LET ME RIDE

On sale today, It Girl and the Atomics #10, the first issue drawn by Natalie Nourigat. 

In stores, and online. Download it here.

Lettered by Crank!, colored by Allen Passalaqua, and that nifty cover, of course, is by Michael & Laura Allred.

Read a six page preview.

Or, if you're inclined, let Comic Bastards tell you how good it is.

And since we're sharing, how about this awesome pin-up from Megan Levens for the second trade paperback, due out in the Fall...

Current Soundtrack: Little Boots, Nocturnes

I AM THE SOUND OF YOUR OWN DREAMS

A new week, and some new links.

* Comicosity has a new interview with myself and Natalie Nourigat, mainly focusing on A Boy and a Girl, but with a little It Girl and the Atomics mixed in.

Read it in full at the link.

* Comic Book Daily has a nice plug for the minicomic I did with Jung Hu Lee, "You Cross My Path," in their column Comics from Around the Web.

This is an unhappy little tale about Portland, Oregon’s darker side. It’s about the bogeyman who promises you something cool and then turns out to be evil. This isn’t a new story. It’s happened in fiction and real life more times than you can probably imagine. But there’s something so straightforward, so visceral and unassuming about Rich and Lee’s telling. It’s worth a look.

You can, of course, still read "You Cross My Path" here.

Current Soundtrack: shufflin' the iPod, with Duffy, "Don't Forsake Me;" Frank Ocean, "Crack Rock;" Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, "Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks;" Suede, "Heroin"

NATALIE - SHE'S PROBABLY OUT THERE THINKING IT'S FUNNY

Image has announced their May publications.

Remember those teaser panels I posted a few weeks ago suggesting people guess who the artist for It Girl and the Atomics #10? You know. This post, and this one.

Well, now you can get your answer...

IT GIRL & THE ATOMICS 10
story JAMIE S. RICHart NATALIE NOURIGATcover MICHAEL & LAURA ALLRED  

MAY 1532 PAGES / FC / E EVERYONE$2.99 

“TWEENAGE FBI” Part OneBETWEEN GEARS creator NATALIE NOURIGAT joins the Atomics team! Someone broke into Flem’s lab and stole a dangerous invention. It Girl picks up the crooks’ trail, only to discover it leads to a team of underage secret agents – though the real criminal mastermind is centuries older than all of them.

That's right! My A Boy and a Girl collaborator Natalie Nourigat will be drawing both #10 and #11.

Here is a special sneak preview: the cover to #10 by Michael and Laura Allred, and five unlettered pages from Natalie!

Colors are by Allen Passalaqua.

This story will basically stand-alone. Though it does have some small connections to the two-part story in #7 and #8, I've tried to design each basic story so you can read them all on their own.

#10 is all done so expect a more substantial preview soon!

Current Soundtrack: XTC, Drums and Wires

READER MEET AUTHOR: Emerald City Comic Con & Stumptown Comics Festival

It's a new year, and once again, time to announce that I'll be attending two awesome Pacific Northwest comic book shows.

Emerald City Comic Con, happening in Seattle the first weekend of March, has announced Joëlle Jones and I as special guests. They always have an awesome selection of people--take a gander for yourself, right here--and we're proud to be amongst the 2013 roster. ECCC is a good time, guaranteed.

This year, Joëlle is promoting Helheim and I am promoting A Boy and a Girl, so we are setting up with Oni Press rather than Artist's Alley. Our collaborators will also be in attendance. Cullen Bunn will be there for Helheim, and Natalie Nourigat is setting up with Periscope Studios. I am told that Natalie and I will be on a panel with Oni to talk about A Boy and a Girl, which the publisher has postponed to launch around the same time. (Which is why you haven't seen the launch happen this month; we're bummed about it, too.) Megan Levens will be at the show, as well.

Joëlle is booking sketches, so check out the deal she's offering and get back to me.

We've also been approved for a table at the Stumptown Comics Festival on April 27 and 28.

This is going to be an exciting event. Chynna Clugston Flores is a special guest of the con, and I will likely be running her spotlight panel. We should have plenty of It Girl issues on hand.

Nicolas Hitori de has also booked a trip to be here. We'll probably be carrying around some Spell Checkers vol. 3 pages as a sneak preview.

And, I am sure Natalie will be around, as well, and A Boy and a Girl will be partly underway at onipress.com--meaning we can finally start talking to you all about it. We've been sitting on this for a year now, we're dying to hear what people think.

So, mark your calendars!

Current Soundtrack: The Joy Formidable, Wolf's Law

A YEAR SINCE LAST SUMMER

Multiversity Comics sent out a survey to a bunch of comic book creators asking them what they thought about comics in 2012 and predictions for 2013. They are releasing the results as a series of columns, a category a day. Amongst the contributors are myself and Natalie Nourigat, my stellar collaborator on the forthcoming A Boy and a Girl and also another comic we haven't announced yet.

Here is the main aggregate page for the Mutliversity Comics Favorites of 2012 lists.

So far, they have posted the choices for title and artist. New categories will go up all week.

Current Soundtrack: Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights: The Tenth Anniversary Edition

IN A FUTURE WORLD, WITH AN ASTROGIRL

Today at New York Comic Con, Oni Press held a panel to present details on upcoming projects. In amongst the announcements were new specifics regarding the company's online comic initiative and the book Natalie Nourigat and I are doing for it, A Boy and a Girl.

Read all the details here at Robot 6 and check out all the previews. There's new Sixth Gun material, and comics by Wook Jin-Clark and the team of Ananth Panagariya and Tessa Stone, and lots more.

The new OniPress.com
The publisher also announced the January debut of a totally new OniPress.com that’ll be loaded up with webcomics by a host of creators.

“We saw the transformation of the music industry over the last decade, and we see comics experiencing a comparable metamorphosis,” said Oni Publisher Joe Nozemack. “We believe there’s opportunities for new models to emerge alongside the existing ones giving both established and new readers comics that engage and entertain.” 

The new OniPress.com will initially offer two new serials a week, along side three additional serials pulled from the publisher’s 15-years worth of backlist material. The first of these new series, A Boy & A Girl by Jamie S. Rich and Natalie Nourigat and Buzz by Ananth Panagariya and Tessa Stone, were initially teased at Comic-Con International in July.

Per the release, A Boy & A Girl explores a future where real people are rapidly being supplanted by life-like androids, the need for that emotional connection can become even more desperate, and Travis will go to great lengths to find out where that amazing girl he met last night, Charley, lives, so that he can convince her to go on a date with him. What Travis doesn’t know yet is that it’s Charley’s last night in town, and she’s in a mood to really tear things up. If they’re going to go on a date, it’s almost guaranteed to be one that neither of them will ever forget.

That describes it pretty well, I think. The comic will go online starting in January. It's been in the can for a while, so Natalie and I are both very excited to see it emerging into the light of day.

Lettering was done by Ed Brisson, who is also a writer. Check out Murder Book and the rest of his website.

By the way, did you also see this wicked Joëlle Jones page from Helheim in the preview material? Day-um!

Current Soundtrack: The Divine Fits, A Thing Called Divine Fits

e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Midi-Confessions123 * Criterion Confessions * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll [old version] * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2012 Jamie S. Rich

A BOY AND A GIRL TALK

Great interview with Natalie Nourigat over at Spandexless, where she discusses her current and future work, including a little bit about our book A Boy and a Girl, filled with thinly veiled passive-aggressive denigrations of my character. She's so horrible!

(Except not really.)

Go read it.

Oni Press has still only released art you've already seen, but I like this sketch that Natalie sent me early on, so what the hell...a new tease!

Current Sountrack: Fun., Aim and Ignite

YOU'RE SO GREAT, AND I LOVE YOU

Spend some time over at Comic Book Resources, because not only can you see their exclusive preview of Wednesday's It Girl and the Atomics #1, but the Robot 6 blog has a new interview with me, featured by in the column by that fine journalist Tim O'Shea, Talking with Tim.

What appeals to you more in writing in the Madman universe, the characters or the situations they find themselves in [or that find them]?
I’m always drawn to characters more than plot. I think good characters suggest good stories. You have to do things for things to happen, and what you do depends on who you are. The thing I’ve seized on the most is the idea of self-actualization. Throughout all of the Madman series, the search for self is always up front. That’s always been important to me in my own work. So, to have a group of characters who are all trying to make themselves and the world they live in better, that to me is the perfect scenario. 

It Girl is also just a really pleasant person to be around. She’s a sweetheart with an optimistic outlook and a willingness to experiment and explore. I’d like to be her friend in real life, and writing about her, it’s like I am. I get to pal around with a superheroine!

Read the whole article here.

Current Soundtrack: Blur, Blur Special Edition Disc 2

LET'S ENTER THE LIVING WORLD, LET'S MAKE IT A BOY AND A GIRL

The massive Oni Press announcement from Comic Con yesterday included the first official mention of my comic book collaboration with Natalie Nourigat, A Boy and a Girl. Comics Alliance has the early details of this and all the other super cool new Oni Press projects. We're proud to be in such esteemed company! Natalie and I worked on this book all through 2011, and we can't wait for everyone to read it!


I've basically been referring to this book as a "futuristic romance." It's a date night where two people meeting for the first time find themselves going from one crazy good time to another, with hints of danger along the way.

Current Soundtrack: 

e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Midi-Confessions123 * Criterion Confessions * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll [old version] * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2012 Jamie S. Rich