Nothing but blue skies

The glorious early summer weather that London is enjoying at the moment provides the perfect excuse for a photo session with the scrumptious new Mirabilis hardback from Print Media Productions. This is the first copy to reach Britain - the rest are even now en route by lorry from the print works in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or possibly resting in a lay-by while the drivers fit in a well-earned cuppa and a sandwich.

I've previously gone on record as saying that the Mirabilis iPad edition looks "better than print", but that was before I saw the quality of colour printing that publisher Ivo Miličević has brought to this project. These books really look amazing - even better than iPad, in fact - and are such a feast for the eye that they almost eclipse the ravishing Dirty White Candy, who took time off from her punishing schedule of blogging, tweeting, script-doctoring and novel-writing to pose for the camera in a Mirabilis t-shirt.

The author's promise to the reader

In the Best.Episode.Ever of The Simpsons, the Comic Book Guy is asked what right he has to complain about Itchy & Scratchy. “As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me,” he says, to which Bart replies: “They’re giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? If anything, you owe them.”

In most countries outside the UK you don’t have to actually pay for the mere right to have a television in your home. But even if you’re watching The Simpsons for free on Fox, you still get shown a bunch of commercials that aren't exactly an enrichment of your viewing experience. And then you give in and go and buy stuff you don't need and the advertisers give the network some money to thank them for bringing all those bees to the flower. So you did end up paying for that show, whatever the writers at Gracie Films may think. There are no free lunches, and no free TV dinners either.

The contract that exists between writer and audience is more complicated than that between a craftsman and his customer. The reader or viewer or player gives you their money, but on top of that they give you their undivided attention (the ones who keep up a running commentary all the way through a movie, please leave now). They are asking you to make them believe - and not only for the time it takes to watch the movie or read the book, but an enduring belief. That’s why I can’t abide plot holes. A story should bear scrutiny if it has any right to my time.

Neil Gaiman says that the reader’s contract when buying a book is for that book only; it’s not a mandate upon the author to deliver more in the series. The problem I have with that, as an author, is that I know the power of suspense. It’s the best trick I have in my writer’s toolbox to keep you reading. You want to find out what happens next - at least, I hope you do. And after all, I don’t have to promise a ten-book arc with a sweeping plot that hinges on many secrets with which I am enticing your attention. I could just tie up everything in the one book. If I choose not to, it’s because I’m trying to plant a compulsion in you to buy my next book - and in that case I'd feel under an obligation to deliver.

The corollary is that if I do start to weave a story around some far-reaching mystery, I’d better have in mind the real answer to that mystery. At the point when it because clear that Lost’s writers hadn't yet thought about why the polar bear was on the island (much less why it was also in a Green Lantern comic) and they were just going to figure out something later - at that point, the contract is broken. Why continue to pay their wages when you can make up your own ending and it’ll be just as good?

The flipside of all this, and just as undesirable, is when stories are spun out indefinitely. “A beginning, a middle and an end,” is what Aristotle stipulated, not “a beginning and then endless variations on the theme until you finally jump the shark.” Success is the usual culprit, as endings have to be left open enough to leave room for a sequel or a new season. Prison Break is a perfect example of the problem: what would have been a memorably taut, single-season narrative suddenly splurged into the diminishing returns of patched-on plot developments. And, although I realize this is heresy, maybe we could say the same of The Sopranos. I know we got six seasons of the best soap opera on TV, and thank you, David Chase - but what about the pitch-dark Greek (okay, Italian) tragedy that the first season was building up to? The network’s need for more of the same possibly deep-sixed a climax that, had they gone ahead and ended the show there, would be remembered now as the chilling, thrilling apotheosis of TV drama.

Any sense of obligation a writer may feel to his or her readers, beyond delivering the script or book that they actually paid for, is of course self-inflicted. George R R Martin and Neil Gaiman rightly take their own view on this. However, the writer’s duty is to the characters is not up for debate. You brought them to life, so it’s incumbent on you to give them a life. That means a proper story, not leaving them in limbo halfway through or dragging them into an endless and directionless existence where nothing is ever resolved.

Obviously I’m thinking now of Mirabilis. I can certainly promise that the story will not be spun out ad infinitum. Leo and I have one year of narrative, which we currently expect to take about 800 pages across four seasons. Then it’ll be January 1st 1902, the green comet will be gone, and all our loose ends will be tied up, leaving not a rack behind.

The harder promise to make is that the story will reach its conclusion. I would gladly swear to that right here and now, but it’s not just up me. Since the DFC folded, Leo and I have been continuing to finance the work at our own expense. At least in comics it's not too difficult to do that: digital publishing brings in a nicely regular if not (yet) huge revenue stream, and every time we sign to a print edition in a new territory, as with the upcoming Print Media hardcovers in the UK, that pays for a few more issues. Mirabilis #9 through #12 are already fully funded, and by the time we complete #12 we'll be able to say the same for the four issues that will tie up season two. A handful at a time moves the mountain.

That's why I'm glad I'm not doing this for television. Joss Whedon would love to have had enough viewers to make Firefly and Dollhouse viable; same goes for David Milch and Deadwood. My heart skips a beat every time Fringe's ratings are mentioned. Since they announced the season four renewal, the heart in question is looking healthy at the moment, and thank you for asking, but if I had to find $1 million per episode of Mirabilis then I'd be in cardiac arrest in a month.

If Mirabilis continues to build an e-readership as it has been doing since Christmas, and if we keep on picking up print publishers in the US and Europe - in short, if enough people care about Jack and Estelle to want to find out what happens to them - then we promise on bended knee at any altar you like to take this story right through to the end. We’ve planned out an epic with some really big surprises that we think you’re going to enjoy. Hope you can join the ride all the way to the end.

London Calling

My wife Roz, in addition to being a million-selling ghostwriter, runs a thriving blog called Nail Your Novel, where she dispenses advice on the craft of writing. Most of the discussion there is about novels and screenplays, so I thought it might be interesting to see what Roz makes of a comic book. She certainly fits my definition of a casual reader of the medium as, while she might accompany me to the local comics store, she couldn’t find her own way there without a map and she won’t actually cross the threshold unless I drag her inside, preferring to poke around in the dress agency down the road while I’m sorting through the latest Dark Horse and Vertigo titles. Anyway, without further ado or indeed any ado whatsoever, here is what she made of London Calling by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page:

In a London flooded so deeply that nothing below the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral is showing, a woman paddles a boat. She tells her three child passengers a story about Charlotte Corday, a French psychic agent who was sent to London on a secret mission. And so we flash back to the meat of the story. It’s the 1950s. Corday is newly arrived in London, waiting for further orders about her mission and avoiding a number of unsavoury folk who seem to know more about why she’s there than she does herself.

Ultimately the mystery is about vampires, which I thought was a pity. Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t find vampires as interesting or original as many of the other ideas that were casually slipped in just for atmosphere.

But the strength of London Calling is not the story. The real fun is the richness of the world, drawn in a boldly inked black and white style with plenty of retro drama.

It seems to have diverged from ours around the Second World War, when Winston Churchill used psychics to tell him what Hitler was thinking before he thought it himself. Walsh and Page have had a lot of fun taking recognisable elements of London - both fictional and factual - and reweaving them into a punkish world of their own. Many ideas are used as throwaway textures in the background - for instance, Quatermass’s alien discovery is fact and Martians stride around central London against recognisable buildings such as the BBC headquarters in Bush House. Charlotte gets some of her orders when a TV puppet called Dennis the Donkey speaks to her from her landlady’s TV set (and, with fairytale humour, tells her switch off and to go to bed).

Charlotte herself is a likable and distinctive guide to this world, alienated by her Frenchness and harbouring a breezy disdain for the foes she meets. Her superiority and plain speaking in the midst of the madness is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s Alice.

Despite the slightly pedestrian vampires, it’s a charming and likable romp. London Calling is published by Time Bomb Comics. Walsh and Page have continued the adventures of agent Charlotte Corday in The Iron Moon published by Print Media Productions.

London Calling doesn't seem to be available on Amazon, but you can buy it direct from Time Bomb Comics. For comics cognoscenti, there's a longer review on the Forbidden Planet blog, and you can find out what artist Keith Page is up to (The Soho Devil with Christopher Fowler - looks intriguing) over on his blog. The Iron Moon is on Amazon (UK only) with the further - or earlier, or parallel - adventures of Charlotte Corday:

Is Hergé’s art holding the boy reporter back?

I admire Tintin. What comics creator could fail to? Charming, well-rounded characters in inventive plots, driven by storytelling that gracefully swoops from humor to suspense to danger and back again. Yep, Hergé is undeniably one of the great talents of the 20th century. I often describe Mirabilis as "Tintin with fantasy" and I'm always conscious of doing my best to live up to that.

But for all that, and even with the involvement of Spielberg and Jackson, the prospect of the upcoming movie hadn’t motivated me to dig out any Tintin books and re-read them. It’s the way many British people feel about cricket. Nice to know that it’s still played. What’s on the other channel?

Until this week, that is, when I caught up on Hero Complex with what Steven Spielberg has to say about the first movie, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

“It just seemed that live action would be too stylized for an audience to relate to. You’d have to have costumes that are a little outrageous when you see actors wearing them. The costumes seem to fit better when the medium chosen is a digital one.”

It’s not so much what he said about the movie, interesting as that is. It’s the screenshots that have me really stoked. And those images have been on the web since last November, so why hadn't I even bothered to take a look before? Well, what did we know about the Tintin movie? At least it wasn’t going to be 2D. Gotta love those Studio Ghibli movies but it’s love with a shrug, admit it. And as for mo-capped 3D? If you see me shiver, that's the grisly memories of Polar Express that won't stay buried.

Instead of either of those extremes, Spielberg and Jackson have picked a very slightly cartoonish 3D styling. It’s a look that’s grounded in realism but with just enough Disneyesque stylization to nudge the characters safely away from Auton spookiness and into warm relatability. Of course. Should’ve figured that Steven Spielberg isn’t the sort of man who’d get trapped under a boulder in the Uncanny Valley and have to saw his own arm off.
So here’s the thing. Up until this week I could’ve waited for the DVD. Now I’m really keen to see the movie in theatrical release. But in the meantime, if I do happen to look at any of the original albums (European for “graphic novels”) it’ll only be one or two of them, and the reaction they’ll evoke will be a sort of kept-your-dinner-warm admiration. A rich glow of nice. Nobody is going to be devouring those old Tintin stories in a fever pitch of tunnel-visioned excitement as if the sun might go out at any moment…

And why not? That crazed all-consuming zeal is what I feel when I’m reading The Walking Dead or Irredeemable. You want the truth? The world moved on. The art in those Tintin books now, it’s been damned with the label of “classic”. Like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Vampyr, even Battleship Potemkin – sure, you and I and Martin Scorsese watch those movies. No, we don't; we study them. They’re what the vintners drink.

Tintin books shift, at best, two or three thousand copies a year in the UK. I doubt if it’s even as many as that in the US. Yet a movie can exponentially boost the sales of an attached comic. What’s the use of getting the Tintin books in front of the wider, non-fan market if they can’t see past the quaint old wrapping to enjoy the stories?

You know what I’m going to say. And you know I’m right, even if you don’t want to hear it. It’s time to modernize. Comics can be reinterpreted as movies, as TV, even as Broadway musicals, so why not as new comics too?

They need to remake the original Tintin books using the art style of the movies.

An expensive undertaking? Not when you have a crack at selling north of half a million copies of each of twenty-four books. And that’s just the English language editions.
I don’t say this to court controversy, whip up a fake debate, or take a potshot at a beloved and brilliant comics creator. In the English speaking world, Hergé’s stories are fading away into obscurity. They deserve a wide audience but, just like those classic old silent movies I cited, fewer and fewer people are going to seek them out in their current form. Do we want Tintin to be known only as a series of movies, or would it be a good thing if the movies drove people to read the stories as comics too?

If all this sets your blood to boiling, remember I’m not the one stopping people from reading Tintin. If it was up to me, the series would be taught in schools. And remakes wouldn’t invalidate the original albums. They’d still be there, and maybe the newer versions would provide readers with a stepping stone (a Rosetta Stone?) to real appreciation of Hergé’s work as a storyteller. And surely that can only be a good thing.

Audrey Niffenegger talks about comics and time travel

Today's Panel Borders audio interview with Audrey Niffenegger is now available for streaming or download. Most of the discussion is about her graphic novel The Night Bookmobile. I'm planning to read the book (intriguing reviews from Danny Graydon here and Graphic Novel Reporter here) having found that the original novel of The Time Traveler's Wife is a lot more complex and interesting than you might think if you've only seen the movie. And Ms Niffenegger did all the art herself too, so (as one of those comics writers who rely on somebody else to do all the hard work) I wouldn't dream of saying anything negative anyhow.

A reservation I have about the interview itself is that it betrays the typical British awkwardness about comics. Even that term "graphic novel" - I don't object to that, unlike my good friend Peter Richardson of Cloud 109, for example, who finds it unbearably affected. When it's used to mean a comic that's ashamed to say it's a comic, then I agree. (That's not why Ms Niffenegger herself used it, incidentally, as she explains in the interview.) But as a way of saying, "This is a complete story in fifty or more pages" as distinct from a 22-page monthly comic book, then it's fine.

The interviewer does wander off a bit into discussion about how comics pages can be designed so that you read them Calvino-style in multiple directions at once, and how that can lead to a disconstruction of the very nature of linear narrative, blah blah blah. None of which I have the slightest patience for. A story is good simply insofar as it engages the reader and makes them care enough to want to know what happens next. A good (ie effective) comic is a storyboard of static images, much like a movie but with the advantage that comics are a literary medium and can therefore provide the depth that a movie, having a set pace that the viewer must fall in step with, doesn't have time to explore.

But that's a minor quibble. Overall, if you can get past the zoo-visitor's wary fascination with the outlandish beast that is a British literary critic's view of comics, it's an entertaining show that takes in Doctor Who, comics, time travel and storytelling in general. Well worth a listen, even for someone who prefers Daredevil to Derrida.

Teamwork

If you saw the unveiling of the hardback front cover on Facebook this week and you're particularly eagle-eyed, you may be wondering why it only has my and Leo's names over the title. Are we doing a Trotsky on our colleagues Nikos and Martin? Have we become airbrush historians? Did power and money go to our heads? (I wish.)

Fact is, the full credits are prominent enough inside the book but there is only so much room on the cover itself, and the house style of our publishers, Print Media Productions, is to put the writer and artist up there above the marquee. No-one is more aware than I am that a comic like ours is a team effort - no preening auteur, I - so although I'm very proud of that cover, and I can't wait to see it on the counter of my local comic store, it does give me a twinge of guilt too.

Well, to redress the balance and share the credit around where it is due, here is one of the alternate issue covers that will accompany Mirabilis's debut on digital platforms Graphic.ly and Comics+. Oh wait, is that news to you? I see another post coming on...

A Frenchwoman in the Royal Navy - and in trousers!

Thanks to Myebook, the flipbook showcase site, here's a tantalizing look inside upcoming graphic novel THE IRON MOON, by Stephen Walsh (writer) and Keith Page (artist). I'll be reviewing this in the next week or so - but you don't have to wait, as Lew Stringer discusses it on his blog. It's the first in a game-changing slate of titles from Print Media Productions, who are also the UK publishers of Mirabilis. If Lew's opinion counts for anything (and it should) you may want to order The Iron Moon on Amazon right now.

The whole world looks so different

There are no prizes (as distinct from No-Prizes) for identifying where this image comes from. It's the very first scene of the whole Mirabilis saga, where Jack is getting ready for his duel in Kew Gardens. The idea of an orchid flowering in the depths of winter came about because I wanted to show something extraordinary but logically explicable before the green comet turned up and logic moved away without leaving a forwarding address. It wasn't just the orchid that filled that role. Those Victorian hothouses are like steampunk starships, lush green alien fronds pressing inquisitively against the cold glass. What better egg from which to hatch the return of the unseelie king?

Inspiration for this scene came from two sources. First a visit to Nymans in West Sussex, where I saw a building that has been left half-derelict as a kind of folly after a fire in 1947. Hot water pipes still ran along the outside of the building, and there an entire ecosystem thrived despite the frost. And that must have stirred memories from when I was about Jack's age of a midwinter trip to Kew Gardens with a girl I'd just met. That's where fiction departs from reality, of course. Jack doesn't get to take the girl to Kew Gardens, he goes to take potshots at his rival instead.

I also wonder now: is that the full story? Because another plausible explanation would be that I was remembering J M Barrie's line that "God gave us memory so that we could have roses in December," and probably thinking that I'd rather that, instead of memory, he'd said imagination. And in another Edwardian fantasy, published just a year after the events of Mirabilis, Peter Pan hung out in Kensington Gardens, from which my mind could easily have flown to Kew. Now I don't think any of that was the way it actually came about, but who knows? They wouldn't call it inspiration if you could be sure of analyzing it.

The reason for digging out the Kew Gardens image this week is that I've been putting the final touches to the proof for Mirabilis: Winter volume one, which British and Irish readers will be able to get their hands on next month, and the very last thing we had to decide was the endpaper design. That drawing of Leo's looks amazing when blown up to several feet across, and it captures the spirit of the first half of the Winter book so perfectly that there was no other contender.

The green comet is getting hot!

Almost six weeks on from release of the Mirabilis iPad comics app, things are getting exciting. We've had two million impressions webwide and over two thousand hits on the Mirabilis website. Is that in the six weeks since the app was launched? Nope, would you believe in the last three days!

Meanwhile, Mirabilis is still in the Top 30 on "What's Hot" in iTunes books and in BookBuzzr's Top 10 most-read ebooks for December. The mini-episodes "Stung!", "The Door in the Water" and "The Wrong Side of Bedlam" are starting to storm up the charts in the Kindle Store. And we're gearing up for our debut in the iBookstore too.

And all of this is just the start, because in a few weeks you'll see all eight issues of Mirabilis: Winter appearing on a whole range of devices courtesy of leading digital comics platforms Graphic.ly and iVerse Media's Comics+. So although iPad is still my personal e-reader of choice, you'll now be able to carry the Year of Wonders around on your phone too. (Shavers and TV remotes may take a little longer.)

Nor is electronic the only option. If the age of digital comics has shown us one thing, it's that all these new ways of reading are breathing a new burst of vigor into print comics and graphic novels as well. In a few weeks I'll get you the on-the-street dates for those big 'n' beautiful hardcover editions of Winter volumes one and two from Print Media Productions, and a pretty firm idea of when the first issues of Mirabilis: Spring will be hitting the App Store.

I'm writing those issues right now and it's a blast. The action leaps on a couple of months from Winter, the green comet is getting dazzlingly bright in the sky now, which means that fantasy is rife and... oh-oh, no spoilers. Let's just say that this new season starts with a bunch of stunning surprises that will put your jaw on the floor. And it all gets bigger, sexier and more wondrous from there on in.

Top slot on BookBuzzr for Mirabilis app

After the Herculean effort of finishing Mirabilis: Winter and working with our code maestro, Simon Cook, to get it in the App Store, Leo and I started to think about ways to get the word out. One of the best forums for this is BookBuzzr, which is usually used for print books. BookBuzzr lets you set up a flipbook widget so that people can take a look at the first few pages of your book before they decide to buy.

As chapter one of the Winter book is free on iPad anyway, we also put that on BookBuzzr just before Christmas and promptly forgot all about it. (Two plates of turkey with all the trimmings and a bottle of Crozes-Hermitage 2003 can do that.) So I was astonished this week to take a look on BookBuzzr and find that Mirabilis is the #1 most-viewed title on BookBuzzr's comics and graphic novels section.

Now, I know what you're thinking. BookBuzzr is mostly looked at by proper literary types. You know, the folks who read Dan Brown and James Patterson. So how big a deal is it to be top-ranked in comics? Well, we're also #1 in Young Adult and #1 in Science Fiction & Fantasy. And we're in fourth place most-viewed on all BookBuzzr books last week.

How this will translate into app sales remains to be seen, but if you're a novelist or comic book creator and you're looking to publicize your work, I recommend giving BookBuzzr a try. Don't worry about giving part of your work away for free. If the story is compelling, people will come back for more. As Cory Doctorow says, today the artist's enemy is not piracy but obscurity.

US trade paperbacks on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

No need to fight, there are plenty of copies to go round. I'm talking about the long-awaited Mirabilis trade paperbacks, two fabulous volumes each with 112 pages of thrills, spills, wonder and chills.

Mirabilis: Winter volume 1: There's a green comet in the sky and things are getting strange. Every day, fantasy and reality are getting harder to tell apart. Witches in bottles, warmongering cabbages from the planet Pluto, and a pterandon roosting on the Eiffel Tower. Or is it a pterodactyl?

Jack Ember is caught between two very unreliable mentors. Talisin is a two-thousand year old wizard or an escaped madman - or possibly both. The Kind Gentleman is the sort of fairy godfather who'll grant you three wishes you can't refuse. Both of them have plans for Jack, who's spent his life dreaming of adventure and now is about to get rather more of it than he bargained for.

On sale on Amazon for only $19.99. Or get it from Barnes & Noble here.

And the action continues in Mirabilis: Winter volume 2: The green comet looms closer and the boundaries of reality are starting to crumble. Plant monsters, chess-playing robots, warrior saints and undersea kingdoms. And still the year has hardly begun.

Jack finds the odds against him piling up. He needs help. But who can he trust? Surrounded by fickle friends and obliging enemies, it's time to make some hard choices.

You can buy it on Amazon here. So that's a total of 224 pages of wild 'n weird green comet goodness. And for UK and Irish fans there's an even bigger treat coming up, as in just a few months you'll be able to buy the album-sized hardback editions.

Meanwhile, Leo and Nikos and I are cracking straight on with the next season, Mirabilis: Spring, the first volume of which we should have ready before the year is out. Year of wonders? Oh yes.

And in other news: we learned late last night that the Mirabilis iPad app has shot in at #7 on "What's Hot!" in App Store books.
So if you've got an iPad you can get all of Mirabilis: Winter and the Royal Mythological Society letters pages as a bonus feature. Enjoy!

Charge of the fright brigade

More of Martin's fabulous concept art for Mirabilis that doesn't get seen nearly enough. When the hardback editions come out in the spring, you'll get to see some of his paintings in all their mouth-wateringly brilliant glory. Meanwhile here's another look at a few of his centaur images. See more Edwardian London fantasy by the talented Mr McKenna here on the Mirabilis website.

It all starts here

Mirabilis has been in the App Store a little over 2 weeks now, and in that time we hit #12 in the UK books chart, #24 in France, and #74 in the US. Not a bad start to 2011. In a few weeks we'll have news of the iPhone version, and some other digital platforms too, along with more details of when readers in the UK and Eire can get their hands on those gorgeous Print Media hardback editions.

Stateside and Canada, you can get the trade paperback already: Mirabilis: Winter volume one from Amazon and from Barnes & Noble and volume two will be on sale before the end of January. There's never been a better time to make it a Year of Wonders.

Mirabilis graphic novel app in Top 100 grossing books

Mirabilis - Year of Wonders has been in the App Store for four days now, which is pretty exciting as it is. But the really great news is that we just nudged into the Top 100 grossing ibooks at #99!

You can get the first instalment of the story completely free, then other chapters cost $1.99 each. So it was fabulous when we rose to #13 in iTunes books, but to actually be in the top-grossing charts too shows that new readers are following through with the story after they've been astounded by the fluid interface, easy in-app issue management, eye-popping zoom and page flip, magical colors and dramatic art.

Next stop: the Kindle. And in the meantime, if you haven't got the Mirabilis iPad app yet, you can find it here in the USA and here in the UK.

Mirabilis trade paperbacks now available

And, as promised, here it is (just) in time for Christmas: the trade paperback edition of Mirabilis: Winter. The first book was so long that we had to split it into two 112-page volumes that between them collect the entire first season. The perfect stocking filler if you have two oblong stockings measuring 7" x 10" - which, by the way, is a little bit bigger and more deluxe than regular tp format. The production is very nice, with sharp colors on good quality paper stock with a silky finish. If you're used to the glossy, highly reflective pages of something like Buffy or Hellboy, it's nothing like that. It's more of a matt feel, but on somewhat better grade of paper than a typical comic book. All in all, a pretty classy item if I do have to say it myself.

Join Jack and Estelle on a sweeping adventure across Europe from London to Istanbul. On the way you'll meet mind-controlling cabbages, bottled witches, babies thirty storeys tall, saints in plate armour, genie caretakers, Shakespeare-loving vampires, airships, magicians, demon kings, mad horticulturists, chess-playing robots, crime-fighting apes, sinister plans and debonair derring-do. And we're still just in the first month of the Year of Wonders! There's duelling, love, betrayal and leaps of faith and trust, all wrapped in elegant Edwardian style with a dash of English fantasy. It's the ideal family entertainment, and if you can think of a better way to spend a couple of hours after the turkey and crackers, I'd like to hear it.

If you're in the USA, here's where to order Volume One on Amazon, and you can also get it on Barnes & Noble. Only $19.99. Canadian comics fans can get Volume One on Amazon Canada for the ridiculously low price of $14.75 - a whopping 27% discount. That's because there's a green comet in the sky, hence lots of miracles like that coming up.

European readers can get the books for around 15.99 euros in France, in Germany and they should be available in Spain, Italy and other territories too, as well as Australia by the middle of next year. I'll let you know the links when I have them - and also the links for Volume Two, which should be published in the next couple of days. (Incidentally, don't be put off if Amazon's product info says the books are not available. They are printed to order, so as soon as you buy, a personal copy will roll off the presses and be sent to you.)

British readers can get Volume One right now for £12.99. (Again, ignore what it says about unavailability; Amazon will ship within days, and they don't bill you till they ship anyway.) However, as soon as the contract for the UK hardback editions is signed, be warned that we'll be pulling the Amazon.co.uk trade paperbacks - so you Brits, if you can stand waiting another few months, you might want to hold out for those beautiful big hardback editions. Or buy both - we won't complain.

UK hardback editions due early next year

As if the news about the upcoming Mirabilis graphic novel on iPad wasn't exciting enough, we are just about to put ink on a deal that will see Mirabilis: Winter, the first 200-page instalment in our fantasy saga, released in early 2011 as two glorious album-sized hardbacks by PrintMedia Productions.

PMP are the guys behind Strip Magazine, one of Europe's leading anthology comics. The first of their planned slate of graphic novels is the rip-roaring steampunk adventure The Iron Moon, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page, previewed here and available for pre-order on Amazon here.

These books are really going to be something to cherish, not least because the format is a jaw-dropping 9" x 12". Have you seen the Charley's War books? Yep, that big. And hardbacks. In full color. There's got to be a catch, right? And there is, if you live outside the UK, because these two volumes will only be available in Great Britain. However, US readers can get the trade paperback editions from Amazon.com and the monthly Mirabilis comic book will be available in the USA from January. So really, everybody wins.

Mirabilis graphic novel on iPad

I'll be doing a complete post about this as soon as we go live - which is a matter of weeks away now. But I just had to share this with you because I've been playing the ad hoc build of the Mirabilis app and it really is a dream. Lush magic lantern colors, razor-sharp graphics, and an interface that's as stylish and smooth as an Irish coffee poured by George Clooney. If you're used to struggling with existing comic reader apps, you're going to be blown away by what our resident iOS wizard has conjured up.

Don't wait. Really, you should go direct to your nearest Apple retail store (look here for store locators: Apple in the UK and Apple in the US), buy yourself an iPad for Christmas, and you will then be able to get the reader app and the first chapter of Mirabilis free, with the other chapters available via our nifty in-app storefront. Mirabilis on iPad is our way of telling you that the Year of Wonders has arrived. And we have a lot more incredible news coming up, so don't go away.

Comic books online, on the stands, and in the App Store

In the run-up to last Christmas, I posted a bunch of mock-up comic book covers - y'know, just for fun. The covers here are a little different. These are eight full-size, full-color comic books that will be on sale in the USA early next year - the first wave of a 32-issue run comprising the whole of the Jack and Estelle story. (But not necessarily the whole of Mirabilis: Year of Wonders, as we have plenty of other plotlines up our sleeves.)

Those are guaranteed to be worth waiting for as, along with the story itself, you'll get the RMS letters columns and a cornucopia of wondrous paintings by Martin. But the good news is, you don't have to wait. The whole Winter season will be available in trade paperback (two volumes) in just a few weeks. That's 224 pages of thrills and spills as only Leo and Nikos can serve it up. Look for those on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

That's still not the really exciting news, though. Because the Mirabilis app is on course for a December release and you really need to buy, borrow or steal yourself an iPad right now. Thing of beauty though the iPad is, I honestly haven't seen anything on it to compare to the knock-down gorgeous graphics of Mirabilis. It fairly crackles with luminously sharp empyrean energy. Okay, don't actually resort to stealing. But do anything and everything else to make sure you have an iPad to hand on Christmas Eve as you will not want to miss the opening salvo in the Year of Mirabilis. Did I mention that the opening chapter is absolutely free?

DriveThruComics latest - and other big news

You've seen this cover before. The big difference is that it's about to be the first in an eight-issue run of real comic books. I'm talking about regular, tried-and-true printed comic books now, not e-comics - though we are also on course to have the whole of the Mirabilis: Winter graphic novel on iPad in time for Christmas.

The iPad issues will probably retail around $1.99 each, but if you haven't gone totally digital yet then you may prefer to buy the physical comic books on IndyPlanet. Those will be tagged around $4.50 each, meaning you can read the whole 200-page graphic novel for $36. At that price you have to bring your own Mylar bags. Issue 1 should be on sale in a few days.

On the other hand, if you've never been bitten by the comics collecting bug then you could hold out for the graphic novel editions. We anticipate the trade paperbacks (two comic-sized volumes) going on sale in the USA in December. Those will retail at $19.99 each. But if you live in the UK, the real treat will be massive European-album sized hardback editions due out early next year. Save up your book tokens as those should be the most gorgeous incarnation of all Mirabilis's many forms.

Oh, and we also have breaking news of serialization of the episodes in India. This has got me and Leo beside ourselves with excitement because Jack will be heading off from Britain to India in the Spring GN, so it'll be great to think of Mirabilis becoming another bridge between those two great cultures. More on that as the details firm up.

2011 is guaranteed to provide you with a format of your choice for reading Mirabilis - whether it's online, as an app, in paperback or hardback, or in the form of regular comic books. As a special offer to get you started, we've put Mirabilis #1 up online and you can get it for free on DriveThruComics. Even if you've read this opening issue already, please hit the link and give us a review as we're collecting stars.

Renaissance men in training

The last month has been a super-steep learning curve for me and Leo as we’ve been busy making ourselves familiar with the worlds of printing, book distribution, marketing and app development - all at the same time.

At times over the years we have worked in prose and illustrated novels, choose-you-own-adventure style books, role-playing games, comics, television, videogames, websites and Flash design, radio and even movies. And now we’re getting up to speed on the production as well as creative side. It’s exhausting but exhilarating. Like pushing your bike up Porlock Hill and then coming down without brakes.

It means that at long last we can start to firm up some details of what you can expect to see between now and Christmas. First of all there’ll be the long-awaited iPad app. I know – not everybody has an iPad yet. But why not? It’s like going from black and white to colour TV. Comics have dawn-of-time colors on that perfectly-sized screen and, with average prices per issue around $1.99, you’re saving money and shelf space. And with most comics apps (ours included) you get to read the first issue free. So you can try more titles.

A friend of mine who works in marketing asked about our pricing. I said each episode of Mirabilis after the first will be $1.99, because that’s a dollar off the cost of a typical print comic. He was surprised. “In most fields you pay more for convenience, not less.” So there you are. Get ‘em now, as the comics ads used to say, before we come to our senses.

The iPad versions will be the only way you’ll get the full comic book style layout for Mirabilis including letters page and “coming next issue” blurb. But if you aren’t ready to give up buying physical books just yet, we have a couple of options planned. First of all we’re looking into getting our own paperback edition of the Winter book up on Amazon.com. We’re risking the supposed stigma of self-publishing but we just like being in control, striking out as pioneers, doing our own thing… Also we don’t have any contacts among US book publishers yet!

Here in the UK, we have a publisher negotiating to release Winter as two 112-page volumes early next year. These will be European-style large format hardbacks, a little pricier than the iPad or paperback options but eminently collectable.

I’m cautious about giving definite release dates as we’re breaking new ground with all these ventures. Each day usually brings an unexpected setback followed by a flash of inspiration to solve it. But Christmas is the season we’re working towards. Updates to come…