Starting Thursday, November 9th, the webcomics collective THE CHEMISTRY SET welcomes writer Steven Goldman (STYX TAXI, EVERYMAN: Be The People) and his talented collaborators to its ranks. Goldman’s work will appear every Thursday on the site — alongside Elizabeth Genco’s SCHEHERAZADE — beginning with a serialization of his urban fantasy series STYX TAXI.

“STYX TAXI is the story of NYC’s finest (and only) taxi service for the dead,” said Goldman. “STYX’s drivers are ghosts, borrowing the bodies and rides of living cabbies to ferry the souls of the recently-deceased back across the veil. Each soul they pick up gets the chance of, well, a lifetime: two short hours and relatively free reign to make peace with the life he/she left behind, before moving on to…whatever’s next.”

The first few months of STYX TAXI will showcase the work of talented illustrators such as Jeremy Arambulo (SIGLO: PASSION, THE BUSHWICK CHRONICLES), Goldman’s brother Dan Goldman (SHOOTING WAR, 718), and Rami Efal (24SEVEN, HEBI NO HADA). “Shortly thereafter, THE CHEMISTRY SET will premiere a brand-new STYX TAXI story I’m working on with Hyeondo Park, Jim Dougan’s immensely talented collaborator on COME THE DAWN,” said Goldman. “The STYX TAXI stories will carry us at least up through February 15th, 2007, when artist David Marquez and I will start serializing a new book, a corporate thriller entitled CHARMER…but more about that later.”

“Deciding to join THE CHEMISTRY SET took almost no thought at all,” Goldman said. “I’ve known Vito [Delsante] for almost as long as I lived in New York City; Neil [Kleid] and I share Detroit roots and a love of both Faygo’s Rock’n'Rye soda and making comics; Elizabeth [Genco] and I have been friends and fellow sounding-boards for ages; and I’ve been enjoying Chris [Arrant]’s work on Newsarama for years. So when I first heard whispers about the four of them pooling efforts on a webcomics site with a writer/artist collaborative focus, I knew it was something I’d want to be a part of. Frankly, I’m honored they’d have me as part of the experiment that is THE CHEMISTRY SET.”

STYX TAXI has garnered a fair amount of critical acclaim, including the following:

“STYX TAXI is sharp, challenging, touching. A smartly-scripted, well-drawn comic book that clearly comes from the heart.”
– J.M. DeMatteis, writer of ABADAZAD and THE STARDUST KID

“STYX TAXI is a thinking person’s comic full of deep writing and incredible energy.”
– Ryan McLelland, Newsarama

“STYX TAXI – This whole story dances on wires. So sad, so wonderful, so true.”
– Donna Barr, author of THE DESERT PEACH and STINZ

“It’s a series of little moments, but they’re great moments.”
– Troy Brownfield, Newsarama’s “Best Shots”

Starting November 9th, join Goldman and company Thursdays at THE CHEMISTRY SET for STYX TAXI… and the ride of your afterlife.

To catch-up and/or review what’s happened so far on 1 Way Ticket, look to the right and click on Chapter 1 and 2’s Catch-Up Pages.

1 Way Ticket is written by Chris Arrant and illustrated by Dan Warner

Thus ends chapter 2, leaving unanswered questions like: Who is the person in the river? What does Webster want? What happens to Sully? Where can I buy that bad ass guitar? While we put the finishing touches on Chapter 3 to begin on November 29th, the next two Wednesdays will have some special content about music, comics, music in comics, and origins of 1 Way Ticket.

In parting, I’d like to give a shout-out to Criminal Records in Atlanta’s Little Five Points. An ideal mixture of music, comics and style all in one small cramped store. If you’re ever in Atlanta, you shouldn’t miss out.

What Came Before: Catch up on the story so far here. And now, Page Seven:

Please come back next Tuesday, November 14 for Page 8! And for those of you in the U.S., don’t forget to VOTE today!

Previously in STUCK…

Chapter 1; Chapter 2 (to date)…

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Thanks for checking us out.  Please leave a comment and tell us what you think…we’re 4 pages away from the stunning conclusion of Chapter 2.

Tom & Vito

TODT HILL, an adventure strip by Kleid & Colden, updates here every Friday. Kids can be so, so cruel.

View the Hunt Thus Far

Join the Crew at

From The Library is a series of interviews with some of my favorite storytellers. For the latest SCHEHERAZADE update, click here. For NIGHTVISIT, click here.

Holly Black brings mythic fiction to the masses in a big way. For that alone, she qualifies as one of my heros, but naturally that’s just the beginning. Holly is charming, gracious, and generous with her formidable writing expertise. Evidence: she once drove me to the train station in the pouring rain, kept me warm and dry in her car ’til the train showed up, and then passed the time with an insightful mini-lesson on plotting that completely changed my outlook and has guided my own story choices since.

Of course, I fell hard for Holly’s rich, juicy prose well before I met her. TITHE and VALIANT, her urban gothic faerie tales, are delightfully (read: brutally) true to the old tales and the lives of teenagers. Her series for young readers, THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES (with Tony DiTerlizzi), are bestsellers; production on the movie has begun.

Also? she’s just neat. You’ll see what I mean in a sec.

You just finished up a stint at that infamous speculative fiction writer’s workshop, Clarion. Was Clarion your first experience as a writing instructor? I know that you’ve worked extensively with critique groups as a participant; what was it like to be on the other side of the desk, so to speak?

It wasn’t my first time instructing, but my previous experience was more of the “get in, say some stuff, do an exercise, then get out” kind. This was the first time I was teaching over an extended period of time.

First of all, let me say that it was immense fun to work with the extremely talented 2006 Clarion class. They were smart, funny and really good writers. The hardest thing about teaching Clarion, in fact, is the quality of the writers. It is much easier to figure out what an obviously flawed story needs. It’s a lot harder when the stuff is of very high caliber.

It was hugely helpful to have Kelly Link as my co-teacher. She’s been through Clarion before as both a student and an instructor and could explain things that I wouldn’t have ever known, like:

Kelly: Here’s the part where we make them wear dresses.
Holly: There’s a part where we make them wear dresses?
Kelly: It’s tradition.
Class: *dons sparkly gowns*

Also, Kelly is a genius, so working with her was a learning experience for me as well as the class.

According to the bio on your website, you collect rare folklore books and spooky dolls. Tell me a bit about your collections. A superdorky corollary that I can’t resist: name the top five titles in your folklore book collection.

This is the superdorky question I have long dreamed of being asked!

Actually, what I have is old editions of books, like the 1893 version of Robert Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (with introduction by Andrew Lang). The thing is, there are exciting new editions coming out all the time–like the new Secret Commonwealth Maria Warner is bringing out in November–so there’s nothing I’ve got that you can’t get now, although some books were out of print when I first got them.

Hence, this is my top 5, not according to rarity or any academic criteria, but just my favorites:

1. Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by WY Evans-Wentz
2. The Middle Kingdom by Dermot Mac Manus
3. The Encyclopedia of Fairies by Katharine Briggs
4. A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture by Charlotte F. Otten
5. Vampires and Vampirism: Legends from Around the World by Dudley Wright

As for my spooky dolls, my collection has evolved to be almost exclusively Korean ball-jointed dolls, often known as “dollfies.” I have even gone so far as to buy them tiny coffee cups and cigarettes so they can join me in my ennui.

What were some of your favorite stories growing up? (”Growing up” refers to any time between the ages of zero and, say, eighteen, and “stories” can refer to anything — books, movies, comics, and, of course, folklore and fairy tales.)

This is the hardest question to answer, because there were so many books that were important to me. My favorite book when I was a kid was THOMASINA by Paul Gallico. After that, I read a lot of Lloyd Alexander and Madeline L’Engle. A couple of years later, I remember reading Anne Rice’s INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE obsessively, along with Tanith Lee’s LORDS OF THE FLAT EARTH, Michael Moorcock’s Elric books, and Tolkien. Also hugely influencial for me was Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s book, FAERIES.

My mom had an “unedited” compilation of Grimm’s fairy tales that I loved and when we had to do a huge report on a subject in eighth grade, mine was vampires in folklore.

Victorian mansions, fairies, ghost stories, crazy hats — I’m guessing (call it a hunch!) that you probably like Halloween. What was your most memorable Halloween costume?

Hahaha. I did like Halloween as a kid, but the thing was, my mother liked to make me and my sister these elaborate costumes. She was hard-core about it, so you had to tell her what you wanted to be six months in advance of Halloween. And often the costumes were so complex you could barely move. But there was a contest at the community center every year and my mother was going to kick all the other mother’s asses. I remember being Lady Mouse with a giant paper mache head that was impossible to move in and also The Frog Prince, where I had a huge rubber head. Basically, I remember barely seeing out of a lot of eye holes.

Name one thing that you have yet to do but would like to do.

See a ghost.

New to the comic? Read the story so far

1 Way Ticket is written by Chris Arrant and illustrated by Dan Warner