Without Fear

I love creating new characters with Sami Kivela. 

In EVERFROST, we’ve created a leading character in the mold we love. Van is battling herself inside, she’s looking backwards as much as inside as much as forwards. She’s driven and determined and absolutely destined to make some bad choices, but they’re the best choices she can make in any given moment. She’s never going to stop, and she’s going to fail, and the beat will march on.

I think you are going to love Van and what she does throughout all we put her through in this comic. 

Going back a step, it’s important to think about why Sami’s characters are so good. His designs are always so visually engaging, they are well thought out. He puts emotion into every face and into every line. 

We first put together the pitch for CHUM, and his clear understanding of who these characters were sat me down in my chair. This was a guy instantly as invested and intelligent about our story as I was. Looking back at his Summer Stanwyck, I still love how he nailed the pulp paperback femme fatale I was going for. 

He rounded out the cast with the blood simple cop, and the shark cunning dealer, and the simple sad muscle. 

Next up was DEER EDITOR, and his design of ol’ Bucky still sits behind my con table at every show. I wanted Robert Redford in the news pool with antlers and Sami nailed it. The book lived on that keen eye for detail. 

When we made BEAUTIFUL CANVAS, I wanted someone I could understand within the layers of the complex lead. Lon Eisley is a hitwoman struggling to know if she’s creator or destroyer when she’s contracted to kill a small child in the same week she finds out her girlfriend is pregnant. Sami brought every facet of thought and life into her design. 

Now, here we are, nearly a decade after making some pulp archetypes and I’ve asked for something different again. 

Van is a brilliant mind. That intelligence comes with a cost: she sees the world for what it is. She’s lost all hope. But that hasn’t stopped her. Brutal determination is her food. Not giving up is the outcome. But she wasn’t always this way, so we hint at this past, right before it slams back into her.

After working in isolation for a long time, Van finally finds a way off planet. Success. With one task left to complete, she is distracted when she sees her son again. And she hasn’t seen him since he died in her arms as a child. 

Things are going to get a lot worse before anything gets better, but the question is: what’s the worst that can happen?

Well, you’ll find out some of that on the final page of the first issue. 

EVERFROST #1 is in Previews Magazine for a June 02 release – Order Code: APR211533

Talk to your LCS about preordering the comic, and ensuring you get a copy set aside for you when it hits the streets in June! This is our fifth book together, and we just keep getting better, that I can promise.

EVERFROST is a brand new sci fi miniseries from Sami Kivela and Ryan K Lindsay, the smash hit team behind BEAUTIFUL CANVAS, CHUM, and DEER EDITOR. And I gotta tell you, it’s great to have the band back together again. I’ve been making comics with Sami for nearly a decade, and it’s always exciting and makes me a better writer.

This futuristic story follows Van, a scientist who retired to the ice coast to die, who has finally figured out a way to escape from Earth. Here we will find her walking through the snow, and she’s carrying a big sword, and even bigger loss in her heart. But first she needs to work out how and why she just bumped into her son who she hasn’t seen since he died in her arms when he was a child.

Everfrost is a 4 issue miniseries published by Black Mask Studios

Artist: Sami Kivela [Abbott, Undone By Blood]

Writer: Ryan K Lindsay [Eternal, Negative Space]

Colourist: Lauren Affe [The Witcher, Stranger Things, Five Ghosts]

Letterer: Jim Campbell [Giant Days, Wasted Space]

Editor: Dan Hill [Beautiful Canvas, Metropo]

#1 is in Previews for a June 02 release – Order Code: APR211533

This comic is a mix of icy Frank Frazetta imagery over Blade Runner science and is a perfect fit for readers who love SAGA, ODY-C, BLACK SCIENCE and DESCENDER.

Everfrost has interstellar giant alien skull-whales, emotional flashbacks, sky fights, clones, and a giant fucking sword. It’s wild, it’s absolutely stunning, and it’s designed to also make you feel a little, too.

If you read ETERNAL or BEAUTIFUL CANVAS or NEGATIVE SPACE, then I think you know what I’m aiming to do with this one. Each of those comics sold well, gained stellar reviews, and got me to a place to write EVERFROST. I’m trying to marry the scenery of big epic genre pieces with the heart of weird smaller character studies, and hopefully find a sweet spot in between where your new favourite comic lives.

Talk to your LCS about preordering the comic, and ensuring you get a copy set aside for you when it hits the streets in June!