Flash on shelves and Skin Police in the wings

Hello and welcome back to another edition of Burnt Barn Business.

After a few weeks back in the UK catching up with family I’m home in Spain and working away. I don’t tend to stop working when I travel but it’s more of case of “what needs to be done” as opposed to my usual routine of just tortoise like working through one story after another regardless of whether I have a publisher for them yet or not. That’s the position I’m in right now as I keep chipping away at scripts I hope will become comics whilst going back and forth with various publishers on what feels like a dozen potential projects.

The market out there is a little slow right now and it feels like everyone is a little gun-shy, but I’m confident some exciting stuff will get the go ahead soon and when you’re speaking to so many different publishers concurrently there’s always the possibility three or four things get picked up at the same time and then suddenly its panic stations. Which is why I just keep writing to make sure I’ve banked scripts and don’t find myself needing to write four issues in a week or anything crazy.

Anyway, whilst I’ve been trundling along in the world of actual made and being published comics I’ve had a lot going on.

FLASH GORDON QUARTERLY #1 is either on your comic store’s shelves already or will be as of tomorrow as a little mix-up seems to have happened with its release. Either way it features the incredibly fun story FLASH DETECTIVE SERVICES that I wrote. I personally requested my pal and incredible artist Russell Mark Olson for this as with Russell you just know he’s going to deliver all that sticky noir goodness and getting to collaborate with him even on this 8-pager has been a joy.

All artists require different amounts of direction and information and Russell, especially in a 30s noir setting, only needs the bare minimum to weave his magic.

We were also lucky to have letterer Lucas Gattoni join us to complete the team and I think we’ve made a little gem of a tale.

Excitingly, there is also very much the possibility of us doing more. So, if you enjoy our make sure to let Mad Cave know through your social media channel of choice.

With Flash out in the wild all focus turns to the next big thing I have going on (and it really is a biggie) - SKIN POLICE!

Yes, the new sci-fi series I’ve written over at Oni Press with the amazing Daniel Gete on art is into the final few days of pre-ordering (if you’re interested please, please, please let your local comic store know!) with issue hitting shelves October 2nd.

This series starts off as a thrill-a-panel sci-fi action story, and although the action only gets more intense as we go you’ll soon see that there’s an awful lot going on beneath the service as the insidiousness of this future Europe-setting starts to peak through the cracks with conspiracy, betrayal, deceit and lies bubbling up to push our characters, their principles and beliefs right to the edge.

Come for the action delivered in spectacular visceral bursts by Daniel and stay for the twists and turns of the many mysteries contained within the story.

We also now have the first issue fully coloured by Jason Wordie and lettered by Jeff Powell. Here’s a peak.

I absolutely adore what Daniel did with this second page where we are first introduced to series protagonist Brisson Eckis, having him literally leap out of the panels towards us.

Daniel is such a detailed artists providing these intricate, rich backgrounds in 90% of the panels, so when he drops a stark empty background it really hits extra hard, like here. I love it.

I think that’s everything I have for you right now. I’ll be at a few Spanish comics events this month - Jornadas de comics Aviles and Jornadas de comics Valencia - so, if you happen to be at any of those come say hello if you see me.

Stay safe out there and we’ll speak soon.

Jordan