Hey, Kids! Comics!

After Seventeen years toiling away in the comics industry, struggling to make my mark as a writer, it's beginning to look like 2008 might be my biggest year yet in the biz.

Yeah, I know we're not even halfway through 2007 yet, but making indy comics takes a long time. As it stands, though, I have a bunch of projects moving along that should be out next year.

Of course, there are more than a few projects I've been involved with that I thought would be out long ago that never made it to the stands. And some of the projects I have on tap for '08 were originally intended to be finished years ago. But I'm reasonably confident that most of the projects I'm listing here will be out and in comic shops before the end of '08. They're all well-along, production-wise, and have strongly committed, established publishers – publishers that I have confidence will actually still be around when the books are ready to go next year.

Here's what we're looking forward to in '08:

Femme Noir: The Dark City Diaries. Finally! The great folks at Ape Entertainment have picked up this long-gestating creator-owned 4-issue project, drawn by Joe Staton, based on our webcomic. Horacio Ottolini and Mark Stegbauer are slapping on the inks, while Melissa Kaercher colors.

Kolchak: Night Stalker of the Living Dead. A three-issue miniseries from Moonstone Books, based on the classic TV series. In this Tim Hamilton-drawn horror epic, I take the intrepid reporter/monster hunter and drop him down into the middle of a Dawn of the Dead/28 Days Later-styled zombie plague. Hey, everybody loves zombies, right? Covers by Dave Aikens.

Captain Midnight. Right now, this is a serialized back-up feature entitled "Assault on Midnight Mesa," made up of three 6-page installments, that I hope Moonstone will eventually collect as a one-shot. The artist is Rich Clark.

Perils on Planet X. I've just come to a verbal agreement (with contracts on the way) with a reputable publisher to bring to the market the long-in-the-works sci-fi swashbuckler illustrated by the talented Gene Gonzales. Three issues, color. Look for more details on this, soon.

And, finally, there's Gravedigger: Dangerous Prey, a new, hardboiled crime comics one-shot, pencilled by Rick Burchett and inked by Fred Harper. Of the projects on this list, it's the most tentative, but I'm hopeful that it will be out before the end of next year.

I also have a number of prose stories lined up for publication by Moonstone Books in '08, featuring characters like The Avenger, Captain Midnight and, possibly, The Spider again.

I'm the busiest I've been in years, and I'm having a blast working on these projects. Hopefully, they'll proceed without serious snags and make it to your local comics shop as planned. Keep your fingers crossed!