SoooooOOOoooo, in case you missed the news — this happened. It was a whole thing. Got a lot of media attention, as it turns out. As such, a lot of other questions popped up around and about the situation, and I thought I’d try to answer them — most of these I already answered on Twitter, but I’m gonna pop a few more in here, too, for posterity’s sake.

I do appreciate the outpourings of support. It’s been a wonderful counter to the overall situation, and also a great counter to the hot fresh tides of hemorrhagic diarrhea that have sloshed upon my beaches, spewed forth from the Worst People. And trust me, there’s been a whole lot of that. To what end, I dunno — they got me fired, good job, clowndicks, now what? But I’ve noted about 40 YouTube videos celebrating the firing, and gotten lots of communication from The Worst People, some of which relies on the standard poo-poo baby insults (soy, cuck, and a new one, NPC? wtf is that?), and private messages that were more comfortable using nastier (often homophobic) epithets.

I guess this is their victory lap? So it goes.

But, I got considerable support, too, and thanks, honestly, for that. I was at the Bucks County Book Festival yesterday in Doylestown, PA (chatting with the inimitable Fran Wilde!) and I had a lot of people come up and offer their support — people I don’t know, people who were not necessarily fans before? It was nice. I had people at the farmer’s market, at my son’s school, all aware of the situation. Which threw me for a loop, but they were all in on the solidarity, and that was rad.

I also know that some folks put themselves out there by supporting me online — either because they work with Marvel, or are especially vulnerable to harassment — and many who did speak up for me DID receive harassment all their own. So both thank you and apologies for that.

(I also appreciate folks sharing links to my books and such. That really means a lot, and honestly, it does help.)

So, to answer a few more QUESTIONS and such that have come up — kind of an FAQ, evolving out of this situation:

Q: “Chuck, but don’t you actually suck and are also the worst?”

A: I mean probably, I dunno.

Q: “But didn’t you want Roseanne fired from her job and isn’t it the same as what happened to you?”

A: Roseanne said racist stuff and boosted dangerous, wackadoo conspiracies, which is different. But also, you’re free to call for me to be fired, and Marvel is free to fire me. I mean, I don’t like it, and I think it sets a troubling precedent and a chilling effect (alongside a very clear message to comic creators: “We do not have your back, not one little bit”). But it is what it is. They were free to do it.

Q: “Were you really fired for your politics?”

A: They told me as much, though in an EW article, there was this:

Which is sorta weird, because it suggests they don’t like… bad words? Politics are fine, as long as I don’t put the word ‘fuck’ in there? Which for the record is probably nonsense. I mean, hello, DEADPOOL, the movie, is gloriously, deliriously filthy.

And again, we’re talking about someone (ahem, me) who has written blog posts expounding on my love of tasty, tasty vulgarity going back to like, 2009. My first novel, Blackbirds, is heady with the stink of countless vulgarities. Shouldn’t have been a surprise. Couldn’t have been a surprise.

Q: “Did you receive any warnings beforehand?”

A: None, zero, bupkis.

Now, this answer and the one before it combine to suggest, at least to me, that booting me off the comics was in fact ideological — like, okay, if you didn’t like my vulgarity or whatever, you would’ve done one of two things:

1) You would’ve asked me to tone it down. “Chuck, you’re being poopy,” they would’ve said, and then I could’ve decided on my own if it was worth toning down my poo poo doody words to keep a job.

-or-

2) They would’ve just let me finish the last two issues of Shadow of Vader and then softly urged me off the second as-yet-unannounced SW comic. And then just… quietly never hired me again. That woulda worked. I might’ve wondered if something was up, but not enough to speak out about it. I would’ve casually assumed that they didn’t want to hire me again for XYZ reason, which is 100% normal in freelancing anything.

But this wasn’t soft. It was done with purpose and swift measure, suggesting an ideological bent. Further, nothing I’d said or done in my tweets recently had made the news — well, it made cuckoo alt-right news blogs, which is the only place I make that kind of splash. So, if someone there felt, uhh, splashed upon, it means they felt that way because they pay attention to exactly that kind of news — fringe right-wing stuff, not MSM.

(Well, okay, I had some tweets in the mainstream news recently — specifically, the shitposting tweets between Sam Sykes and I, which resulted in You Might Be The Killer, directed by Brett Simmons, and still currently airing on the SyFy network and showing at film festivals. So: my tweets were bringing me only good news. I say this not to humblebrag — well okay maybe a little — but also to note that the way I tweet is not unknown. The evidence of that literally exists in film form.)

I mean, hey, maybe I’m wrong; maybe someone just had it UP TO HERE with all my BAD WORD TURDS and just couldn’t take it anymore but this seemed like something else to me. This felt explicitly political. As if I had peed in someone’s ideological pool.

Q: “Who really fired you? Marvel? LFL? Disney?”

A: I have no way of actually knowing this, and can only go with what was said on the call, which was that this was my editor, at Marvel. I asked specifically “where does this come from?” and that was the answer.

Q: “Were you fired because you included LGBT characters?”

A: Not to my knowledge. I only noted that in my original thread about all this because that is what tipped off the harassment wave at the beginning of all this, way back when Aftermath came out — and that harassment wave arguably culminated in this campaign to get me fired, which, ultimately, seems to have worked.

Q: “Would you ever write for SW or Marvel again?”

A: My understanding with Marvel is that I’m done there, like done-zo, game over, it’s KOS if I show up. Star Wars, well…

Star Wars is like, the greatest thing to me. It forms part of my pop culture blood and bone. And the people I have met, both fans of SW and the people who work inside the architecture of that storyworld (all fans themselves!) have been amazing.

I don’t expect they’d hire me again (breathe a sigh of relief, Worst People), and it’s not like I have time anyway — Del Rey has me for a couple big books of my own I need to put out into the world first (WANDERERS — 2019!) Plus, other projects are lining up, which is nice. But, sure, I’d work in SW again. I love it too much.

Q: “But Chuck, don’t you actually hate fans and insult them?”

A: No. What? No! Why the sweet hot fuck would I hate fans? Fans, in the truest sense, literally supported me and my endeavors. That’s true of fans of SW, of Marvel, and of me personally. The only people I’ve ever insulted are the ones who harass, the ones who have very poisonous ideas about dehumanizing people who don’t look like them.

If you feel insulted by that —

Well, check your soul, see what you really stand for.

Q: “But Chuck, didn’t you actually insult people who didn’t like your book and also The Last Jedi?”

A: Also no. No, no, no. My own wife didn’t like The Last Jedi! (Though she’s come around on a second viewing. In fact I literally just caught her re-watching the Yoda “we are what they grow beyond speech” this morning.) Tons of people don’t like present-tense writing, so they didn’t like Aftermath. That is perfectly normal and cool. Like what you like, don’t like what you don’t like. The people that got me salty were the ones who again, were harassers, or were the keepers of awful ideologies.

Q: “But as a brand representative –”

A: I should stop you there. I see this often enough that I need to call bullshit. Freelancers are not brand representatives. Yes, if a company finds our tone or words reprehensible, they shouldn’t hire us, but no one in their right minds expects a freelancer to be a banner-carrier for a brand. We do work. We are real people. We get to have real opinions. I’m not your dancing monkey.

Q: “But Chuck, aren’t you antifa?”

A: Well, I am anti-fascism, yes — which, last I checked, wasn’t supposed to be controversial. Being against a dictatorial, authoritarian regime is… pretty much stock-and-trade for the entirety of American history. That said, I do not belong to any “antifa” groups — I don’t put on a mask and do whatever the fuck antifa do. I’m Eleanor Shellstrop — not really into joining groups.

Q: “But Chuck, didn’t you call for violence against Trump supporters?”

A: I’ve been seeing this one a lot.

Let’s refer to this tweet right here, and then, you tell me.

Because it feels to me like, ohh, I dunno, when I say, “this isn’t the same as calling for violence,” I’m making it clear that this is not the same as calling for violence. It’s almost like I said, “The sky is blue!” and then a bunch of people got mad because they assert that I said the sky is red?

Obviously, no, I do not call for violence. My support for incivility is one meant to support noisy protest, whether in the streets or in restaurants or in government buildings. It’s one that says it should be okay to use your words, all of them, even the vulgar ones, because you shouldn’t have to couch your scorn for this administration’s actions in a pillow of polite comfort. That comfort serves those we protest, not the protestors.

Let me say, of course, that if you feel that my tweets felt like a call to violence — I offer a genuine apology if what I said came across that way. I don’t see it, but then again, I don’t always see the whole shape and tenor of things I say, because I, like most people, am firmly up my own ass. I’m just doing my best over here, so if it came across that way: apologies.

That said.

That said.

Do understand the deepest fucking irony of being precious about this, mm? The PA GOP governor candidate talked about stomping Tom Wolf’s face with golf cleats. The president has routinely flirted with inciting violence at his rallies. Or hey, remember Greg Gianforte? Or GOP mailers with rifle scope crosshairs on Democrat opponents? Not to mention the codified policies of putting kids in cages, which one could argue is a violent, illegal act. Or shrugging off the violence against reporters — or the deaths of reporters. Or cozying up to white supremacist groups. Or, or, or.

So, no, I’m not calling for violence.

But those calls are out there, and they’re coming from inside the house.

(The White House.)

(Zing!)

(Ahem.)

But I am mad. I mean, am I not supposed to be?

If you aren’t mad, I gotta wonder why.

Q: “But you did delete some tweets because you knew they went too far.”

A: I deleted some tweets because they were the tweets being sent around by huge alt-right celebrity types — thus, they were open portals to endless harassment, and deleting them shut those portals, therefore snipping a lot of that harassment. I very, very rarely delete tweets, but these, I had to, just to stem the frothy poo tsunami trying to crash on my house and home.

For the record, I still stand by them. I still would like to tell the GOP to eat shit. I still compare them — particularly, GOP Congress — to prolapsed assholes. That’s not a call to violence, it’s just me being pissed, and trying to (perhaps weakly) utilize some of the vulgar rage magic put forth by some other maestros of the form, like Bill Hicks or David Simon.

Q: “What is a prolapsed asshole?”

A: It’s like a regular asshole, except instead of an innie, it’s an outie.

Q: “Did you see David Simon tweeted about this?”

A: I did, just this morning. And it is not exaggeration to say that it is currently one of my fondest moments in this weird-ass career of mine. A tweet like that from David Simon is a blessed object. I wish to get it made into a cross-stitch and hang that shit above my desk.

Q: “What happens now to Shadow of Vader?”

A: Ennnh? I don’t know. I like to think they’ll keep my first three — they told me I was being pulled off of 4 and 5, which leads me to believe that my completed scripts for 1, 2 and 3 will still end up out there. I was honestly very proud of them. The third issue in particular! The editor (same who fired me) was very happy about it. I wasn’t kicked off the book for lack of quality. And I had started to see the art for issue 1 rolling in from Juanan Ramirez, and the covers from Greg Smallwood were whoa-dang.

Q: “And you were kicked off a second book?”

A: Yes, a comic, not a novel, to be clear.

Q: “Should we boycott Marvel?”

A: That’s between you and your gods. I won’t encourage it, and I also won’t tell you not to. Boycotts do damage — they would theoretically damage the company, but would also damage creators across the board, including some marginalized ones. One option would be to continue to buy those comics, but only those — Nnedi Okorafor, or Eve Ewing, for instance. Or Jody Houser’s upcoming Star Wars run, or Greg Pak’s run.

Or don’t — I mean, I dunno, boycotts aren’t mean to be clean, they’re meant to burn down a forest. Again: between you and your gods. If you do cut out Marvel, I hope you’ll increase your comic buys elsewhere, supporting creators telling cool stories where you can.

Q: “Should we buy Shadow of Vader when it comes out?”

A: Again, consult with your intestinal flora on that one. You could buy my issues and not the ones by others. Or you could say fuck it and never buy them, or buy them all or — again, you do you. Do what feels right and feels necessary.

Q: “Who will write the rest of Shadow of Vader?”

A: I do not know. (I won’t lie, whoever picks up that job will earn an askance glance from me. That’s petty, I know, but I’m a messy bench.) I did full outlines for issues four and five, so I don’t know if they’ll cleave to those or do some other thing. Epic shrug.

Q: “What was the other comic series?”

A: I don’t wanna say and spoil anybody’s pudding. It’s not announced yet. When it is, I’ll flag and and say HEY I COULD’VE WRITTEN THAT, and then we’ll all rage like Ewoks about it.

Q: “Chuck, you gonna be okay?”

A: I’m gonna be great, seriously. I’m privileged in a lotta ways, and very little of my income was from comic stuff, so — I’ll be aces. This more concerning to me in a LARGER, WHAT-IT-SAYS, RED-SCARE, BLACKLIST kinda way. I hope we’re ALL okay. As I’ve noted, marginalized creators are subject to considerably greater harassment and also are more vulnerable to this sort of thing.

If this can happen to me?

It can damn sure happen to you.

Vote in November.

Yub-nub, frandos.

And thanks again.

Hello! I was fired from Marvel — from two Star Wars projects. The detail from the tweets I tweeted:

So, here’s a thing that has happened – I just got fired from Marvel. Taken off issues 4 and 5 of SHADOW OF VADER, and taken off an as-yet-unannounced SW book. This might be a long thread, so apologies in advance. (I hesitate to talk about this, because honestly, it gives the Worst Possible People a win, something they’ve wanted for a while. But I also feel like I’ve long held to honesty and forthrightness, and I don’t feel like lying when people realize I’m not on these books anymore.)

To rewind a little bit, when SW: AFTERMATH came out, I assume most know but maybe you don’t, I put some ahh, elements in there (LGBT characters) that were not received well by a certain subset of fandom. That resulted in both a negative review campaign, found across various FB groups and other Worst Places on the Internet, that began mounting the very minute the book dropped online. I was literally at a midnight release of the book, and when I got done, there were already a pile of one-star reviews piling up – which seemed strange, obviously. And scary, too. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time. (And as a caveat, obviously I recognize that yes, some people just don’t like the book for the Usual Reasons, and people who hold those reasons are not to be lumped in with the more septic side of fandom. Tl;dr see also TLJ reviews.)

I also started receiving TONS of harassment – harassment that has gone on for years, harassment that has required me to contact local police and warn them of SWATting attempts, harassment across all corners of the Internet, here, FB, Reddit, YouTube. Some of it was bot stuff, obviously, or sock puppets, but some of it was pretty creepy, and very personal. I didn’t call a lot of it out or even highlight, but it was there, a sort of… constant background noise. (Christ, for an extra special treat go search for my name and check out the YouTube videos if you want an eye-opening glimpse.)

And I was worried of course because, jeez, I thought I had screwed up. I wondered for a time if the book was bad. But then it hit list and stayed on list for four weeks – and the next two books hit list, too, and EMPIRE’S END landed even higher on the list than the first book. And privately, I was told by folks inside LFL that there was no worry here, that they valued that I spoke out both speaking up for myself and for STAR WARS, which has always honestly been a progressive brand and company. And it made me very proud to work for them, too, not just because — holy hell, basking in the glow of STAR WARS, but because the people were great, and they totally got it. (Hell, a lot of the people inside LFL have experience considerable harassment. I mean, that’s not news, but Kelly Marie-Tran? Bueller? Bueller?)

After I did HYPERION with Marvel, they hired me then to write the TFA adaptation, which meant I got to work with some wonderful folks – @hantos and @cracksh0t – on a project that was tricky, because it ended up being more a translation of the movie than an adaptation. (I know Heather received some of the worst harassment in the entire industry – I can’t speak to how well Marvel did or did not protect her from it, but I know she was at the bottom of a major misery funnel from Comicsgate and their ilk. Far worse than I suffered.)

Still, I thought things were good, and I hoped to do more work with Marvel or SW or a combo of the two someday – comics isn’t really my “thing,” per se, but I felt like I was getting a handle on it. Of course, the harassment continued – and it got worse again when TLJ came out. Which I’m sure is no surprise to anyone who has ever tweeted, “Hey, I really liked THE LAST JEDI!” That’s really when I started to see lots of YouTube videos and stuff about me and it was… Well, it was creepy. And I’d seen other signs of people being… fired for political reasons, or folks like @ChelseaCain who was yanked around and was also the subject of considerable nastiness.

And then we announced SHADOW OF VADER juuuuust last weekend, and people were excited, and I thought everything was good. I was not made aware of any issues, and my online self has always been my online self, so. Except, yeah, no. Today I got the call. I’m fired. Because of the negativity and vulgarity that my tweets bring. Seriously, that’s what Mark, the editor said. It was too much politics, too much vulgarity, too much negativity on my part.

Basically, because I was not civil.

Which, of course, is their decision to make. I’m not their boss. (And, turns out, they’re not the boss of me, either. Har har.) (I joke because otherwise, I cry.)

My understanding over this call was that this was a Marvel decision, not an LFL decision, but I can’t really confirm that. The editor said he had made the call. He seemed genuinely upset at my tweets and profanity, so maybe that’s accurate. And again, that’s his right to do so. If they honestly feel that my presence will damage the book, I don’t want that. I want the book to shine, and artists like Juanan Ramirez and Greg Smallwood to do their amazing thing. Artists like that are gods in my mind, so I’m happy to not distract from their literal magic.

But it does set a troubling precedent. One we’ve seen already – James Gunn, Jessica White, and so on – of folks fired because they riled up the wasp’s nest of asterisk-gate. And it seems odd to be mad that I’m mad about politics when – well, look around. Climate change, kids in cages, sexual harassers at the topmost tiers of power, and so on. A call for civility as the PA GOP candidate threatens Tom Wolf with a golf cleat stomping. I dunno, man.

I know it hands Comicsgate a big win. It will embolden them. But they won — I’m out of Marvel and, I guess for now, at least, out of any kind of Star Wars. Do your victory lap, I guess. (Just please leave me out of it.) (All that being said, a lot of wonderful people still work inside those institutions and storyworlds, and I hope you’ll continue to support them and the stories they’re telling.) To conclude: this is really quite chilling. And it breaks my heart. I am very sad, and worried for the country I live in, and the world, and for creative people all around. Courage to you all. I have a dire fear this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

P.S. Vote in November like your life depends on it. Because it just might.

THINGS THINGS THINGS

VARIOUS THIIIIINGS

*does the Things To Talk About dance*

*which involves a lot of gallumphing*

*also partial nudity*

Let us begin.

Ragnatalk: The E! True Hollywood Story

So, finally, finally, Thor Ragnatalk, Episode 2 has come out. This was — this was a hard one to record, and we really weren’t going to talk about the whys and whyfors of that situation, but Anthony and I felt we had to explain ourselves and, maybe too, tell our truths, so this episode is exactly that. As always, you can listen to new episodes at Ragnatalk-dot-com, where you can hear us reveling in the glory that is Thor: Ragnarok, taking the movie in ten-minute chunks. It’s also available where PODCASTS LIVE, like for instance, over at Appletown. Listen, subscribe, hear our great shame, our tale of woe, our journey of iniquity.

p.s. may contain pee jars

Death & Honey

HEY SO, remember Three Slices?

In case you don’t, a quick refresher:

My very good friends and authorial talent batteries Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson said, “We should do a collection of three novellas,” and I dunno what I said, I probably mumbled something and covered myself with a bean bag so I could drink more low-shelf whiskey, which legally constituted an agreement on my part. As a result, Three Slices was born. (You can get it on e-book or audio!) Kevin wrote a Iron Druid story, Delilah wrote a Blud tale, and I wrote a Miriam Black novella.

And it was a lot of fun and there was much rejoicing.

We decided to do it again.

It’s called Death & Honey.

And this time, there’s a print version.

*hold for applause*

Subterranean Press is offering 1500 signed numbered editions, and only 52 (!) signed leatherbound copies of our little collection, and you can pre-order now. (Releasing in February.)

What’s in it?

Well, Kevin wrote a new Oberon’s Meaty Mystery.

Delilah wrote a new Rhett Walker story.

And I wrote a story tied to the Miriam Black universe, starring the character Lauren Martin, aka, Wren — it bridges the gap between The Raptor & The Wren and Vultures. (It is not essential to read this to understand either of those books, but is a narrative value-add, so to speak.)

There will of course be an e-book and audio edition, too. More on those when there’s more to say.

In the meantime, here’s the cover to the print version, by Galen Dara —

Bucks County Book Fest

Aaaaand finally, I’ll be speaking this Sunday at the Bucks County Book Festival, appearing at a panel at 1pm with AWESOME AUTHOR HUMAN Fran Wilde! We’ll be speaking at the Editor Tent, talking about… ummm?

Sci-fi and fantasy and probably knock-knock jokes and loud birds and ice cream.

TBD.

You can find the whole Bucks Book Fest schedule here.

Hope to see you there!

This is not the first time I’ve noted this, nor will it be the last, but I like to occasionally put a fine point on this —

Sometimes, writer’s block is not writer’s block.

Let’s rewind a little.

I got a nice email. Part of this email contained the following:

Anyway, things have worked out and I’ve recently been trying to get back on the horse. But, I just cannot seem to make any headway. I feel as though every idea I’ve had is as useful as a paper parachute. And it feels impossible to garner any new “worthy” ideas. If I try to just push on with one, it doesn’t work. I’ve tried all the basics; Bradbury’s noun-cohesion technique (I don’t think he called it that, but *shrugs*), free writing, random word/character/title generators, fan-fiction (don’t judge me!), writing advice; books, blogs (including your own), studying my own past work; finished, unfinished, etc. But, I still feel like a fish on a beach: floundering, hopeless, lifeless. Obviously this leads to all the angst-riddled and existential questions: am I good enough? Should I give up and become an accountant? The list goes on.

So, to get to the point, can you offer me a torch or even a slither of light to help find my way through the dark?

There’s a lot going on here. Because there’s a lot going on with any writing process and with anybody’s brain, whoever they are. Our brains are fucking thorntangles of complicated business, with lots of thoughts and fears and weary worries and woes — and then adding onto that the expectations of work, of writing, of creating something in an imaginative way, ha ha, ohhh, boy, that can be like shoving a bunch of angry ferrets through a narrow pipe. It can work if all the ferrets play nice, but they won’t, because they’re ferrets. They’ll form a squirmy, ferrety ball and won’t go down that pipe.

We all have days, as writers, as makers, where it’s hard.

It’s just hard.

We maybe don’t know why. It just is.

Writer’s block — which is silly that we call it that, because everybody feels blocked and frustrated from time to time, from parents to plumbers to astrophysicists — manifests out of an unholy host of reason. And out of those reasons are a panoply of potential solutions.

Hey, maybe something in the first part of the draft isn’t working.

Maybe you’re not ready to write the book yet.

Maybe it needs more time in the ol’ THOUGHT OVEN.

Maybe you need to take a walk, move some blood from your sluggish body into your brain — blood carries oxygen and oxygen, if I remember my science correctly, CARRIES IDEA MOLECULES.

Maybe you need to eat better. It’s hard to think with a glob of corn pudding in your head — created when you’ve eaten too many damn carbs and haven’t worked them off. Maybe eat a lighter snack next time and sit down.

Maybe you could use some coffee.

Maybe you could use some liquor.

Maybe this just isn’t the book for you.

Maybe you should try something small, build up some confidence, get you that sweet, sweet dopamine hit of finishing a smaller, more doable project.

Maybe you’re just psyching yourself up and out.

Maybe it’s a normal fear of failure.

Maybe it’s the rarer, but also normal, fear of success.

Maybe you just gotta write the hell through it.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s not writer’s block at all.

Maybe it’s depression. Or anxiety. Or the one-two-punch of them together.

I’m not qualified to tell you that. Nor am I qualified to tell you how to fix it. I am qualified, though, to tell you that it’s normal. It’s not odd to suffer under the yoke of those disorders. It doesn’t mean you’re broken, it means you join millions of other human beings — and honestly, I’d bet a not-small-percentage of other artists, too — who just got a lot of shit going on upstairs. (Doesn’t help that the world is basically a Portajohn filled with yellowjackets right now, and we all feel trapped inside it.) So, you need to be kind to yourself and get the help you need for depression and anxiety — and trust me when I tell you, that help shouldn’t look like the help you’d give to fix writer’s block. The solution for one is not the other, because the problems are literally different. In that case, the block is a symptom of a larger thing — and treating depression like it’s writer’s block?

Well, it’ll just make the block worse.

And the depression, too.

Because you’ll feel inadequate. Frustrated. It’s like thrashing around in quicksand.

Every process is different, and every mind is different, too, and how we join one mind with its process is a tricky thing — one made trickier by depression and anxiety. But it doesn’t mean you can’t work. It just means you’ve gotta find your own way forward.

Some people sculpt a tree with a chainsaw — others use gentle little wire loops to sculpt detail into clay. Yours might require a gentler, finer detail — a slower pace, a kinder rhythm. Do what you must, but most of all, recognize that whatever’s going on upstairs is not unusual, it is shared by many of your kin, and like them, you can still keep on keeping on.

Soooooo, some news! With the wrap up of the brilliant Darth Vader run by Charles Soule, I will be writing a five-issue miniseries for Marvel Star Wars called:

SHADOW OF VADER.

*thunder rumbles*

It was announced at NYCC this past weekend!

Each issue takes the POV of someone affected by Vader — i.e. someone cast into his literal and figurative shadow. The first issue is a riff on Friday the 13th, with Vader as our slasher killer. The second is basically Willrow Hood: A Star Wars Story. Third issue is about a morgue attendant on the Death Star who becomes somewhat… obsessed by a series of unusual deaths, deaths that ahem, might have been caused by a mysterious choking sensation. Fourth issue shows the return of Aftermath‘s Acolytes of the Beyond. And finally, the fifth issue shows a conflict between Leia and a new Resistance pilot who has learned of Leia’s grim, Vader-flavored bloodline.

You can check out the first two covers, both by Greg Smallwood:

I mean, right? So cool.

Art on the first issue will be by Juanan Ramirez.

You can read more about it at StarWars.com, plus read about tons of other cool SW-related publishing announcements. (Including Alphabet Squadron!)

The day that was announced was also the day that You Might Be The Killer premiered on SyFy, and though I did not get a chance to watch it live, I did DVR it and watched it last night. I also followed along as it aired, checking out the hashtag and it was great fun to watch people… well, having great fun, especially on a day so deeply shitty and divisive as Saturday was. (Goddamn, this country cannot get its head out of its ass, can it?)

I think that’s it for news from me, so here you go, have a butterfly, just don’t eat it.

…

You ate it, didn’t you?