Posted in: Comics | Tagged: bristol comics expo, Comics, conventions, fables, Mark Buckingham, mike carey, shelly bond, unwritten, vertigo

Vertigo At The Bristol Comic Expo – An Unwritten Prequel Graphic Novel Has Been… Written

Kyle Rogers writes from the Bristol Comic Expo, happening this weekend.

Panellists: Shelly Bond + Mark Buckingham

Mark Buckingham met Karen Berger doing portfolio reviews at a con, and she offered him work a year later. His first DC work was on Hellblazer in 1988 as an inker. Most of his work through the mid 90s was inking, moving to pencilling in 1997. And it was working on the Merv Pumpkinhead: Agent of Dream mini introduced him to Bill Willingham. Fables then launched in 2002, but Buckingham was busy working on Spider-Man with Paul Jenkins so he couldn't join to begin with. After reading scripts from Willingham, he drew the Animal Farm story arc, which led to meeting his future wife at a convention in Spain.

Fables #129 depicts Snow White as Joan of Arc on the cover. #130 cover was shown as well, depicting June Bug – this will apparently be a one-shot specifically aimed at new readers. Shelly Bond also showed the cover of the in-progress Fables Encyclopaedia, which will feature character bios and histories. #131 will be the start of the next story arc, focusing on Rose Red. And next year will see the release of a set of detailed Fables bookends featuring the core cast of heroes & villains preparing for battle.

There's also going to be a crossover (described as an "event") between Fables and The Unwritten to start with TU #50, a double sized issue. Apparently this was first conceived at a post-con curry at BCE '12. There will be a variant cover by P. Craig Russell.

Tech issues led to a question and answer session. The first was about the new-reader accessibility of the event for Fables readers who don't currently read The Unwritten. Issue #50 will be new-reader friendly, without requiring readers to read previous issues to follow. Bond states that part of the event's intention is to raise awareness of The Unwritten amongst Fables readers.

The Vertigo session introduced the new 100 Bullets miniseries, Brother Lono, by Azzarello & Risso. Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy's horror series about underwater adventure The Wake, which Bond described as making "Orca look like Finding Nemo". Collider by Simon Oliver of The Exterminators and Robbie Rodriguez, dealing with a unit who deal with "broken physics" events. And an American Vampire special is coming up written by Snyder with Rafael Albuquerque on art, as well as the anthology issue in August.

Jeff Lemire's new book Trillium, released in August, will be put out as a flipbook, with one side for each of the two protagonists.

And they left us with news that an Unwritten prequel original graphic novel will be published later this year, with a preview page shown demonstrating some interesting layouts…

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