Well, it took the purchase of a $3000 scanner and months and months of tracking down original art, digital clean up, and very expensive over-my-bandwidth-limit charges, but I just heard from Image today that my scanning efforts are good enough to go ahead and make a new digital comic book edition of A Distant Soil.
Because A Distant Soil was self published by me for the first 14 issues, there has never been an Image edition of those comics. The lead story was reprinted in our graphic novels. There are no digital files of the cover art or back up stories.
I do not have digital rights to some of the back-up features, so they are cut.
I’ll be doing new cover art for many of the back issues (issue 1 and issue 9 were particularly lackluster efforts,) and there will be new character portraits.
Lookie, handsome character portrait in progress. You likey?
Old fashioned drawing thing made with dirty stick marks on pressed wood stuff.
The prequel to A Distant Soil, “Seasons of Spring”, will also be cut and run separately. Some pages need to be completely re-lettered, and that is time-consuming unfunny. Don’t feel like you’re getting shorted. The early issues of A Distant Soil were 40-48 pages long.
I’m not sure how to restore issue 14, but I may simply run an original story in it. In color. That would be fun.
All sketches and paintings that ran in the series in black and white will also be published in color. Lead stories will still be black and white. Alas, just do not have the copious funds to hire a colorist at this point. I’m feeling the pull of Kickstarter…
I’m very excited that Image is bringing an A Distant Soil digital comic out, and am very grateful they’ve helped me with my project for so many years. Image has just been great!
Really excited about this news. Whee!
Also: I am working on the new issue of A Distant Soil. This makes me happy, too. I will let you know as soon as I’ve turned it in to Image. Back to print until the end of the story! March, march, march…
