Hey guys, it's Scott.
And what an exciting day all around for comics! A huge launch day for Substack, and we have a bunch of stuff going on at Best Jackett. First and foremost, Nocterra #7 comes out Wednesday. It's the start of our brand new arc. It's five issues long and it's called Pedal to the Metal. I genuinely believe it's even better than our first one—it's got bigger shades, faster trucks, and it's more in the spirit of everything we wanted to do with the series, so I can't wait for you to see it. Really, really proud of it, so pick it up! There a bunch of really awesome variants from everybody from Jay Fabok to Dani Strips, and we'd love for you to let us know what you think!
Secondly, last night at midnight we launched our Founder’s Tier membership at Our Best Jackett. It's called the Black Jackett Club:
We're so so excited. We've been working on it for a number of months to make sure that you guys got way more than the cost. It's a $300 membership for the whole year, and with it you get some incredible stuff, honestly, in my opinion. We tried to price it out so that you'd be getting at least double what you're paying for it.
So, the first thing you get is five exclusive covers, not available anywhere else, on our projects. The first one is going to be a We Have Demons #1 cover. It's going to be a version of a Greg Capullo cover that we're doing that will be exclusive to Substack and will be signed by me and Greg. So, already you have a big chunk of value right there. If you want to CGC, just let Comic Sketch Art know, there'll be a whole link coming soon on how to do that. You can CGC it, get it sealed up, monetize it, flip it, take advantage of us, please. Second cover out of the five will be a Nocterra: Val #1 when we do a Val one-shot at the end of this arc over the summer. So, that'll be a big deal. Again, the series was optioned by Netflix, so there's a lot of value in that. And thirdly, we're going to bring Wytches back at the end of this year. I've tried to let you in as much as I can about the development of the TV show and we're really thrilled to have it come back bigger and better than before. So, the Wytches Second Cycle #1 will be the other exclusive Substack variant—a Jock cover that’ll only be available to Black Jackett members. That’s three of them, and the other two are unannounced, and all five will be shipped to you free of cost.
And the other big thing is you'll get an opportunity once a year (coming soon, actually), to send me ten of your books, they can be anything—trades, oversized, whatever it is you want. You pay the shipping and I will sign anything you want for the price of the membership itself. So, all included.
Third thing, you're going to get a 24 hour advance to buy whatever BJP merchandise you want when we start putting up statues and shirts and all kinds of cool stuff over the next few months for our Best Jackett books.
Fourthly, you get free access to all of our VIP panels throughout the year at different cons. I'm doing one in San Diego, so if you go to SDCC you get to come to our events for free. It'll be $150 or so to get in, but you guys get it included in your membership. So, already you got half your value right there. And if you make it to San Diego, and you're one of the first hundred people to respond about this dinner, we'll take you out to dinner, on us. It's gonna be a lot of fun! And at that dinner, by the way, you get signed lithographs that are exclusive to members as well. So, there's a whole bunch of stuff.
We're also raffling off tickets to NYCC for you guys to come meet me and Greg and a bunch of other people and get cool stuff.
If you sign up now and you’re one of the first hundred (email confirmations for that are going out soon!), you also get a five minute live one-on-one with me and we can talk about whatever you want.
So, a TON of good stuff. We'll be announcing more as the year goes on, but I hope you'll consider signing up. The big thing here is we can only handle about 350 people right now. So, if you're interested, please sign up in the next few days. We really want you to get a chance to be a part of it, and I'm worried about anyone getting locked out of it because it's going to be a ton of fun. And if it does really well then hopefully we can open it to more people the second time around, but this is it for now.
And also, I wanted to push so many of my friends doing amazing stuff today on Substack! Grant Morrison, a friend and a mentor to me, is launching theirs today:
Brian K. Vaughan, another good friend, is launching what looks like an amazing book with Niko Henrichon, his co-creator on Pride of Baghdad (which was edited by resident BJP editor Will Dennis!):
Tom King (nerd) and Elsa Charretier, they're doing one as well:
Jeff Lemire’s doing a new Black Hammer on his:
And, of course, James Tynion IV has just upped the ante entirely with all the stuff that he's offering with the Onion Club. So, you must sign up for that if you're not already, it's incredible:
And there's also Khary Randolph, who's a friend and is doing some amazing stuff with Joanne Starer:
Kelly Thompson—I read Black Cloak and it's fantastic. It's so good. It's like a really interesting blend of fantasy and noir:
It's a great day all around and I hope you guys will partake, not just of the Black Jackett Club stuff, but of everything. And lastly, things have been going so well at comiXology. I can't thank you enough. We've had so many subscribers check out our stuff and I hope you'll continue to do that. Sign up for comiXology Unlimited and you get basically everything we've done there for the price of one comic a month. And thank you for the well wishes about COVID. We're all in the clear here, knock on wood. *knock knock knock* Yes, it was rough, but we all tested negative and everybody's back in school and all that stuff. So, I really appreciate the kind thoughts.
And yeah, I'll be back with more personal stuff. Thank you for the comments on “POWER,” which is Quinn's new word when he throws his blankets into his crib, which I love. He just came up with it out of nowhere for some reason. He also is now even more fixated on Godzilla, and so our bedtime story every night is about Godzilla. And he's very afraid of Gothel from Tangled. I don't know if everyone knows that one, but it's a great Disney movie, the 50th animated film they did, and the first to introduce the ‘CGI 3D mixed with animated’ style that Disney now uses and all that stuff, and I think it's a perfectly constructed film and underrated gem. But he's very afraid of Mother Gothel, and so in our new stories, Godzilla comes out of the water, boom, boom, boom, and he walks up to the tower where Gothel is keeping Rapunzel captive. And he says “rawr Gothel, you let her go!” And Gothel says, “no, no way, cuz I’m mean!” And then Godzilla slides on his tail like he does in Godzilla vs Megalon and he kicks her, boom, out of the window and she falls all the way down and, poof, she disappears. And then, just for good measure, he eats her cape and then he goes back in the water and we tell that story over and over. He loves it.
So, thank you again for everything. Talk soon!
S
Newsletter #50: Opening the Black Jackett Club on CDoS