate, indicate the format you want. If there’s a format not listed above leave a comment below with your email and I’ll see about generating it. It’s all DRM free so you’re able to pass it around to friends.

UPDATE: Now available on Amazon, if that’s easier for you Kindlers, though for a static price.

[Shannon, by the way, is currently on tour on the west coast -- she's doing a book launch at Lucky's on Aug. 24th in case you live in Vancouver!]

So here’s a breakdown of how much time we each spent working on the book.

Jim’s hours: 283.8 (writing: 23%, revisions and editing: 16%, publicity: 20%, publishing business: 38%)

Shannon’s hours:  1000+ (drawing)

So basically, Shannon put in 80% of the time even considering I took on publicity and publishing roles. (If I was just doing the writing, it would have been closer to a 90/10% split.)

We’re dividing the money we make 80/20%, but it still feels weird. I mean, I knew it took a long time to draw, but it really takes a long time to draw. This wonky division of labour is something to keep in mind when if you’re ever approaching someone to draw a comic. Even if you’re a slow writer and they’re a fast drawer, you’re still asking them to spend much more time realizing something than you spent creating it. What are you bringing to the project beyond amazing ideas and sparkling prose?

We got a bit of coverage at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival — the guys from Vepo Studios interviewed me for their great piece on self-publishing comics and I rambled on with the guys with RGB Filter as well. (Sadly, Shannon hates being videotaped.)

More recently we drove to Detroit and did a launch at Leopold’s Books, a fantastic new bookstore with an emphasis on comic/zine/visual culture. Greg, the owner, interviewed us on stage. Probably the nicest thing was hearing that he was worried the comic was going to be another exploitive take on Detroit in the “ruin porn” genre but was pleasantly surprised to see it was not.

UPDATE: Quill & Quire gave it a starred review: “Munroe has created another stunning, thought-provoking work that will linger in the reader’s mind.” The Indypendent has an interesting contrasting review of three Detroit books, including ours. Also, Shannon’s touring the west coast in August! Drop her a line if you want her to come to your town.

Secondly — what with the urban farming theme and spring being here and all, we figured it’d be fun to make seed packets marketed for the post-Rapture world — ones that don’t need the light of God to grow. (The first twenty people to buy a copy of Sword of My Mouth at the Toronto launch get one.) So Scott made a nice design and Shannon went to take some pictures “in context” as it were at a garden centre. The photo and the altercation that followed with the manager follows below.

Manager: Do you have permission to take these?
Shannon: I sure do!
Manager: I don’t understand. Do you have permission to take these photos?
Shannon: Yes, I do.
Manager: From who?
Shannon: That guy who is in charge of everything. What’s his name again?
Manager: Can you please stop?
Shannon: Peter. That’s his name. Peter gave me permission.
Manager: If you don’t stop taking pictures, I will have to confiscate your camera.
Shannon: (laughing my head off) No, you will not.
Manager: Hmm, well…you have to stop. Please.
Shannon: Hang on, I need one more with the macro setting…

And the guerrilla photography is only this week’s promotional gambit — last week Shannon spent a ton of time redrawing people’s faces for their Facebook profiles in her signature style, in exchange for them linking to the launch or the book.

Over a hundred people have had their Faces Gerardified.

UPDATE: Check out this neat interview with Shannon at Annalemma.

It was a push to get the book ready in time, and tricky to manage as it’s a IDW / NMK single edition co-publishing dealy, but Shannon still took the time to do these hilariously amazing bio illustrations of the two of us, check ‘em out after the jump!


I’d given Shannon a bunch of photos of me on a trip for a possible bio pic illustration, and the one she chose was of me facing off the digital zombies in some airport arcade. I went along with it even though I was a bit concerned it would make me look like an asshole if she drew herself quietly crocheting or something. Happily she drew herself as villainous as me. As usual with Shannon, things turned out awesome! Back to back, awaiting the critical onslaught…

One of the things we did differently with this book was research, and so I’ll take this opportunity to write a bit about that.

I’m a big believer in the notion that just living a varied life is a valid kind of research, and most of my creative work has pretty clearly drawn from my life in one way or another. (I have to rely on my recent history because, frankly, I have a pretty shitty memory — I’m envious of writers who can dip back into their childhood with ease.)

I’ve never liked research because it felt like homework. Obligatory. But I definitely needed to do it for Sword — I’d only visited Detroit once very briefly and I didn’t want to fuck up my characterization of that troubled and unique city. And it really helped — not only did it make me feel less fraudulent, but it gave the book a thematic core and direction I wouldn’t have hit upon myself.

Here’s five approaches to research that worked for me.

1. Choose a research subject that you’re fascinated in — not just something you think would make a good story subject. I’ve been interested in Detroit ever since a brief visit in ’94, but despite it only being 4 hours away I’d never visited again. Writing a book set there was a great way to spend some focused time learning about the place. Even if I decided not to write the book it would have been time well spent.

2. Talk to people. Let everyone know what you’re researching. Talk to experts & enthusiasts alike. On the phone or in person — email interviews are just work for people. Be social, have some fun, meet some characters and see how far a conversation with a stranger can go.

3. Go places. There’s a million details that even a gorgeous photo won’t expose you to. Get a list of places of interest you’d like to visit and maybe go with one of the strangers from #2. Research as adventure! Shannon and I went to Detroit twice for a few days — she got tons of photo refs, and I got lots of story and character ideas.

4. Niche websites and blogs are good starting places. Especially when they can connect you with people and new places to go. For me it was a good starting point for cultural touchstones like scrappers, 8 Mile, political corruption.

5. Read some books in a style you enjoy. Long form non-fiction generally makes me glaze over (which allows me to daydream about the subject at hand, so admittedly still useful) so I went with some more entertainingly written books. While a bit sensational, Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit by Zev Chafets was a compelling read and gave me some ideas about the racial dynamics that are still relevant today, 20 years after it was written.

Final thoughts: in excess, research can be a procrastination method with diminishing returns. But for someone like me, who is more on the make-it-up-as-you-go school, it’s helped bring a richness in ideas and specificity in detail to my recent work — and has been enjoyable to boot.

Sword of My Mouth #1, the first part of the follow-up to my post-Rapture graphic novel Therefore Repent!, is now in stores and this weekend at TCAF. #1 will be the only print edtion — issues #2-6 will be digital only, after which the complete story will be collected together and published as a printed graphic novel. So if you’d like to get them as they’re released bi-monthly through this year, you have two options — you can subscribe to the complete series in a digital format for $6 or pre-order the printed graphic novel for $12 and get a free subscription to the digital issues as well as some other goodies.

In a time when the economy and other forces are making the print pamphlet model unsustainable for many indies, we’re excited to see how this will work. The digital format isn’t going to replace the print book, but it’s an interesting format that allows for cheaper prices and more direct interaction between creators and readers — one we hope to foster by adding commentary.

UPDATE: Pre-orders no longer available, but you can order it here.

Comic artist and former No Media Kings intern stef lenk received a Xeric grant for her illustrated booklets TeaTime 1 and 2. Whether you’ve got a project that you’re submitting to the next Xeric deadline at the end of this month, or if you’re just interested in hearing about the nuts and bolts of comics publishing from printing to promotion, you’ll find stef’s opinions and experiences in the article below food for thought. UPDATE: Canadian comic self-publishers will want to check out this Gene Day Award.

A Self-Publishing Comics Primer
by stef lenk

BEFORE YOU START
Someone wrote in another Xeric testimonial that you should not attempt self-publishing and all of this business unless you have no choice. This is really true. It’s a tonne of work, there’s no money in it, and trying to put comic books out there for public consumption is another full-time job on top of doing the actual (creative) work. I have tried to get rid of my bookish compunctions from every possible angle. I went to art school to learn how to make stuff to put into books. I talked emptily about potential book projects for years. I took a course in book publishing so I could make other peoples’ books. I’ve read a million books looking for one that hasn’t been written or illustrated yet. And yet all of this has still brought me here.

These days, I pay my rent through work in book/magazine publishing/design, I draw obsessively, and I still have many many unfinished book projects. But the more of your own work you do the more focused you become, and the easier it gets, at least to be confident enough to start a project, to see it through, and to learn a thing or two about it and yourself in the process.

For those of you up for self-publishing, here are some of the things you’ll need to think about.

TIME

Writing/storyboarding/drawing the book takes time. For me, this reigns in at approximately 200-250 hours per book — including storyboarding, reference material, final drawings, and tonnes of mistakes/second/third/fourth tries.

YOUR DAY JOB

Don’t quit it. No one else does and survives (well). Freelancing is an ideal complement to self-publishing ventures, but the stress (and the effect it has on doing your artwork) shouldn’t be underestimated either. Be nice to yourself along the way.

If you can stockpile cash and then take time off, do so. If you can marry rich, that too is a good option. If you are already rich, you must email me immediately so we can discuss this further and in great detail.

TELEVISION

Get rid of it.

ART SUPPLIES/STUDIO

If you are waiting to start your project until you have a new MacBookPro or a fully equipped studio space in the East Village, don’t. I know a few people who spend alot of time collecting toys and very little time actually using them. This is unfortunate. Use whatever you can get/whoever will let you. Preparation is the easiest form of procrastination.

GRIEF/GUILT RELATED ANXIETY THAT YOU ARE NOT WORKING HARD/QUICK/WELL ENOUGH

Inevitable, but NOT helpful. Try to override these thoughts with great expedience and fervour.

EDITING

If you know anyone with this skill who will be willing to help you, you have struck gold. Honestly. Having an editor=Creative GOLD. Allow them to criticize, Listen to the criticism, Act on the criticism.

PRE-PRESS

Books are offset-printed (should you be choosing this format) in 16-page increments called signatures. This is due to the folding process necessary to make sure all pages have a reverse-side, and can therefore be efficiently bound/stapled, etc. If you have decided to make a book that is, say, 18 pages, you must be prepared to pay for 24 pages, and have a bunch of blanks. 1/2 sigs are a possibility, which means you can have 20 pages (the magic number is 4 in folding pages) but you will likely still have to pay for 24 pages and they will be trimmed after printing, which wastes both paper and money. Obviously 16/24/32 page booklets are all magic increments.

If you know a bit more about your printers, such as how large their press-beds are and what the max size of paper they take, there are ways to cut down costs even more. My books are just slightly smaller than conventional ash-can size; this is so they get printed on one sheet and reverse on the other side to create two books per sheet. (the process is called print-and-tumble, which means that the whole book is printed on one side then they turn the page over and rerun it with the same plates reversed. This cuts down HUGELY on costs.

Colour is more expensive than b/w. To print in colour, the printers have to make four plates for each page and ink colour — one for cyan, one for magenta, one for yellow, and one for black, which are the four staple inks in colour printing. This might be evident to any of you who have home printers with separate cartridges in your inkjets. The pages of your book then have to be run through the press four times (one for each plate) which ups your man-hours for the job. And there is ever a hassle with proofing and colour correction, which is much trickier, I’ve found, than b/w. Overall, if you are printing in colour, be prepared for at least double if not quadruple the cost quoted for a b/w project.

The way printers refer to colour is related to how many plates are needed to print either side of the page. For instance, ¼ (stated as “1 over 4”) means, b/w (or one colour) on one side, and full colour (4 plates) on the other. 4/4 means full colour on both sides of the page. If you want to get fancy, some printers may allow you to print your one colour other than black. That is called a spot colour, and if you should choose/be allowed this option, it means ALL your text will be this colour (or shades thereof).

Paper stock is an issue. Coated paper is the shiny stuff, where ink sits on top of the page and looks shiny and lovely. Like most magazines. Newsprint is the other end of the spectrum — like newspapers, it’s thin, ink soaks in and dulls, but is cheap cheap cheap.

Your printing costs will break down (or at least mine do) into three: paper, print, and binding. Bind, the third of these, can be stapled (called saddle-stitch) or perfect bound (glued together like most trade paperback books). If there is any way you can handle any of this stuff yourself, you will cut down on billable-man-hours there.

DIGITAL PRE-PRESS

I try to avoid tweaking in Photoshop all together, but do find that I need to do a bit to make all pages consistent in terms of levels/gray-scale tones, etc. This takes time and some Photoshop skills, or at least basic knowledge of the program. Or someone else who can help.

BLEEDS

For gods’ sake read up on “bleeds” if you’ve never published before, and intend to have artwork that reaches (past) the edges of your book. Bleeds are your necessary margin for error when the book is trimmed. The amount of reworking and redrawing I’ve had to do because I didn’t have properly trimmable edges around my drawings has been highly frustrating. (This will not really apply to artists working in panels with white edges, by the way; leaving white borders is another simple solution to bleed/trim problems.)

PRINTING COSTS

These can vary of course, but my booklets cost approximately $1200 for a print run of 350-500, keeping in mind they are 16 pages each (plus cover) and full-colour. See pre-press for more info on this.

You CAN opt for photocopy/zine-style, but just know that these days desktop publishing is ubiquitous and the standards are getting ever higher, so it’s harder to grab peoples’ attention with the cheap photocopy format, except for a very specific niche market. In the end, the more seriously you invest in your work, the more seriously your potential audience will invest in it.

Screenprinting, letterpress, are other options, and beautiful ones; printmaking is, however, a separate affair.

BOOK FAIRS

There are a tonne of them, that vary in cost/efficiency. The bigger festivals are curated. If this is your first book, do as many as humanly possible. At book fairs you get to keep all profits from book sales, but this occasionally at the price of malevolent glares by bargain hunters who can’t fathom why you would charge $8 for what could be construed as a rather elaborate-looking brochure. Many people will not understand. Be prepared for this. The people around you also selling books WILL understand. Love and respect them accordingly.

A couple of years down the road you can start doing a cost/benefit analysis (so to speak) of which fairs to do/which fairs to skip. The experience is fantastic for making a niche for yourself in the comics community, meeting publishers, and having your work evaluated. The people are AWESOME. But again, you never sell quite as many books as you had hoped, and the prep work shouldn’t be underestimated. Tables also cost money. If you can find someone to split the cost with, by all means do so.

Some of the book fairs/comicons I’ve done/know of.

Toronto Comic Arts Festival

SpeakEasy Comics night (Toronto)

OCAD Book Arts Fair (Toronto)

Word on the Street (Toronto)

Canzine (Toronto)

Expozine (Montreal)

Wayzgoose book arts fair (Grimsby, Ontario)

SPX (Washington DC)

MoCCA (New York)

BD Angoulême : the MOTHER of all festivals, and the best Best BEST one out there EVER! A DREAM! Comic exhibits in the town church. No joke. Not to be attempted, though, unless you are planning a vacation in France already, you speak at least basic French, have a lot of extra money (or a very liberal credit card!) and can plan way ahead of time so you can get cheap place to stay.

Book fair math is always helpful if you are feeling discouraged about money. After every book fair my friends/fellow book-makers sit back and evaluate: “This time I made back the cost of the bus ticket to get here!” “This time I made back travel AND the cost of the table!”, “This time I spent every penny on other books, but Christs’ toes, LOOK AT THIS STUFF!”

Consider postage/shipping costs if you are doing book fairs outside of your own country. Bringing them over the border could be questionable at customs, so this is an extra cost/inconvenience.

ONLINE SALES

Consider Etsy, it’s free and awesome, and you can direct anyone you want there. They sell your books, and take a nominal fee for it. There is a tonne of stuff up there though, so drawing attention to your page can be another challenge in and of itself. Your own website is a great help, but building one is a challenge. Blogs also work — Blogger or WordPress are the most popular and the former is the easiest to use/no website skills necessary.

Nothing online will be too too helpful, however, unless you have a way of driving traffic to the site. Facebook/MySpace can be helpful publicity, but to get beyond your immediate circle of friends you will need other tactics.

ADVERTISING/PUBLICITY

If you have a knack for design/some basic skills in InDesign and/or Quark, it will be of great help in this venture, as you can make posters, postcards, etc to give out. People always want free stuff, so anything you can give them to take away/remind you of their work is — awesome. Websites (as stated above) will save a tonne of postage costs (in terms of submissions) and give people immediate access to your work. Associated costs should be factored in: printer ink cartridges; labels; book stands/table signage, as well as promo postcards and business cards.

EMAIL PROMOTIONS/MAILINGS/PRESS-RELEASES

You can do as much or as little as you want, and see results accordingly. Once you’ve self-published a few things you will want to have built a bigger fan-base than your close friends, or the cost/momentum is going to be harder to sustain. Consider a mailing list: letting people sign up for it and sending out announcements when you have new book/events. Also put together press releases and send them to the weeklies/comic blogs/ etc. in advance of your official launch. Double check the timing on this, it varies with each publication.

SELLING BOOKS ON CONSIGNMENT

Personally, I find that accounting makes me feel like a fat man going uphill on a children’s bicycle. DIY distribution, inventory and selling books on consignment, however, makes me feel like a fat man with no legs running a 200-metre dash, rife with hurdles and a full bladder. Once you get the hang of it all, it’s strangely edifying, and a great peephole into the world of business that will inevitably surround you the deeper into publishing your books you get.

Consignment is not a great way to recoup costs, but it is the best way to have your books available/visible on a day-by-day basis. Check out bookstores in your area, specifically ones that sell small-press stuff, and offer books on consignment. Typically for a 40/50% take, these shops will stock your books and you play your own distributor, stopping by occasionally to restock/get paid for any sales.

Be aware of the profit (“profit”) margin: Here’s the math on one of my typical consignment books that a customer pays $8 for:

$8=retail price per book

print run cost=$1200 therefore unit price per book= $3.42

consignment fee=40% of the purchase price (another $3.20),

profit=a resounding $1.38 per book.

When approaching stores try to accept that your books will possibly be tucked into a milk-crate on a back shelf somewhere, where likely they will only be found accidentally by customers hoping for a cheap score in a carefully hidden smut section. This is, alas, how it works. But you get to know book-store owners (who are Awesome), you get to put your books in the company of all the stuff you read yourself (Awesome and Gratifying), and you are broadcasting to the world with increasing dedication that you are not just drawing these things for yourself, but you are searching for an audience (Yes!).

Also, check in frequently. ESPECIALLY if your book has been reviewed, written about, or excerpted. No one is ever going to love your work as much as you are, so you have to take care of it, even once it’s left home. Salespeople/bookshop proprietors have bigger distribution/inventory issues to sort out and rarely-to-never keep up with their consignment. There is also so much consignment material in any given bookshop, this section is usually in great disarray. Make sure your work hasn’t been lost, trampled, or moved to the staff washroom to be used as reading material, or worse.

DISTRIBUTION

Eventually the charm of zooming around on a bicycle to stores throughout the city so they can sell 4 or 5 of your books every six months will wear off, and you will have a wall of unsold books cluttering up your home.

Distribution is a good idea. There are many people who can help with this. At this point, I am not one of them: I am still investigating what the possibilities are out there. It seems like having work accepted to comic distributors is no small accomplishment. And there are fees. And unsold books shredded. And such. Be warned.

GRANTS

Writing grants is another job/financing possibility for this whole process. The more applications you write, the clearer your project ideas and focus will be. It’s a great exercise, and also a humbling one. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get one. Collect rejection letters. And keep writing them. It is so valuable to teach yourself to explain what you are doing to complete strangers. I have yet to master it. And there is luck involved.

Submissions, press-releases, and queries (to publishers) are also really helpful in honing your ideas and evaluating which ones are worth seeing through to completion.

SUBMITTING WORK FOR REVIEW

Google comic books/journals, read the specs, submit your work. All attention is helpful. Tell/show anyone who will listen. And be thankful when they do.

SUBMITTING WORK FOR PUBLICATION

Probably at some point you will get tired of being a one-(wo)man band with all this self-publishing. Submit excerpts for consideration to magazines, publishers etc. Best way to figure out who to submit to is to look at your own bookshelf. If you like reading them and the work they publish resonates with yours, chances are you have found a good publisher/venue for your stuff.

ALTHOUGH

I don’t suggest skipping the self-publishing part. There is no better way to gain respect for the people you will be working with in the future. It’s a tonne of work, but there’s something fascinating and holistic about the process, you’re actually involved with your books from the very beginning to the very end (their sale). No part of publishing is easy, whether it be publicity, marketing, editing, or sales, and getting high and mighty about your artwork with the people who are trying to help you put it out there is just lame.

THAT’S ABOUT ALL. GO FORTH, SELF PUBLISH, RINSE AND REPEAT.

stef lenk is a freelance artist/ illustrator presently living and working in Toronto. She spells her name all lower-case. You can read her Xeric award winning books and check out her blog here.You can purchase the first five episodes of her graphic-novel in the making (which include Teatime 1 and 2) at steflenk.etsy.com.

You can read other Xeric winners’ articles here.

The first 22 pages of the next post-Rapture story after Therefore Repent! will be appearing in comic stores in May, to be eventually collected into a graphic novel called Sword of My Mouth in 2010. Check out Shannon Gerard’s fantastic cover art and the description after the jump, and if it looks good you can preorder at your local comic store — it’s in this month’s Previews (MAR09 4308, pg. 266). Update: I just saw it’s a Staff Pick at Previews!

(What’s that, you say? You’re behind and haven’t read the critically acclaimed Therefore Repent! yet? Well, lucky thing I’m releasing the full graphic novel as a free download today, isn’t it?)

Sword of My Mouth #1
Jim Munroe (w) • Shannon Gerard (a)

If Ella didn’t have her baby, she’d go crazy from the loneliness. But she might still go crazy from the guilt, because the baby isn’t quite right. The world was simpler before the righteous floated away into the sky, and magic started working.

A stand-alone six-issue story continuing on from acclaimed graphic novel Therefore Repent! (“It’s completely nuts… It’s a book about what if the Rapture actually happened, and that’s all I’m gonna tell you.” —Junot Díaz, 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction), Sword of My Mouth moves the focus from Chicago, under siege by angels with machine guns, to the urban prairie of Detroit, where a different kind of struggle is faced. Folks in the D have banded together to turn land with burned out crackhouses into farming tracts, and seem to be on a road to self-sufficiency… until Famine rides into town. This six-issue story arc will be written by creator Jim Munroe (“a pop culture provocateur” — Austin Chronicle) and drawn by Shannon Gerard.

B&W · 32 pages · $3.99
Diamond Previews code: MAR09 4308

Therefore Repent!

What if the religious right… are actually right?

Without warning, multitudes of Christians float bodily up into the sky.

For the immoral majority, life goes on pretty much as usual.

Except that after the Rapture, magic works — for those willing to risk demonic mutations.

And an angelic army appears to have been deployed to mop up the sinners.

But through it all, outsiders Raven and Mummy face the possibility of a bigger problem than the end of the world: the end of their relationship.

Praise for Therefore Repent!

“Therefore Repent! is great. Loved the conflict between the old and new religions, plus it’s got Jesus and mutants.” — Joe Meno, author of Hairstyles of the Damned

“Therefore Repent! is impressive, layered, and in places surprisingly funny. I didn’t think it would be my sort of thing, but I enjoyed it.” —Jim Ottaviani, author of FALLOUT: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and the Political Science of the Atomic Bomb

“Now, just dealing with the Rapture might be enough of a hook, but Jim and Salgood do a great job of characterization from the very beginning. The two protagonists are so interesting that I had to keep turning page after page to see what and who they were. And yes, Salgood can draw like nobody’s business… I give this book two thumbs up.” —Chris Pitzer, AdHouse Books

“The tale’s offbeat anarchy and peculiar, parodic charms will win you over. It’s like one of those church pamphlets about salvation gone terribly, terribly wrong.” —John Burns, The Georgia Straight

“Therefore Repent! is an absolutely boundless piece of fantasy that he wisely grounds in very human relationships… to say it’s an imaginative work would be an understatement: ‘unhinged’ is probably more accurate. I can’t wait for more.”— Robert J. Wierseman, Quill & Quire

“The art is extraordinarily fluid and the storyline ingenious and sharply intelligent.” —Jeff VanderMeer, Realms of Fantasy

“It’s completely nuts… It’s a book about what if the Rapture actually happened, and that’s all I’m gonna tell you.” —Junot Díaz, 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction

Joe Shuster Award Nominee for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Writer 2008

I don’t want to give away too many details, but it’s set in Detroit, involves one of the Four Horsemen, and the first 22 pages should be debuting at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival in May 2009.