BLACK CLOAK - FINAL TULA LOTAY VARIANT COVER REVEAL
(so many covers!)
All right. Here we go!
A lot of what I have been busy with (off and on) over the last couple months was preparing BLACK CLOAK #1 for print. As this is something I haven’t done myself before, there was a dramatically steep learning curve. Everyone at Image has been crazy helpful and nice but I’m not gonna lie, it’s been a struggle!
The good news is I’ve learned a lot and the book is looking GORGEOUS and we are getting a truly awesome response so far from reviewers and retailers. So I’m excited (yet still terrified. fun!)
I’m going to debut those special Founders Only covers in a few days, but because we added some covers at the last minute I wanted to show those off. So, even though I LOVE getting Variant Covers, I don’t really like overwhelming readers with them, as it quickly can feel like too much.
However, we had a small screw up that meant none of the covers for issue 1 were marked as Incentive Covers — which CAN really hurt your order numbers — not always, but we didn’t want to risk it. And because I work with some of the absolute best people around, I was able to call in some weekend favors (still paid of course!) from Mattia and Meredith to do new Variant Covers for issue 1. And in a happy accident we realized that we’d used the wrong Tula Lotay cover for our clean dress variant — which meant we hadn’t actually used that “sketch” — which got us to a total of 3 covers. You may have seen the first two which debuted on AIPT last week, but I’m going to show them all here now, starting with the final unrevealed cover by Tula Lotay. And since her cover is the last (except the Founders Only cover) I guess I’ll just start with the last cover and work toward the main/first cover.
HERE WE GO!
BLACK CLOAK #1_COVER I: TULA LOTAY (1:50)
BLACK CLOAK #1_COVER H: MEREDITH MCCLAREN (1:25)
BLACK CLOAK #1_COVER G: MATTIA DE IULIS (1:10)
BLACK CLOAK #1_COVER F: TULA LOTAY CLEAN DRESS
BLACK CLOAK #1_COVER E: TULA LOTAY
BLACK CLOAK #1_COVER D: PEACH MOMOKO
BLACK CLOAK #1_COVER C: CHRISTIAN WARD
BLACK CLOAK #1_COVER B: JEFF DEKAL
BLACK CLOAK #1_COVER A: MEREDITH MCCLAREN
The past couple weeks has been consumed with BLACK CLOAK print stuff — including getting a bunch of retailers comp packages to help promote the book — looks like about 50 shops (most in the US but a few in Canada) are getting packages — as they were the fastest to claim them — so if you have a great shop, keep your eyes out for our swag in your shop and let me know if you see any of it in the wild! The poster is PREEEETY eye popping — wanna see? ;D
#RennaRights! ;D
And the really good news for those of you who are Founders from year 1 — you’ll all be getting one of each of these (Signed 11x17 poster, vinyl sticker, and postcard) with your Signed Founders Variants in January. Plus the oversized foil postcard we showed you earlier in the year.
Also, for those of you that missed it yesterday, Image did a great little trailer for the book — feel free to give us a like (and leave a comment!) and share it around with anyone you think might dig BLACK CLOAK.
Oh! And you’ll all be happy to hear that so far we’re getting great advance reviews for issue 1!
A 5/5 rave from But Why Tho?
A 4.8/5.0 rave from Monkey’s Fighting Robots
And a fun little review from Professor Bill at Comic Book University — he’s not a big reviewer of indie titles, but he tried this out and was pretty happy with it! Yay!
Meredith and I have also done a bunch of podcasts — I’ll try to link them as we do them (but it’s been a lot and is hard to keep track!) — most aren’t out yet, but I had a terrific chat with Damon (who many of you may know from the comments section here — among other things) at Agents of Fandom:
Okay. More very soon (like…probably this weekend!) — including more exclusive reveals. Wooo! Like…you guys haven’t even seen the insane cover that Mattia did for issue 3 of BLACK CLOAK… AND I’ve been so consumed with BC that we’re way overdue on some THE CULL teases too. Plus we haven’t even talked about all the media and end of the year lists and well, so much!
More soon and thank you all for being so absolutely spectacular. <3
OOH. We haven’t had a question in a while. I have holidays and holiday travel on the brain, so let’s go outside comics a bit:
Where’s the best place you’ve ever traveled? Doesn’t have to be far! Just has to be somewhere you truly love and maybe even somewhere that changed you?
~Kelly
I've travelled a lot and have fallen in love with a lot of different cities, but honestly, the 2 weeks I spent in Iceland felt like I travelled to another, better universe. It's my favorite trip I've ever been on and I'm scared to go back because I don't think it can live up to my memories, ever though I know it will.
Covers look great!
I don’t know if I can name a best place I’ve traveled, but one that I enjoyed a lot that is probably a bit more unusual for most people would be Iceland...in winter. Dark, mysterious, lovely. (And I loved their traditional Christmas tales of the mischievous Yule Lads - they project the Yule Lads on the sides of buildings around Reykjavik, so you can walk around trying to find them all :)