Ahmed + Acosta team for ‘TerrorWar’ this fall through Substack

Following yesterday’s news that several comic creators would begin publishing their comics through their Substack newsletters, Saladin Ahmed has revealed more details about his first comic that’ll be available on the platform.

Note that there are still a lot of questions about how these new Substack comics will work — what’s the format? Are pages going to be embedded into an email, sent as a PDF or what? What am I getting for my (in Ahmed’s case) $6 a month? Ahmed promises to post an FAQ about the “nuts and bolts” of the subscription he’s offering, but in his latest email he talks specifically about TerrorWar, his newsletter comic.

The new series, which stars Muhammad Cho, a “terrorfighter” will be drawn by Dave Acosta with color art by Walter Pereyra and lettering by Shawn Lee. It’s about a city where people’s worst fears have come to life somehow, and the terrorfighters face them down with really big guns.

Here’s the description:

Welcome to Blue City. After a few hundred years of climate mod blowback and orbital strikes, this is where everybody came. And I mean everybody. Every language on the planet, every food known to humans, every way of looking at the world, all mashed together into the last livable place on Earth.

How livable depends on what neighborhood you’re from. Some folks here spend their whole lives surrounded by servants and flowers. I grew up in the back of a broken down zataar mandu shop, listening to credit drones shred my neighbors to bioscrap when they couldn’t pay their bills.

But things got worse when the Terrors showed up.

They appeared out of nowhere a few years ago. No one knows what they are or where they came from. Some people think they’re aliens. Some people say ghosts. Others claim they’re the sins of Blue City come to life. Whatever they are, they’re ripping this last safe place apart. Burning up our loved ones and leaving behind piles of ash.

You don’t know they’re there until you feel it. Like something watching you from inside your own head. Then things around you start to…change. And not just in your mind. Stone and metal and flesh ripple and shift and twist into the shape of your worst fear. By the time most people realize whats happening, it’s too late. They’re burnt toast.

Not me, though. I’m one of a handful of people who can hear Terrors coming. One of the few whose weirdo brains can beat them back. I lead a team of others who can do the same. We don’t come from the pretty neighborhoods. We know Blue City is a stinking heap.

But it’s our heap.

I’m Muhammad Cho, Terrorfighter.

I’m here to kill your fears.

The comic will be released through Ahmed’s Copper Bottle newsletter sometime later this fall.

“I can tell you that I am having the time of my life writing these books,” Ahmed said in his newsletter announcing Copper Bottle. “Telling stories I’ve waited years to tell, partnering with brilliant artists at the top of their game. I couldn’t be more thrilled to have finally found the right venue to share my best work directly with you!”

As noted yesterday, the content Ahmed and others are creating for Substack is completely creator-owned. Once it’s released through Substack, the creators can then release it in print as well, with complete control over where and how it is published. So if you aren’t up for reading TerrorWar online, no doubt you’ll be able to buy it in print someday as well.