maybe a few teeth: thedeadairchannel028

October at last. The Halloween decorations are out in Queens, and for one month only the neighbourhood looks like the inside of my head feels.

New York Comic Con happens next week. I'll be there, but not tabling myself, so if you have things you want me to sign you'll have to catch me at the Dark Horse booth on Friday at 2pm or the IDW booth on Saturday at 3:30pm.

I'll also be on a panel with Skybound talking about the Energon Universe on Saturday morning, and signing at Midtown Comics with other Energon folk on Friday night at 7pm.

Other than that I'm using the con as a chance to catch up with people- it's the first time all four members of my studio, White Noise, will have been in the same place at the same time for four years. Life happens far too fast.

I do know I have at least one announcement happening at the convention, so keep an eye out for that. That'll be Project Expel.

Not much downtime these last few weeks, but lots to talk about, so this'll be a newsletter full of links. I know I'm about to lose essentially a week to NYCC, and last weekend was taken up by Baltimore Comic Con in turn.

Baltimore was lucky timing for us, as it meant we missed the Nor'easter that struck the East Coast. Which meant we missed getting eaten by street sharks.

This was my second year at the show, and it's a really enjoyable one. Out of all the shows I've done in the US, it reminds me the most of Thought Bubble back home- an entirely comics focussed show, and a more relaxed feeling that allows more face time with people than some of the larger, more overwhelming ones.

It was a pleasure to meet new people, to talk on a couple of panels, and to promote the Mad Science Division cold open, which released that weekend. It was also a pleasure to sign a hell of a lot of Batman: Dark Patterns, Nightwing, and increasingly more Shredder, which more and more people bring to me at every show.

Speaking of Shredder, issue 12 dropped last month, featuring the status quo shift I've been teasing for ages.

At this end of our second arc, Shredder takes command of the E.P.F.- the Earth Protection Force- a multinational agency that police the world, defending it from interdimensional, extraterrestrial, or magical threats.

This means Shredder's gone legit. In a manner of speaking. He will protect the world as he sees fit, whether the world likes it or not. The idea here was, what if Shredder became a Nick Fury or M figure? How different would running an international peacekeeping organization be from running an international crime ring?

The next six issues of the book are all about this new role and what that actually looks like... both for him and the world. They've been my favourite issues to write so far.

Both CBR and Screenrant have written articles about this new direction, which is nice of them.

Solicits for Nightwing 145 have revealed that Robin will be appearing in the book beyond the Bad Seeds issues. He's not in every issue of the current arc, but he's in most of them. The internet seems worried that I'm going to do something terrible to him, though all I've said is that he's coming for a lovely weekend in Blüdhaven.

And when would I ever let something terrible happen to a Batman character?

I spoke with Marvel.com about our upcoming Spider-Woman book, particularly about the Carnage-of-it-all, and what other characters might show up as we get deeper into the series.

Brian and I spoke to Byron over at Comic Book Yeti about Mad Science Division, which was a lovely long wholesome sit-down to talk about a decidedly unwholesome book and its thoroughly unwholesome inspirations. Good fun.

Haven't gotten much reading done these last few weeks- all reading time has become writing time as I attempt to get out ahead before the con interrupts everything. I've been focussing on M.A.S.K. the last two weeks, handing in the script for issue 10, and the last script of Project Sledgehammer came back with just a few "I"s to dot, so that's almost squared away.

I've also ended up with a brand new project on my plate- one of those things where I was asked "what would you do with this?", and a story popped into my head pretty fully formed, which I then pitched on a call and it seemed to go down well. We'll call this one Project Pig.

Though time's been tight, I did prioritize going to see Resident Evil as soon as it was released. I'm of an age to have been equally raised by Resi games and by Zach Cregger's comedy troupe Whitest Kids u Know in the heyday of YouTube, so it's bizarre watching these things come together in a film that's so bloody good. It was exactly what I was hoping it would be. Which is essentially Zach Cregger's Evil Dead II. I'm baffled by complaints that Resident Evil isn't meant to be funny, and can only conclude that none of the complainers have actually seen Leon Kennedy's haircut.

Kieron and Caspar have solicited the next arc of The Power Fantasy. I've had a sneak peek of the opening salvo of this new arc and it's really fucking good.

Si Spurrier is returning to prose, working on a Real Book, and tracking his progress in Patreon, which feels like a rare opportunity to see the creative process at work. Si cut his teeth on novels, including a Conrad Kurze novel that I'd still trade a tooth for a good condition copy of. Maybe a few teeth, but I can't promise they'd be mine.

Ram V's Deicidium is almost upon us. This is what he's been working on almost exclusively for the last year alongside Anand RK and Evan Cagle. It's an incredibly ambitious project, extremely carefully crafted, and planned to span years. A tale of gods and people and everything in between. A meticulously built fantasy world raised from the ashes of our own. I did a bit of behind the scenes work on this, fleshing out one of this world's religions- believe me, no stone has been unturned on this one.

You can read 24 pages for free right now on IGN. That's more pages then most single issue comics, cos Ram's nice like that.

I'm writing most of this on Thursday, and the news has just broken that Cronos has passed away. Founder of the band Venom, whose debut album coined the term "black metal," he was a titan of extreme music, and this really feels like the end of an era. One of those moments where a generation of artists start to turn from contemporary into historical figures.

I vividly remember being at some con or other with Casp over a decade ago when Tommy Ramone died, and realizing that everyone who played on the first Ramones record was now gone. There's probably a German compound word for that specific melancholy.

I'll write again after NYCC. Today, I'm going to go listen to Venom.

This has been thedeadairchannel. A blackened tooth stolen from the maw of Dan Watters. Please do subscribe.

Upcoming releases:

Oct 7th: M.A.S.K. #5

Oct 21st: Nightwing #143

Oct 28th: Shredder #13

Nov 4th: Mad Science Division #1

Nov 4th: Spider-Woman #1