For your consideration:

Ripped from the pages of The Chemistry Set! These books should be coming out in the next few months or so (actual release dates are a bit squishy, I’m afraid):

NEGATIVE BURN #16 (Diamond Code: OCT073437)

Featuring THE GENTLEMAN by Jim Dougan and Umberto Torricelli


Cover by Jordan Raskin

NEGATIVE BURN #17 (Diamond Code: NOV073494)
Featuring OSCAR CHAVEZ, MACHISMO MONITOR by Jim Dougan and Roger Langridge

Cover by Dean Haspiel and Kat Roberts

Ask your local comic shop retailer to save you one, won’t you please? Like I’ve said before: why read something for free on the internet when you can pay for it?

And yes! For the three of you who’ve been wondering, I will have new comics on the ChemSet in 2008. I promise (or threaten, depending on your point of view…)

Check it out, yo! Three Chem Setters have comics in stores today. Represent and support!

Cemetery Blues #1 by Edgar Allan Poo artist, Thomas Boatwright

Scooby-Doo #128 by FCHS and Stuck writer, Vito Delsante

Lifelike (OGN) by Stuck and Styx Taxi artist, Tom Williams

The Chemistry Set Online Comics Collective is pleased — well, not pleased, exactly, more like extremely reluctant but they’re doing it anyway, to announce the addition of Andrew Foley and Nick Johnson’s comic THE HOLIDAY MEN to the site’s regular features.

ChemSet co-founder Vito Delsante tried to explain the situation. “I don’t really know how it happened. I was just having a drink–a Pepsi, it wasn’t even liquor!–and the next thing I know I’m in a cheap hotel room with a dead hooker and there’s Andrew and Nick telling me they’ll take care of everything if I’ll just convince the other ChemSetters to let them join. No one’s found the body, yet, so,” said Delsante, stifling a shudder, “They’re in.”

THE HOLIDAY MEN chronicles the ongoing conflict between twisted versions of holiday icons and global economic superpower O’Mega-Mart. Described by Johnson as “a subtly nuanced, satirical critique of consumer culture,” and “a haphazard collection of ridiculously violent fight scenes” by Foley, THE HOLIDAY MEN is the first collaboration between the two talented, handsome, and modest creators.

An elderly curmudgeon since the age of 12, Foley graduated from the Alberta College of Art and Design’s drawing program, ran his own painting studio, and successfully evaded his creditors for several years in the ’90s, before deciding to focus his creative efforts on writing. In addition to the independently produced comic books PARTING WAYS and DONE TO DEATH, he’s been paid to write more than a dozen graphic novels that haven’t been published, and a couple that have.

In addition to being a founding member of Calgary’s Vicious Ambitious Studios, Nick Johnson’s hobbies include juggling, animal husbandry, and lingerie modeling. An artistic wunderkind who drew his first comic prior to leaving his mother’s womb, he started selling minicomics to earn beer money at the age of fourteen.

Writer and artist first met in 2000 when Foley attempted to dispose of the pizza box Johnson lived in at the time. Said Foley, “Looking at the frankly disturbing images Nick had scrawled on the side of the box, I realized I’d just stumbled onto an amazing creative talent and immediately planned to ruthlessly exploit him to the best of my ability. Now, with THE HOLIDAY MEN, I finally get the chance.”

In addition to giving Chemistry Set’s audience a rollicking good time, THE HOLIDAY MEN also offers invaluable services to its corporate clients. Foley claims that, “Sponsoring a HOLIDAY MEN panel is a great way to bring your message to ‘the kids.’ You give us money and we give you access to the free webcomic-reading demographic every company’s dying to reach. Being part of this project will lend your business instant ’street cred.’ Rather than seeing you as a dust-covered dinosaur on the brink of extinction, partnering with THE HOLIDAY MEN will convince young people you’re ‘radical to the extreme!’” Anyone interested in becoming a HOLIDAY MEN sponsor is encouraged to send an e-mail with “Sponsorship” in the Subject Header to OMegaMart@Gmail.com.

THE HOLIDAY MEN’s first episode, “The Massacre Memorial Day Sale Massacre”, will appear in serialized installments every Tuesday on chemsetcomics.com, starting January 8. “We’ve still got good stuff like Dwight McPherson’s SURREAL ADVENTURES OF EDGAR ALLAN POO and Andrew Drilon’s KARE-KARE KOMIKS appearing on other days,” said Delsante, trying to reassure himself as much as anyone else.

The Chemistry Set is a destination for webcomics in a variety of styles from a variety of up & coming and established talent. Founded in 2006, The Chemistry Set’s membership boasts three Xeric Award winners and a combined bibliography including work for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Random House, Image Comics, SLG Publishing, Markosia and many others. Visit The Chemistry Set at www.chemsetcomics.com

The Interstitial Arts Foundation’s next online salon will be all about US! Woot!

First things first: What is the Interstitial Arts Foundation? From their mission statement:

“The IAF was founded by a group of literary, visual, musical, and performance artists for the purpose of creating and promoting Interstitial Art. What is Interstitial Art? It is art made in the interstices between genres and categories. It is art that flourishes in the borderlands between different disciplines, mediums, and cultures. It is art that crosses borders, made by artists who refuse to be constrained by category labels.”

What is an online salon? Just a fun term for an online discussion.

Here are the deets:

WHEN: Saturday, Dec. 8-Saturday, Dec. 15
WHERE: http://p081.ezboard.com/finterstitialartsfrm2.showMessage?topicID=323.topic
WHAT: Discuss The Chemistry Set – we call ‘em interstitial; do you?

The IAF is loaded with very cool, very talented folks, many of whom I’ve crossed paths with at cons, online or in my work with The Endicott Studio (lots of cross pollination there). If you’re a fan of genre fiction of any sort, there’s a fine chance that your favorite book was written by someone in IAF-land.

Anyway, good times. Personally, I’m tickled pink.

Anyone is welcome to join in the discussion, so drop by after the 8th.

Want to know more about interstitial art? Check out the IAF’s website (and the Wikipedia page is pretty good, too).

Comics veteran Bill Mantlo will be honored in the upcoming Bill Mantlo Benefit Art Show at Floating World Comics in Portland, Oregon. All sales go to help out Bill, who suffered a terrible accident in the nineties. Chemistry Set all-stars Tom Williams (Stuck, Styx Taxi: Federico) and Hyeondo Park (Come The Dawn) both have pieces in the show, which opens December 6th. For more info, visit www.floatingworldcomics.com.

Due to holiday crunches of various kinds, Tom and I will have to hold off on this week’s update until next week… but we’ll be back in a week for extra-sized zombiliciousness!

Have a happy, healthy and safe Turkey Day, everyone, and see you back here next Thursday!

After an extended hiatus, Styx Taxi is returning to the site’s weekly line-up, starting this Thursday with a story worthy of the Halloween season, “Federico”, with art by longtime ChemSetter Tom Williams (Oni Press’ No Dead Time, the Chemistry Set’s Stuck with Vito Delsante).

Styx Taxi is an ongoing series of stories about New York’s only taxi service for the dead. The ghostly drivers of Styx Taxi offer the souls of the recently-deceased the chance to cross back through the veil, to take two precious hours and make peace with the life they’re leaving behind. Contentment and closure, that’s their goal.

“That premise gets a sharp tweak with ‘Federico”,” says Goldman. “Dom, one of Styx’s drivers, has to help a soul get out of an unusual prison: his own body. Someone’s turned Federico into a zombi, and whoever it was, they won’t take kindly to someone undoing their hard, horrifying work.”

Styx Taxi started as a print series in 2003, published by FWDbooks, and will continue to straddle the print/web divide. The first three one-shots, Pastrami for the Dead, A Little Twilight Music, and As Above, So Below are all still available from the publisher at styxtaxi.fwdbooks.com.

Check out the series that Newsarama called “a thinking person’s comic full of deep writing and incredible energy,” and that J.M. DeMatteis called “sharp, challenging, touching.”

“Federico” will serialize on Styx Taxi’s usual Thursday slot starting November 8th, with other stories to follow.

In a city called Flint, almost as ugly as the real one, something has begun to stir in the pockets of wet shadow. Under hood and mask and clad to the toetips in red, a man has emerged in the alleyways with no memories of his person, his place, or his purpose. A prophecy-mangling amputee has taken to holding court in the street. Several stories above it all, a selfless psychiatric visionary is about to unleash a catastrophic new weapon in the battle with mental illness. Threads of Red Jack is a search for identity, a fable about anger that has outlived its usefulness, and a throwdown between the madmen in power and the madmen with none.

Threads of Red Jack is a new series written by Daniel Kibblesmith and drawn by K. Thor Jensen, appearing exclusively on The Chemistry Set. Red Jack has previously appeared in the Dresden Dolls music video “Half Jack,” viewable here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2njonoOMEU4

“I’m really looking forward to Threads of Red Jack,” said Chemistry Set co-founder, Vito Delsante. “I think of all the new creators and projects that we’ve brought on this year, Daniel and Thor’s collaboration is going to be a solid entertaining effort and should bring more faces to our readership. Threads is going to knock a lot of socks, and you can quote me.”

Daniel Kibblesmith was born in Oak Park, IL on the day of a prominent mushroom parade. His first comic book property, Dr. Dactyl was self-published at the age of three, and briefly adapted for television, until the static cling faded and the perforated pages slipped off the screen. He currently resides in Chicago, IL and supports himself by making graphics for a burgeoning online news empire, dividing his free time between crafting unfilmed scripts and unscripted video.

K. Thor Jensen was born in a hole and climbed up a mountain. He is the creator of Red Eye, Black Eye from Alternative Comics. He lives in Astoria, New York with his wife and family and has enough irons in the fire to brand all the cows in Texas. Threads of Red Jack is his first collaborative work.

The Chemistry Set is a destination for webcomics in a variety of styles from a variety of up & coming and established talent. Founded in 2006, The Chemistry Set boasts three Xeric Award winners and a combined bibliography including work for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Random House, Image Comics, SLG Publishing, Markosia and many others. Visit The Chemistry Set at www.chemsetcomics.com.

So, following the PR that’s been pimped around everywhere, it’s now known that The Gloom, the 1940’s pulp-noir parody first revealed in 2005 by Dan Boultwood and myself is about to be serialised, two pages every Friday right here on Ma Humbug’s House of Broken Glass.

For those who don’t know anything about The Gloom, that’s fine. We forgive you. Only two issues of the five ever came out anyway. But that doesn’t stop us trying again. Oh no.

But one important thing - we’re British. Which means that yes, some of the words will be spelled correctly, like colour, and words with ’s’ instead of ‘z’ in. Try to understand that this is just a learning exercise for you before we return, with red jackets and powdered wigs on for the next stage.

So come back in a couple of days and see the wonderment that is the first three or so pages - because we want you to sit back and enjoy the ride…

The Chemistry Set and creator Dwight L. MacPherson are pleased to announce the launch of Kid Houdini and the Silver Dollar Misfits on the 81st anniversary of the death of legendary escape artist and showman: Harry Houdini.

Kid Houdini mastermind Dwight L. MacPherson is the creator and writer of such titles as Shadowline/Image’s “The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo” and “Archibald Saves Christmas” as well as Arcana Studio’s “Dead Men Tell No Tales” and Silent Devil Productions’ “Jim Reaper: Week One” and “Lil’ Hellions: A Day at the Zoo.” MacPherson also penned two stories for IDW’s “Gene Simmons’ House of Horrors.”

Co-creator and illustrator Worth Gowell is the creator of the hit webcomic “Small Wonder” which has recently been featured on Viper Comics’ website.

Kid Houdini and the Silver Dollar Misfits follows the adventures of young Harry Houdini after he ran away from his family home in Appleton, Wisconsin in 1886. Caged and mistreated by the cruel circus owner, Professor Murat, Harry and his misfit friends Lydia the snake girl, Hans the legless boy and the Siamese twins Jacques and Joe solve mysteries under cover of night. No case is too daunting nor dangerous to sway their scrutiny… if you can pay their fee: one shiny silver dollar.

“I have wanted to do this series for quite some time,” says creator Dwight L. MacPherson. “Imagine ‘Scooby Doo’ meets HBO’s ‘Carnivale,’ and that gives you an idea as to the feel of the story. There are supernatural aspects to the stories, but they are also grounded in good old-fashioned Sherlock Holmes-styled detective work. Regardless of age, I’m certain that readers will find something to enjoy in these new detective stories.”

“When we brought Dwight into the Chemistry Set, we knew we were getting someone with talent and imagination,” said Chemistry Set co-founder, Vito Delsante. “‘Kid Houdini’ is exactly the kind of story we expect from Dwight; fun, colorful and most of all, entertaining. We’re happy that he chose to run it with us, as he could have clearly chosen other outlets.”

Kid Houdini and the Silver Dollar Misfits was co-created and beautifully illustrated by Worth Gowell and vibrantly colored by Kevin Conley.

The first page will be posted on the anniversary of Houdini’s death: October 31st , and subsequent pages will be posted every Wednesday following the initial launch.