Ashes Back On Track, New Artists Announced

By Todd Allen

When last we left the status of Ashes, the original graphic novel crowdfunding to the tune of $32K, artist Jimmy Broxton was no longer on the project and writer Alex de Campi wasn’t sure if there would be a new artist or if she’d be refunding the money to everyone who contributed via Kickstarter.  Turns out, there will still be a graphic novel and there will be multiple new artists.

de Campi writes at Kickstarter:

Greetings. I’ve been busy lining up artists for Ashes since I last wrote a week ago. The good news is, we’re 95% there. As you will see there are still a couple “TBC” (to be confirmed) slots… in these cases artists are interested and have the script, and I’m waiting for them to read it and hopefully confirm their involvement. There are also a couple extremely short sections (3 pages, 1 page) where I’ll be confirming hopefully two VERY high profile artists in the next week or two.

In any case, the project has come back together strongly enough that I feel confident in moving forwards with it. If for some reason any artist drops out in the future (as can happen — sometimes life, or cushy Big Two projects, intervene), there are a couple others who are booked up for the next couple months but have said, “get back to me in the summer if you’re stuck”.

So, without further ado, here is the run list of artists for Ashes, in order of appearance. The script divisions are based on location and secondary characters, so when there is a change in artist it will also equal a major change in location and/or time — which will hopefully make the style transitions less noticeable. You will recognise some of the artists, but maybe not all. Each has been chosen because 1) I think they’re really really good; and 2) Their style/talents/experience perfectly fits the section they are working on and the overall tone of the book. I really can’t express to you how excited I am to work with each and every one of these artists, from giants of the medium such as Igor, Milton and Colleen, to up and coming stars like Greg and Mack.

• Milton & Felipe Sobreiro: http://www.milton.sobreiro.com/arte.htm
• Igor Kordey
• Richard Pace: http://richardpace.daportfolio.com/
• TBC (London chapter)
• Mack Chater: http://mackchater.blogspot.com/
• Colleen Doran: http://adistantsoil.com/
• TBC (the very short pieces)
• Greg Smallwood: http://www.gregsmallwood.darkfolio.com/
• RM Guera (best known for Vertigo’s SCALPED): http://rmguera.com/
• TBC (painted pages)

I expect to have the TBC sections confirmed in a week. As noted above, I’m in active discussion with specific artists for them.

Igor Kordey, you may recall, was the artist on the IDW-published Smoke, to which Ashes is a sequel.  It’s very appropriate he should be involved.  If you’re on this website, you probably already know who Colleen Doran is.  Jason Aaron may be the one getting most of  the publicity for Scalped, but RM Guera is a good pick up for this sort of project.  Richard Pace has done his share of Marvel work.  For last-minute replacements, this is a pretty good group.

We’ll have to wait and see how the varying art styles mesh as chapters, but it looks like this will get made and that wasn’t a given three weeks ago.