

This Wednesday, at finer comic shops and bookstores everywhere, will see the release (according to Wildstorm) of Absolute Promethea Volume 1. I received my copies Friday so it should be out this week as noted on the Wildstorm website. Unless of course the information on their site is wrong, which on occasion has been known to happen.

Seeing this book brings a lot of different feelings for me. It has been a full decade since this material was originally produced and strange seeing it again in a form that forces me to examine just how much I’ve grown as an artist. I can see so many things that I would do differently now, but that was then and this is now, criticism in hindsight. I have to keep telling myself that it has been ten years, so of course I’m going to take issue with some things, but it just doesn’t feel like it has been a decade. I think this is due to when working on the new slipcase art and wraparound cover for the book and the interior design pieces, it was like going into a timewarp, putting myself back to then. So seeing this new volume has a fresh relevance for me. It’s not that I’m trying to degrade my own work, or to say it wasn’t worthy, it’s just impossible for me to not look at it with my current level of knowledge and thought. Reflecting on the material in analytical ways. Even with this perspective in my mind, I recognize this material as the beginning of a coming of age for me, the beginning of finding my footing in the realms of art. I certainly had been doing professional work for awhile when Promethea first came along but I feel that certain things were set in motion, certain things were released in me that allowed me to try and reach for greater potentials. This new Absolute Edition is a landmark in time, a statement of beginning growth of the mind. It was very personal work for me and so I tend to look at it in intimately critical terms. But I love it in all it’s beauty and flaws.

I’d like to briefly talk about some new things done for this book. There is the new art done for the slipcase which is printed with gold ink on a mat white finish, the result looks nice and unique. The book itself has new art for the cover, a wraparound psychedelic image with intricate spot varnishing on a mat finish. There is no dust jacket with this edition. I decided that it just was too large in size to accommodate a jacket. I’ve got other Absolute editions that have dust jackets and I found it cumbersome, so I felt it best that we not bother and just place the art onto the hardcover itself, I really like the way this came out. There are new endpapers designs by me and new chapter head designs by me as well. These new chapter heads were fun and deceivingly simple. but as the chapters progress over the course of all three Absolute Volumes, these chapter head images slowly puzzle together the Qabbalistic Tree Of life, and also have other images that appear and disappear with each new chapter. the image above is the backdrop art for these chapter head designs. These were a lot of fun and a lot of work. And lastly, there is a very nice afterword by my friend and author Brad Meltzer, best known for his work at DC Comics and most notably for his recent best selling novel The Book Of Fate. You can find more about him at BradMeltzer.com

To those of you who have already read Promethea and plan on buying this new edition in order to experience it again in a new way, I thank you, I hope you will find enjoyment from it for many years to come. To those of you who may be picking this up for the first time, welcome and I hope it tickles your brain in ways you might not expect.

bad fuzzy photo…



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