Hey there and welcome back to Burnt Barn Business.
It’s been a fairly eventful time since we last spoke. The biggest of the big news is that my and my good buddy Chris Matthews’ series Mugshots is going to be published by Mad Cave Studios.
Here’s the issue 1 cover as proof.
A lot has changed for us since we completed the campaign for the Mugshots: Sins of the Father ashcan more than a year ago. At that moment we were all making comics in our spare time around time-consuming day jobs. Mugshots was a real passion project for me and Chris but his career as a designer and animator meant that the dozen or so pages that made up the ashcan had taken him over a year to complete. Our original plan had been to crowdfund the full graphic novel version of this volume of Mugshots at the point Chris was close to completing his work on the book, which with the story growing to more than 100 pages...well, who knew when that was going to be.
However, in the meantime, I had started to make inroads to a career in comics. My and Shaky Kane's Weird Work series was picked up by Image Comics, which led to us being approached by Oni Press to do a series, which became The Man From Maybe. The opportunity seemed to be there to take Mugshots to a publisher and get the money so Chris could focus full time on the book.
We pitched it around and everyone fell in love with Chris' art immediately and we found ourselves with multiple options. Out of everyone the publisher that seemed to want us above and beyond everybody else was Mad Cave Studios, so we went with them. After sitting on the news for 10 months, last week it was finally announced - Mugshots will be released by Mad Cave Studios as four 36-page issues.
I’m so proud of this book and I really hope you’re consider asking your local comic shop to order you in a copy. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
To lure you further here is the Fran Galan variant cover for issue 1.
And whilst you’re in your LCS perhaps you’ll consider grabbing the collected edition of my and Shaky Kane’s Weird Work series, which hit shelves a couple of weeks ago.
Mugshots and Weird Work are an interesting pair. Both crime stories inspired by classic noir, but incredibly different from one another, showing the range that the crime genre and comics can achieve. I think they’re both pretty great.
Finally, also available for order is right now is the collected edition of my and Shaky’s The Man From Maybe. I think this book is so much fun and taps into a 70/80s energy of movies like Raider of the Lost Arc. If you enjoyed Weird Work, like westerns, sci-fi or just flat out entertaining comics then I think you should get a kick out of our larger than life series.
So, that’s a whole lot of quality comics to be looking out for.
I’ve also had a couple of other new comics projects get the green light recently, so there should be more exciting news to share soon!
That’s all for now.
Best,
Jordan