Tag: Matthew Dow Smith

Matthew Dow Smith turns community support into an awesome, free comic

After asking fans for help, the comics creator is sharing ‘The After School Villain Society’ for free on Bluesky.

When Matthew Dow Smith found himself facing the possibility of going unpaid at the end of August, he came up with an unusual way to ask for help: he offered to make a comic for everyone.

In a post on Bluesky, the creator of October Girl and Amelia Shadows explained that a delay in an expected payment could leave him struggling to cover his bills. His solution? Offer to make a comic. If supporters could help him raise $2,000, he would create a kids comic, releasing five pages a week on Bluesky. And if he reached $3,000, he would also make a free digital collection available for readers to download.

The comic he proposed was The After School Villain Society, a project Smith said had received the most requests from his followers.

“Think of it as a one-time Patreon pledge where you can support a creator and help a comic book happen that everyone can read,” he wrote.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Matthew Dow Smith on ‘Amelia Shadows’ + ‘The October Girl’

The writer and artist talks about his newest book, ‘Amelia Shadows and the Monster in the Box,’ giving his editors nightmares with his creative process, and more.

Over the course of 30 years, Matthew Dow Smith has built a career that has taken him everywhere from Hellboy and The X-Files to DC and Marvel. But in recent years, the writer and artist has been able to work, as he says, “with the training wheels off,” embracing middle-grade and young adult graphic novels that better reflect the kinds of stories he’s always wanted to tell.

That creative shift has resulted in two growing fantasy series arriving just months apart. Amelia Shadows and the Monster in the Box debuted this week from Papercutz, continuing the adventures of the curious young heroine. Meanwhile, The October Girl Book Three arrives from Mad Cave’s Maverick imprint (in October, naturally), which expands the mythology of the supernatural world Smith has been developing for decades. I caught up with him to discuss both series, how all-ages comics unlocked a new level of creativity for him and how finding the right audience has transformed his career.

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SDCC Slugfest | ‘Ultimate Endgame,’ ‘Cult of the Lamb,’ ‘Die!namite’ + more

The Ultimate Universe heads toward its ‘Endgame,’ ‘Cult of the Lamb’ returns and when Ahoy Comics invites you over for ‘Thanksgiving,’ politely decline the invite …

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you. Hit the links for more information.

The annual San Diego Comic-Con will kick off later this week, and publishers have been releasing announcements in the lead-up to the event. We’re also in the middle of monthly solicitation time, where publishers are revealing what’s coming out in October. In an effort to keep up with all the madness, here’s a round up of recent announcements as we prepare for the big show.

Let’s start with a Marvel teaser for something coming late in 2025, Ultimate Endgame. Readers of Marvel’s Ultimate titles know that the clock is ticking on the return of the Maker, a.k.a. the Reed Richards from the original Ultimate Universe, and Marvel teases his return with a nod to the Marvel Cinematic Universe:

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Slugfest | The Green Lantern Corps flies again in DC’s February solicitations

Let’s take a walk through DC’s February 2025 solicitations, which include GLC, Zatanna, DC’s Misfits of Magic and more.

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you. This edition focuses on the new titles debuting in DC’s February solicitations, which you can find here. Hit the links for more information.

The Green Lantern Corps will soar into a new series in February as a part of DC’s All In initiative.

The series will be written by Jeremy Adams, writer of the ongoing Green Lantern series, along with co-writer Morgan Hampton. They’ll work with artists Fernando Pasarín and Oclair Albert on the adventures of John Stewart, Jessica Cruz, Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, Jo Mullein and more.

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DeMatteis + Spellbound Comics will launch ‘The DeMultiverse’ next week

DeMatteis will team with several artists on four new comics coming to Kickstarter Oct. 11.

J.M. DeMatteis, one of the most prolific and beloved comics writers of the last several decades, will team up with an exceptional group of artists for four new comics coming from Spellbound Comics, which they’ve dubbed “The DeMultiverse.”

DeMatteis will work with Matthew Dow Smith, David Baldeon, Tom Mandrake, Shawn McManus and more on Anyman, Godsend, Wisdom and Layla in the Lands of After. Spellbound will release them as individual comics, as well as a single 100+ page trade paperback. The TPB will include an introduction by Tom DeFalco. Their Kickstarter will kick off next week.

Here’s more on the four titles:

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Sunday Comics | A cartoon journey around Vermont

Check out recent online comics from Caanan Grall, Ben Passmore, Matthew Dow Smith, Lar DeSouza and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below or on social media.

Vermont’s indie newspaper Seven Days produces an issue dedicated to comics every year, with the most recent one arriving about a month ago. Contributors included Sally Pollak, Michael Tonn, Jordan Barry, Coco Fox, Ezra Veitch and more, while Vermont cartoon laureate James Kochalka provided the cover.

“… any of the stories in the following pages could have been reported and written traditionally,” Assistant Arts Editor Dan Bolles wrote. “Presented in graphic form, however, they shimmer through the lenses of talented artists, who see the material differently from reporters.”

Some of the topics they covered included a visual trip through Guster lead singer Ryan Miller’s Vermont (shown above), a look at a Vermont law that allows to-go cocktails and an excerpt from a comic about the U.S. health care system created by Vermont’s Center for Cartoon Studies. You can find links to all these different comics from Bolles’ write-up on the issue.

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Matthew Dow Smith launches ‘Doctor Secret’ on Twitter

The creator launches his fourth and final free, serialized comic on social media, keeping a promise he made when the pandemic started.

Matthew Dow Smith has spent almost a full year posting his own comics to Twitter, and he’s not stopping now — this week he launches Doctor Secret, a three-parter that will wrap up a year’s worth of comics posted to social media.

Smith started posting comics the same week that Diamond Comics Distributors announced their pandemic-related shutdown. He started with the autobiographical My Life as Riley and continuing on with the serialized Johnny Chaos, Arch Nemesis and Amelia Shadows, the latter just wrapping up last week.

“I gave myself one year to see what would happen, hoping that the weekly comics would at least keep my career alive until the industry figured out a path forward, while secretly hoping it might lead to me finally breaking through as a writer as well as an artist,” Smith wrote on Twitter.

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Sunday Comics | ‘Amelia Shadows,’ 24-Hour Comics and more

Check out recent comics by Matthew Dow Smith, Noelle Stevenson, Melanie Gillman, Keith Knight and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

We kick off this week with a new comic from Matthew Dow Smith, who created and posted the comic Johnny Chaos on Twitter earlier this year after the pandemic hit. Alex Dueben spoke with Smith back in July about getting work done during the pandemic; like a lot of other creators, when pens went down at various publishers, Smith started working on his own comics.

This newest, Amelia Shadows, can be found on Tumblr, or, if you’d like to see it a day early, it’s on his Patreon as well (along with a lot of other cool stuff).

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Fund Me Monday | ‘Thomas River,’ the return of Skullkickers and more

Check out recent projects from Jim Zub, Edwin Huang, Doug Wagner, Brian Stelfreeze, Iron Circus Comics and more.

Crowdfunding continues to serve as a viable method for creators to fund their creative endeavors, as comic-related projects flourish on sites like Kickstarter, Patreon and IndieGoGo. The internet also allows creators to sell their creations direct to fans, through sites like Gumroad, Big Cartel and of course their own websites. If you’re looking to buy something from or support a creator directly, you’ve come to the right place. And that’s a good thing to do, now more than ever.

Send any suggestions of your own to jkparkin@yahoo.com.

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Fund Me Monday | ‘Cupid’s Arrow,’ ‘Dagger Dagger’ and more

Check out new crowdfunding projects by Thom Zahler, Ron Marz, Matthew Dow Smith, Vincent Fiorello and more.

Crowdfunding continues to serve as a viable method for creators to fund their creative endeavors, as comic-related projects flourish on sites like Kickstarter, Patreon and IndieGoGo. If you’re looking to buy something from or support a creator directly, you’ve come to the right place. And that’s a good thing to do, now more than ever.

Send any suggestions of your own to jkparkin@yahoo.com.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Matthew Dow Smith

The veteran creator of ‘The October Girl’ and more discusses his early career, posting new comics on social media during the pandemic and more.

I’ve been reading Matthew Dow Smith’s comics for decades. As I joked to him, he worked on some of my favorite comics of the ’90s – which also happened to be some of his favorites, before he got the chance to draw them. But before he worked on Starman and The Shade and Sandman Mystery Theatre – and went on to draw Day of Judgement, Batman ’66 Meets Steed and Mrs. Peel, The Keep, Bad Luck Chuck and many more – he got his start at Caliber Comics. While there, he was writing and drawing his own work, and writing both short comics and series for others to draw. In the years since, he’s been busy with a wide range of projects, but slowly over the past few years, he got back into writing comics. 

When the pandemic hit and the comics industry hit pause, Smith started writing and drawing again. He started by posting weekly installments of an autobiographical series My Life as Riley. Then he launched the serial Johnny Chaos, which wraps up this week, on social media and his Patreon. Next week he’s launching a brand new serial, Arch Nemesis, followed by another, Amelia Shadows: Daughter of Darkness, in August. He also has The October Girl, the first of a graphic novel series launching next year.

The final chapter of Johnny Chaos is out tomorrow, and I spoke with Smith recently about his career, how Doctor Who has influenced his writing and thinking about the future of comics.

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Sunday Comics | Cats + Chaos

Check out new comics by Matthew Dow Smith, Gabrielle Bell, Nate Powell and Rosemary Mosco.

Here’s a round up of some of the best comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

Here’s a fun one to dive into — creator Matthew Dow Smith has been posting an amazing new comic, Johnny Chaos, on his Twitter feed. He’s currently up to chapter five, with new pages going up every Wednesday.

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