I’d hoped to be back to blogging for a bit before this post happened, so it’d feel less like it came out of nowhere, but … for the last few months I’ve been teasing something big happening with work, and this Wednesday, it was announced –
Along with colourist/writer Jordie Bellaire, I will be part of the inaugural class of Tiny Onion’s brand new Artists in Residence program.
From the official announcement on the Tiny Onion Substack:
Our goal for this initiative is to build a better version of the “exclusive” contract, and not only provide talent with stability and guaranteed work without all the usual red tape but to also celebrate them as multi-hyphenate creators and crucial members of the Tiny Onion ecosystem.
“We believe comics are a team sport, and that every creator on a book deserves to be treated as the world-class talent that they are, harnessing their skills and passion to drive our medium forward. With the Artists in Residence initiative, we plan to put a spotlight on the unsung heroes of comics creation and give them a platform to produce their best work yet.”
– Eric Harburn, Director of Editorial
There are two parts to this, both equally exciting. First, this maps out my lettering work for the next year or so, the majority of which I will be doing with James and Tiny Onion. And second, I will creating and writing an original comic series with Tiny Onion:
In addition to collaborating with Elsa Charretier and James on the upcoming series, The City Beneath Her Feet at DSTLRY and a variety of other future projects, Jordie and Aditya will each be developing their own new original series with Tiny Onion to be published at Image Comics. Stay tuned for more details in the months ahead!
As regular readers of this blog/newsletter might have noticed, I’ve been cutting down on work for the last couple of years to the point where I consider myself semi-retired as a letterer. A big reason for this was burnout and chronic pain, but I also wanted to find a good balance between work, life and other things that I want to do, like drawing, writing and recently photography.
This year, I feel like I’ve found this balance (mostly, of course – nothing’s quite perfect), but I want this to continue for the next couple of years at least – I want to work intentionally, do good work, and give myself the time to do everything else.
So in May, I reached out to my closest collaborators to figure out what 2025 looked like, so I could populate my schedule ahead of time and make sure the balance stayed in place. James replied saying, if I could hang on a couple of weeks, he had something to run by me.
That’s when Eric and James pitched me the Artist in Residence program. Lettering-wise, this made complete sense for me, because between this and the other books I’d already planned to letter, my slate for 2025 is filled up. But unlike the usual vagaries of freelance work, I don’t have to worry about finding other work if project timelines slip. The program came exactly at the right time – the stability and guaranteed work mentioned in the announcement.
The other part of this, of course, was being invited to develop an original series with Tiny Onion as one of their Artists in Residence. More details will be announced as these projects take shape, but this part of the contract is both incredibly exciting to me, and a bit nerve-wracking.
As you might know, I’ve been a career writer in a previous life, and have continued writing short stories and short comics on occasion, but now, as work and health have stabilised, I’ve wanted to come back to writing in a big way. Not to make it my primary career again – I love lettering too much for that, and I like being semi-retired – but to make stories that I really care about, that I feel compelled to tell.
When James and Eric made their offer, I toyed with a few different ideas to present them, old and new. But from the start, I knew which book it had to be. I’ve been developing the book codenamed SEASIDE for the last couple of years, and when the offer came, I had a solid outline that I was about to present to an editor. Much more than any of my other ideas, this was the story that I was going to tell no matter what, and I knew that with the backing of Tiny Onion, I could give it the love and the diligence it deserved. It was a no-brainer, and thankfully, the TO gang agreed.
We’re some way from any more details on this particular project being announced, but the Artists in Residence program has been underway for a little bit now, and I can say that it continues to be a delight working with James, Eric and the whole team at Tiny Onion.
More soon!
