Exciting news! My next publishing project, The Long Con, will be serialized starting this July from Oni Press! This is my first book to be published the old-fashioned comic book way – in individual issues with cool covers, available at your local comic book store, and then in trade collection (…if enough people like it!).
Comic Book Resources ran an excellent piece on it yesterday along with a four-page preview from Issue #1. Read it here!
The Long Con has a very simple premise: the Apocalypse hits during a Comic-Con. Most of society, and everything within a fifty mile radius of the convention center, is reduced to glowing rubble. Five years later, a desperate journalist braves the wasteland to revisit the site, and discovers that the con never ended…it only evolved.
Victor Lai, failed puff-piece journalist, and his erstwhile nerd-pal Dez Delaney, indie comics PR maven, must navigate LongCon’s many threats and obstacles in order to bring peace to warring fandoms, discourage cannibalism, and possibly uncover a sinister, decades-long conspiracy with implications for humankind’s very survival…
This is also an exciting first for me in some other ways. I’m co-writing the book with my friend and regular Twitter bantering mate, Ben Coleman. Ben is a deeply funny comedy writer who, thanks to his career as a film critic for the Portland Mercury, also has great discernment when it comes to smart storytelling.
We’re also working with an incredible artist, Emilee Denich, because we were lucky enough to catch her in the thirty seconds before she becomes insultingly famous. Finding an artist who can design dozens of character AND draw big ridiculous set-pieces AND crowded fight scenes AND physical humor AND character banter AND mimic different media styles AND do it in an overall style that would appeal to a broad audience AND make deadlines? That is the dream, my friends, and Em is so freakin’ dreamy.
Add in the color stylings of M. Victoria Robado, the type wizardry of letterer Aditya Bidikar and the laser-eyed editorial skills of Ari Yarwood and Robin Herrera and you have the recipe for an amazing comic shop debut. I hope you’ll all join us when issue #1 arrives at your local comic book store this summer!
My latest story, collected in Bitch Planet: Triple Feature #3, is now available at your local comic book store, or online through Image Comics!
Triple Feature is an ongoing anthology of original 8-page shorts, by creators hand-picked by Bitch Planet writer Kelly Sue De Connick and artist Valentine De Landro.
Bitch Planet is the sharpest satire currently publishing in the comics world – a mix of Brazil-style dystopian sci-fi, blaxploitation flicks, and Orange is the New Black. It was an honor (and a total blast) to be invited into the unexplored corners of that universe.
Naturally, when asked to do a riff on a multiracial/queer/feminist space prison epic, I chose to do a story about a couple of white guys going camping.
…you’ll see how it fits in, I swear.
One of the highlights of Emerald City Comicon this year was moderating a panel with the talented cartoonists Lucy Bellwood One of the highlights for me was moderating a panel with the talented cartoonists Lucy Bellwood , David Malki ! , and Kory Bing . Its full title was The Power Was In You All Along: how to turn your weird talents and unusual obsessions into authentic, original art.
XOXO Festival co-founder and blessed angel Andy Mcmillan was on hand to record the panel for us. We reference some of our visual work in the talk, so you can click through the presentation slides in the viewer under the audio player below!
[pdf-embedder url=”http://www.dylanmeconis.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/powerwasinyou.pdf”]
I’ll be appearing at the Oregon Historical Society on Thursday, Dec. 1st for a panel discussion! The panel is being held in conjunction with OHS’s amazing exhibit on comics in Oregon. (My Eisner-nominated short comic Outfoxed is part of the exhibit.) Other panelists will include my two studiomates Colleen Coover and Cat Farris, as well as syndicated cartoonist Jan Eliot (Stone Soup).
Details below! Note that the event is free and open to the public.
Join us for a wide-ranging discussion among a diverse group of working Oregon comic artists, moderated by Dr. Susan Kirtley, director of the Comics Studies program at Portland State University.
Free and open to the public
Thursday, December 1, 2016
7PM – 8:30PM
Oregon Historical Society
1200 SW Park Ave
Portland, Oregon 97205
From the latest edition of Publisher’s Weekly / Children’s Bookshelf, an exciting announcement!
You’ll be hearing and seeing plenty more about this in the months to come, but for now it’s exciting just to say in public that it’s happened! I love this story and the artistic challenge it represents for me, and I really look forward to speaking with a young audience. Thank you to Barry and to Susan for taking me up on it!
