Monday 11 September 2017

Plans for the future

Tentative logo design. May change before publication.
It's been 20 years since I created the Suburban Satanists strip, the story of an ordinary family who just happen to summon up demons from time to time. It first appeared in the short-lived Norwegian comic Geek in 1997, then was revived for Egmont's Herman Hedning comic in 1998, also published in Norway (and Sweden). It resided there for several years and there was even a collection of early strips published in 2003. 
As regular readers of this blog will know, for years I've been intending to publish a Suburban Satanists comic for adults in English. A handful of the strips have already appeared in the UK, such as in the back of my Brickman Returns comic and in Time Bomb Comics' Bomb Scares anthology. 
The plan was to publish Suburban Satanists No.1 this year and launch it at the Raptus Comic Festival in Bergen in November. However, as it's a time consuming process I won't be doing it this year now. Basically I need to scan the strips, colour them, and letter them in English. 32 pages. I won't have time to get that done and printed by November. 
Page from a future issue.
Therefore, I've had to decline the kind invite to Norway this year and the new plan is to launch the comic next year, in 2018. I'm not sure exactly when; hopefully before the summer, and hopefully I'll be at the 2018 Raptus event later in 2018 to take copies over to my friends in Norway. (And if you're wondering why Norwegians would want an English-language edition of strips they read 20 years ago in the native language, well, most Norwegians are more articulate in English than some English people I've met.) 

So; Suburban Satanists No.1 is scheduled for 2018, and further issues appearing once or twice a year thereafter, depending on sales and spare time. 

In the meantime, I'll be continuing producing Combat Colin comics, with issue 2 scheduled for November 2017, and issue 3 for March 2018. That's the plan anyway! Keep reading this blog for further updates and news! Thanks for your interest. 

5 comments:

Manic Man said...

I have friends in Norway and yes, they can speak/read English better then some English people I know ^_^ I also know that at times, Norweign comics can be printed in English because it's a wider market (one friend was a Comic artist with her own company publishing some in Norway).

Still, it's good when this comes out ^_^. Really, you need an assistant's help but 1) I don't know if you want one, and 2) I live too far away to help on much... ¬_¬;

But take your time and whenever it comes out, it's gonna be good ^_^

PhilEdBoyce said...

Fantastic news Lew! This comes as a very pleasant surprise. I'd never heard of the family before Brickman Returns and thought they were hilarious, so it'll be great to read more of their strips that I've never seen before. Looking forward to it. Your comic empire expands ;)

Lew Stringer said...

Most of us in comics don't earn enough to employ assistants, Ryan. Besides, it'd defeat the object of producing my own comics if another hand helped out,

Thanks, Phil. It'll be a while before it sees print but I'll get there hopefully.

Manic Man said...

true about the money.. and about defeating the object. I was more thinking about not overstraining yourself and trying to do too much.

Lew Stringer said...

Thanks Ryan. Mainstream work has to take priority of course so my self-published schedules are flexible. It'll all work out.