Editor’s Note: The following is a work of fiction (except for the factual parts).

A pin held writer Joe Hill’s picture in place as lines of red string bled out from it across the tack board to connect with pinned images of comics editor Shelly Bond and artist Martin Simmonds and the printouts of various online articles. Private detective (and comics enthusiast) Paige Potter stepped back from the board to drink her late-morning glass of whiskey and ponder the clues.

On December 18, 2018, the comics blog MEANWHILE reported that Hill had revealed he was writing a new comic book series; Hill had indicated that Simmonds was the artist. As she sipped her whiskey, Potter wondered why other comics news sites or The New York Times hadn’t also picked up the story.

Below Potter’s broken second-floor office window, cats were fighting over the treasures left in the dumpster.

Potter found it interesting that Bond — the editor of comics publisher IDW’s Black Crown imprint, which features distinctive creator-owned titles like Kid Lobotomy, House Amok, and Assassinistas — had retweeted MEANWHILE’s article. Simmonds was the artist on the Black Crown comic Punks Not Dead, so the retweet could have been just a show of support for the upcoming comic and its creative team. Or perhaps Bond also had a professional interest?

A cat’s screeching interrupted Potter’s musings. Potter yelled out the window at the dumpster cats and got back to work after they had scattered.

The third clue was a May 21, 2019 post from comics news site Bleeding Cool. In its coverage of comics distributor Diamond’s Retailer Summit, the site noted that IDW had revealed that a “huge” creator-owned title announcement would be made at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Hill was acclaimed for his prose and comics work. Could the Hill and Simmonds comic be the creator-owned title that IDW was teasing?

Potter put the whiskey glass down on her food-stained desk and approached the board. Unconsciously, she massaged the scar on her left arm, an unwanted souvenir from her well-publicized confrontation last year with the city’s comics-obsessed “Letter Hack” serial killer.

Potter knew that Hill had originally envisioned his upcoming comic book series as a four-panel comic strip for his newsletter, Escape Hatch. Hill’s hints to his newsletter readers that he was working on a comic strip had even inspired one excited fan to create a humorous comic strip about Hill making a comic strip; despite its amateurish qualities, Joe Hill Makes a Comic Strip was one of Potter’s favorite online strips.