June 2022 - Welcome Back!
So much happened since the last update! I went to Maryland to celebrate the release of EIGHT BILLION GENIES! I went to California to Celebrate Star Wars and more particularly THE HIGH REPUBLIC! I saw so many cool people and wrote a lot of stuff! Details below, as well as some really neat exclusive items you can acquire, if you're that type of person. Read on!
A COUPLE WEEKS AGO IN A STATE FAR FAR AWAY
In the old days, the good people at Lucasfilm would throw a big convention every year focused on Star Wars. It was a truly groovy thing - thousands of people coming together as fans of the galaxy far, far away. Prior to the pandemic, I'd been twice - but the last one before the pandemic was in Chicago all the way back in April 2019.
So, when they finally held another, in Anaheim California from May 26th to May 29th of this year, you can bet I was there. It was wild. It felt like people had been saving up their Star Wars love for all that time, and you could feel it everywhere. Such a positive, thrilling environment.
I found it particularly cool because some big things have happened in my own Star Wars career since 2019 - the High Republic, among others - and it was a chance for me and the other Luminous writers to finally meet the THR fans in person and understand what we'd accomplished. We did tons of interviews, I wore some sweaters... it was a blast.
That shot above is of me, the wonderful Krystina Arielle and two of my High Republic co-creators Cavan Scott and Claudia Gray (well, her leg, anyway) on the Star Wars Celebration Live stage being interviewed (live! no screwups allowed!) for the crowd there as well as being streamed out for zillions (literally!) of people all over the world. Heady stuff.
We announced a lot of projects and talked about many cool things. One of which was the reveal of the cover for the first issue of a new comic series I have coming out this fall from Marvel: STAR WARS - THE HIGH REPUBLIC: THE BLADE. It's a series giving you more story for a sort of Jedi gunslinger named Porter Engle, who readers of my novel LIGHT OF THE JEDI will already be familiar with. The cover here is by Giuseppe Camuncoli, and I'll be working with Marco Castiello on the interiors. It'll be amazing!
There's really too much news from Celebration to fit into this update, so I wrote up a special bonus blog post over on my trusty website that has more photos, more amusing anecdotes, more of everything you deep divers out there could ever want. That's here - read at your leisure!
THE HIGH REPUBLIC BOX SET!
One very cool thing about Star Wars Celebration is the exclusive merchandise. They make all these things you can only get there, many of them hyper-specific and unique. (For example, I got myself a Dex's Diner coffee mug that makes me very happy.) One such item was a beautiful boxed set of the three adult novels for The High Republic Phase I - my LIGHT OF THE JEDI, plus THE RISING STORM by Cavan Scott and THE FALLEN STAR by Claudia Gray. They're done up as if they're Ancient Jedi Texts, and the set is gorgeous, as you can see.
If you couldn't make it to Celebration (or didn't have 3 extra suitcases to carry these), good news! I have a very, very limited number of these box sets available on my store HERE!
I am also offering a SUPERFAN add-on option that includes one of the beautiful High Republic enamel pins that we had made for Star Wars Celebration AND a special micro-story/thank you note written by me on one of the LOTJ bookplates! You can find that here.
THE SOULE STORE... REBORN!
Longtime fans will probably already be familiar with my webstore, and its... abundance of choice, let's just say. It kind of ballooned out of control over time, and wasn't as user-friendly as I would have liked. Well, IT IS NOW. Take a peek here or click below and let me know if you have any comments or feedback by replying to this email. I'll send them right over to my noble assistant Tommy, who told me to tell you that he "loves comments and feedback and doesn't dread the idea of making more edits to the store!" What a cool dude.
Hell To Pay? More Like Fun To Watch
This Sunday, I'll be appearing live at 2 PM EST on the massive GCX Twitch stream with Rise of Kylo Ren and Hell to Pay (and TV star and dreamboat) artist Will Sliney. Make sure to tune in - he'll be drawing live, and we'll be talking about our upcoming storytelling revolving around the man once known as Ben Solo as well as our huge Image Comics project hitting in November - a little something called The Shrouded College, the first chapter of which is the comic Hell to Pay.
If you're new to these updates, we created a special variant for Hell to Pay just for my biggest fans and Will's Twitch viewers! You can find that here! You can get it signed, you can get it sketched/dialogued... whatever strikes your fancy!
Luminous (And Busy) Beings Are We
One of the best things about Celebration (I just keep talking about it!) was getting to hang out with the other Luminous authors in person - there are five of us (Justina Ireland, Claudia Gray, Daniel Jose Older, Cavan Scott and me), and together (along with the amazing folks at Lucasfilm) we built the High Republic from the ground up. We don't just do Star Wars, though. Three of those folks had some kickass books just drop, and I wanted to highlight them.
First off is Daniel José Older's Ballad & Dagger, which came out last month. Here's a synopsis...
Mateo Matisse was born into a culture that is a unique mix of pirates, santeros, and Sephardim. They’ve been living peacefully in a diaspora community in Brooklyn for the past fifteen years, but now cracks are beginning to appear, and it is up to Mateo to heal them.
Next up is Claudia Gray's new novel, The Murder of Mr. Wickham. Here's some info on the book!
A summer house party turns into a thrilling whodunit when Jane Austen's Mr. Wickham—one of literature’s most notorious villains—meets a sudden and suspicious end in this brilliantly imagined mystery featuring Austen’s leading literary characters.
And finally, Cavan Scott's THE WARD! It's a brand new comic series published by Dark Horse.
St. Lilith's is a secret hospital for supernatural creatures. The personnel are overworked and the facility is underfunded. It's a place, and a life, Dr. Nat Reeves thought she left behind. Until a wounded woman (with a tail) appears on her doorstep. ER meets Hellboy!
YOUR WISH HAS BEEN GRANTED
I also do not just write Star Wars! My newest comic with my Curse Words co-creator Ryan Browne, EIGHT BILLION GENIES, is OUT NOW! Well, it's been out for a few weeks, but it is in fact OUT NOW, because that's how time works. If you don't have a copy yet, I have every single variant of issue 1 available on my site, including the rare and shiny Glitter Cat variant, all signed by Ryan and me! You can get one (or all of them) here.
Here's what some nice people had to say about 8BG:
"'Eight Billion Genies' #1 is the perfect blend of delightful and destructive, a magnificent start to magical mischief." - Joe Skonce of Multiveristy Comics
"Eight Billion Genies is never less than engaging, with strong characters to be absorbed in before the supernatural elements kick it all into another gear." - David Brooke of AIPT
"The concept is dynamite and the team's execution of it is near-flawless in this stellar debut." - Adam Barnhardt of Comicbook.com
Now, a bit of less wish fulfill-y news - Issue 2 was supposed to drop next Wednesday on 6/15, but due to a printing error we are having it re-printed, and it will now be coming out on 6/29! It's possible some stores might put out the recalled version (some of those shipments shipped, as we understand it.) If you see it on your store shelves next week... buy every last one and set them on fire!
THE HORIZON AND EVERYTHING ON IT
In no surprise to anyone who knows my usual m.o., I have quite a few projects coming out soon. In fact, two big things land this coming Wednesday, June 15. (It was supposed to be three, with 8BG #2, but... well... yeah.)
First off, Image Comics is releasing their own version of CURSE WORDS: THE HOLE DAMNED THING, the giant Curse Words Omnibus that we Kickstarted a couple years back. This will be available at your local comic shop, but I am also selling signed copies HERE.
And next, after a few much-needed months off, UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY returns with our Destiny Man special! This is a single issue that gives you a bunch of awesome insight into the main baddie for our alt-future tale of where the United States might go... the Destiny Man!
At Celebration, we revealed a bunch of variants for my upcoming STAR WARS #25, which is a sort of anniversary issue for me - it's my 100th written script for Star Wars comics, out July 2 from Marvel. I'm revisiting a lot of characters and settings I've written before, and reuniting with many of those amazing artists. One of those is my good friend Steve McNiven (who did the art for the War of the Bounty Hunters alpha issue). He created this incredible cover featuring just about every character I have worked with - there's a lot of them.
And... we're out!
Well, this was a hefty one. If you have any questions or comments, just reply to this email. I hope you all have a good start to your summer (or, for the antipodeans out there, your winter), and I'll see you next month!
--Charles