My fine-feathered friends, it is a big week for the geopolitical space opera: The Free Planet volume 1 graphic noel and Free Planet #7 are both available now! That means you can catch up with issues #1-6 of the series ComicBook.com called “one of the best sci-fi comics of this year--and potentially all time” then go immediately to your local comic shop to pick up the next issue. While you’re at it, set up a subscription so you never miss an issue!

Lots to talk about this time out but, one last time for the folks in the back…

Order Free Planet volume 1 from an independent bookstore, your local comic shop or my local comic shop.

Free Planet #7 is in stores NOW!

Get ready for EXPANSION PROTOCOLS, Free Planet’s first interlude. While series cocreator and artist Jed builds up a head of steam on the main story, we’re taking a step back to detail how humanity has spread across the universe. It all kicks off in Free Planet #7, with a millennia-spanning exploration of the war-ravaged Thouros, from the human diaspora’s first arrival to the planet’s eventual absorption by the Interplanetary Development Alliance.

Best of all, we’re being joined by guest artist Ilias Kyriazis, who did this incredible cover, also available in virgin, trade dress-free format!

Long-time readers of my work will recognize the name of our issue #7 guest artist; Ilias Kyriazis and I first collaborated on the G.I. Joe and M.A.S.K. First Strike comics, part of my ill-fated (but increasingly fondly remembered?) time on IDW’s G.I. Joe series. We got on like a house afire and Ilias was slated to do a run on Scarlett’s Strike Force prior to its abrupt and controversial cancellation.

What always struck me most about Ilias’ work were his expressive page layouts, particularly those that used elements of the story as panels. In a very real way, Ilias elevated my scripts through his contributions and we’ve been searching for the right project to reunite on ever since. In consideration of page design’s importance to the Free Planet approach, I knew Ilias would absolutely crush EXPANSION PROTOCOLS part 1.

As discussed previously, a crucial aspect of my approach on Free Planet is that I do thumbnails, not after scripting, but before; doing so ensures that the book is ideated as a comic, not as scenes that have to be forced into the shape of one. If you’ve ever wondered why Free Planet reads so differently, why each spread is a new world to explore, this is this reason.

I first started doing pre-script thumbnails on Jed and my Archie vs the World one-shot and it completely revolutionized how I think about writing comics. That book was a kind of test-run for what Jed and I are doing on Free Planet, as was the Archie: Judgment Day series, on which I collaborated with the very game Megan Hutchison, who embraced and ran with my layout ideas.

However, my approach has evolved significantly since that time, over the course of not just writing six issues of Free Planet but also seeing how Jed interpreted my scripts, discovering new strengths of his all along the way, establishing the overarching Free Planet style. As such, I was unsure how my approach would fit with Ilias’, especially in light of how different he and Jed are as artists. While both utilize a graphic style with a heavy emphasis on page design, Ilias deploys more open space and chooses his moments in a manner entirely distinct from what’s de rigueur in US comics.

Fortunately, as a self-contained issue, we had complete freedom to come up with material that Ilias could absolutely crush. But the challenge remained: How to capture what’s essential about the Free Planet style while also playing to Ilias’ distinct strengths? Given how frequently Ilias’ pages are built around large, singular elements, I used that as a starting point for many of my thumbs. Additionally, in consideration of Ilias’ use of wide open spaces, I eschewed charts and graphs for maps and diagrams, while also making sure to leave room for another of Ilias’ talents: Depicting massive, convulsing crowds.

Ilias did rough thumbnails just to ensure we were on the same page and I was overjoyed to see how much they aligned with my own (which are only ever sent to artists upon special request); it was a relief to find that I had correctly surmised the type of material suited to Ilias’ innumerable talents. Also like my own thumbnails, Ilias’ were pretty loose but, crucially, included placements for balloons; those for our big chunky historical captions would come later.

There was never any doubt that Ilias was the right guy for the job but, if there had been, it would have evaporated once pencils like these came in. Here, you can really see the magic of Ilias’ own approach. Things are still pretty loose across the spread but look at where he’s put in the detail: The figures. Even at this stage, without rendering complete, with no inks, colors or letters, the page still reads, not just in terms of what you’re looking at, but the eyelines—the ones you naturally want to follow around the spread—are crystal clear.

Voila! Ilias’ fluid, elegant inkwork turns this into a comics page. There is, to be sure, a ton of ink and work on this spread but what’s most impressive to me are all the open areas, far more than what you’d normally see in Free Planet. More than just giving Vittorio room to play, the white space also serves another role, with ink serving the same role in its presence as its absence: Framing the most important elements and, once again, guiding the eye through the page.

The lettering placements here were done by me; I always do a new lettering script in consideration of the finished pages. This time out—solely because Ilias didn’t include them in his thumbs—I was a little worried about all my planned captions fitting in. I, however, was a fool to doubt Ilias: Though they didn’t show up in the thumbs, Ilias had clearly designed his pages with my big chunky captions in mind and, as a result, it was a breeze identifying not just an acceptable one, but the right place for every caption.

With a non-Jed artist drawing Free Planet for the first time, I knew that we were going to need Vittorio Astone’s colors to pull things together. As much as I love comics guest issues, we needed this interlude to still feel like Free Planet, especially since it was also taking place in a brand-new setting.

Similar to my scripting challenges, we had to find a way for Vittorio to adapt a style that had been created specifically to complement Jed’s very distinct art, all while honoring and accentuating the strengths of Ilias’ art. It turned out to be exceedingly easy: Instead of the colorholds that Vittorio deploys liberally on Jed’s textures and tones, Vittorio absolutely wowed us with gorgeous textures to fill all those blank spaces, reining in his colorholds, deploying judiciously to push the most important elements even further forward. The result is a page utterly distinct from whats come before but still very clearly Free Planet.

Lettering is my favorite part of the comics process. Part of that is the fact that it’s the only other part of comics-making other than writing that I can do passably, though painfully slow and certainly not at the level of my long-time collaborator Taylor Esposito. But still, I enjoy bringing that familiarity and expertise to bear. Fortunately: Taylor and I are completely in simpatico. Not only do we have a shared theory of lettering but we’ve worked together long enough that we both know and trust one another’s aesthetic judgments. For instance, we both recoil from pages with too many special lettering treatments on them but, on this spread, we both agreed that for a pair of deities separated from the action of the panels—and perhaps not even real—it was warranted.

But there’s also another, larger reason why I love this part of the process: The lettering stage is when a page of art actually becomes a comic. Comics aren’t just pictures with words slapped on top of them; they aren’t even art and letters combined; comics are design, comprising art and lettering. Perhaps a pedantic distinction but one that speaks to the heart of the Free Planet project: None of us are creating in a vacuum or along an assembly line; every member of the team on every issue is working, holistically, toward a goal that is only realized when lettering is added.

Did all that process chitchat fail to sell you? Then howzabout this: Free Planet #7 has a variant featuring Rob Liefeld’s legendary Youngblood characters! Scratch that, we have two variants, including an ultra-rare black & white virgin variant that shows off just how gorgeous Jed’s linework truly is.

Free Planet for the bookshelf

As I’ve mentioned ad nauseam: Free Planet was designed to be read in single issues and that’s still the best way to appreciate it. Not only are the single issues the only place you’ll find our in-world letters pages, but issues #7-8 won’t be collected in the trades at all! It’s why I keep encouraging you to subscribe at your local comic shop or pre-order from mine.

Still: I recognize the appeal of having a book as rich and complex as Free Planet in book format. It was important to me that we provide something that functions on its own merits, that feels like something worthy of standing next to the books populating Dr. Aldous Foyroushi’s Recommended Reading, found at the back of the volume. So, we prevailed upon the good doctor once again, for a Free Planet volume 1-exclusive forward, reproduced here for those of you following along in single-issue format.

We’ve been blessed to keep our ongoing series going strong—as you read this, I’m writing #13 and Jed’s drawing #12—but I absolutely refuse to sugarcoat it for you: The comics industry is currently in an exceedingly rough spot for creator-owned work. Marvel? DC? Huge releases from big-name talent? That stuff’s all doing gangbusters, but—for a host of reasons—it’s harder than ever for creator-owned books, especially those as idiosyncratic and deliberate as ours, to carve out a space for themselves.

The upshot, of course, is this: If you want more Free Planet in your life, we need your help:

• Order Free Planet volume 1 from your local comic shop or independent bookstore; doing so let’s them know there’s demand and to up their orders. Free Planet volume 1 makes a great holiday gift for sci-fi heads, Dune fans, political junkies, and anyone who thinks—incorrectly—that comics are an unserious form.

  • Don’t have a local comic shop or book store? Then open one up! Order signed copies of Free Planet volume 1 from my local shop.

• Set up a subscription to Free Planet at your local comic shop. It’s the best way to make sure you never miss an issue and can read the geopolitical space opera in its original and intended format.

  • You can also pre-order Free Planet #7-14 from my local shop. The EXPANSION PROTOCOLS arc will not be collected in the trades!

• Review the book on Amazon, Goodreads and League of Comics Geeks! Now more than ever, end-consumer reviews are among the best ways to help spread the word about books you love. Plus: It’s FREE.

And that’s it for me this week. As a reward for making it to the end of this monster installment of Atlantis Still Sunk, please do enjoy this glimpse at Free Planet #8, EXPANSION PROTOCOLS part two, drawn by my brother-in-BEEF, BEEF BROS cocreator and violence maestro Tyrell Cannon!

xoxo,
Aubrey