Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Andy Weir, Annette Grantham, Connie Brockway, David Viergutz, Donovan Scherer, Eloisa James, JN Chaney, kickstarter, Lenore Ashwood, Lydia Sherrer, Morgan A. Drake, Parallel Truths, Paul Ian Cross, Project Hail Mary, The Martian, tony lee

Andy Weir, Writer Of The Martian & Project Hail Mary Returns To Comics

Andy Weir, author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary, returns to comics with Lee Townsend and Parallel Truths on Kickstarter

Tony Lee is a longstanding friend of Bleeding Cool, a former comic book writer turned comic convention organiser turned million-selling crime novelist; he occasionally returns to comic books for a bit. But it seems quite a few prose authors would like the chance as well. Some of them rather notable. I mentioned Andy Weir in the title, but he's just one of them.

Every few years, Tony Lee attends an event in Las Vegas called Author Nation. It's primarily aimed at independent publishers and authors at all levels, and last year, Rob Napton, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Legendary Comics, was there to speak about graphic novels. Out of that came an idea developed with Joe Solari and the Author Nation team, alongside their Reader Nation conference. They wanted to create an opportunity for independently published authors to break into comics. And in that endeavour, Tony Lee and (mostly) Rob Napton are producing a themed graphic-novel anthology for the event, titled Parallel Truths. With a week left on Kickstarter. And they have brought in some very big names.

Because yes, as the title of this article suggests, that includes a new comic book story written by Andy Weir, author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary, and drawn by 2000AD artist Lee Townsend. It's where Andy began, he wrote and drew his mad scientist Casey and Andy webcomic in the noughties, as well as Cheshire Crossing, with Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, and Mary Poppins, before switching to prose. Now, for one night only, he is switching back, with other writers Lenore Ashwood, Connie Brockway, JN Chaney, Paul Ian Cross, Morgan A. Drake, Annette Grantham, Eloisa James, Tony Lee, Donovan Scherer, Lydia Sherrer and David Viergutz.

But it's not just the writers; they also have artists Javier S. Aranda, Hector Barros, Stephen Baskerville, Marika Cresta, Nelson Dániel, Sam Hart, Maan House, Giada Marchisio, Andrea Mutti, Lydia Rasero, Werner Sanchez, Álvaro Sarraseca, and Ellie Wright all contributing, While Tony Lee gets his story Witness drawn by John Ridgway. Yes, that John Ridgway. Tony tells me, "When I got back into comics as a teenager, one of the books that really grabbed me was Swamp Thing. I loved John Constantine, so when Hellblazer launched it became an instant buy. John Ridgway's artwork was a huge part of that experience, and he was one of the artists who inspired me to dream about working in comics one day. It feels very strange that, at this stage of my career, when I'm largely writing comics for fun or for projects I genuinely believe in, I finally get the opportunity to work with him."

"What If Another Version of Your Life Existed Somewhere Else? A better one. A worse one. A deadlier one. Parallel Truths brings together twelve writers and fifteen artists to answer this question in one oversized multi-genre graphic novel anthology. Presented by the team behind Author Nation and Reader Nation and featuring some of today's most imaginative creators, each story opens a door to a different world. Spanning 248 pages of original artwork, Parallel Truths is a collection of stories about identity, memory, grief, ambition, love, and the roads not taken. The stories are written. The art is in production. Now we need your help to bring this collector's edition into readers' hands!"

The graphic anthology Parallel Truths will also only be available on Kickstarter, and there are no plans for a comic book shop or bookshop release. And I am told that if that changed in the future, Andy Weir's story would not be included. His contribution is exclusive to this project and tied to his appearance as the Author Nation keynote speaker for 2026. It has currently raised $37,181 toward a $45,000 goal from 615 backers, with 7 days to go. If you want it, there will be nowhere else to get it. But.. what actually is it?

• Access by Andy Weir + Lee Townsend. ACCESS is about a young girl with a superhuman ability to fit in wherever she doesn't belong. It is classic Weir, exploring themes of being an outsider, leading to an unforgettable ending.

• Daddio by Donovan Scherer + Nelson Dániel. Hunted for entertainment by trillionaire heirs on a live-streamed island, a disposable clone relives his own deaths until he realizes the only way to win isn't survival but breaking the game itself.

• Observer Bias by JN Chaney + Lydia Rasero. A scientist opens a portal to another reality—one in which he made a different choice and has a different life. A life that he's always wanted. Or so he thinks.

• Copy / Paste by Paul Ian Cross + Andrea Mutti. Before high-risk surgery, a biological duplicate of Arthur McQuinn is created as insurance, but when a power cut causes a mix-up, one life is suddenly claimed by two men.

• Shaft 81 by Lenore Ashwood + Stephen Baskerville + Ellie Wright. When a lunar miner with a worsening, secret physical anomaly volunteers for yet another descent into the forbidden depths of Shaft 81, she discovers she's been unknowingly groomed as a subject in the corporation's temporal-stability experiments. Forced to choose between diverging realities—one fatal, one monstrous, one hers—she takes the path "less traveled," unleashing a fate both inevitable and terrifying.

• Driving Backward Down Route 302 by David Viergutz + Maan House. Stranded on a forgotten rural route, a group of passengers face living hallucinations drawn from their own secrets, until the road reveals that the most dangerous monster has been riding with them since the first stop.

• Witness by Tony Lee + John Ridgway. When a London detective is called to investigate a woman's death on the underground, a cryptic witness begins changing his testimony. With each new version, reality itself shifts around her, forcing her to question what's true before a report can make any of it permanent.

• Dead Reckoning by Morgan A. Drake + Sam Hart. A ship's navigator discovers she is steering two overlapping voyages—one carrying the living, one ferrying the dead. As both realities converge, she must face the truth that every course she charts condemns the same souls to drown, again and again.

• The Curious Magic of Two Right Answers by Lydia Sherrer + Javier S. Aranda + Werner Sanchez. When a spell goes catastrophically wrong, a wizard's cat and a witch's dog are thrown into a fractured reality where only by embracing each other's impossible truths can they save their lost humans.

• Married in Haste by Eloisa James + Hector Barros. When a drunken aristocrat abandons his bride at the altar, a reserved duke secretly takes his twin brother's place, forcing the newlyweds to fake a love match before London society.

• First Knight by Connie Brockway + Álvaro Sarraseca. In medieval England, a battle-weary knight returns from the Crusades searching for peace and finds instead the feisty — and bloodthirsty — wife-by-proxy he'd forgotten he even had.

• Threads of the Heart by Annette Grantham + Marika Cresta + Giada Marchisio. A woman trapped between grief and memory discovers that loss can become its own parallel reality.

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