AfterShock Comics, the new publisher formed earlier this year by Joe Pruett, has announced a huge slate of writers who'll be penning creator-owned stories for their eventual launch line - including Justin Jordan, Garth Ennis, Marguerite Bennett and Amanda Conner.

AfterShock first made their presence known a few months ago, with the news that the much-respected editor Mike Marts would be joining the company at their launch, leaving his role as executive editor for the X-Men line at Marvel. With this pre-SDCC announcement we also can now confirm that the books published by AfterShock will be creator-owned properties, which is a canny and interesting move.

The list of writers onboard for launch projects are Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner, Paul Jenkins, Garth Ennis, Justin Jordan, Phil Hester, Frank Barbiere and Marguerite Bennett, some of whom have started speaking about their projects on Twitter. Bennett, for example, has described her project as an "erotic horror," with an artist she's wanted to work with for ages.

Which brings me to something I've noticed happen a lot in the run-up to this year's SDCC - that publishers seem to be spending a lot of time announcing writers for their new comics, but not artists. BOOM! Studios, Marvel, DC Comics and AfterShock have all gone all-in for new book launches which don't have a full creative team onboard yet (or, at the very least, announced to the public), which seems a strange way to go about announcing things. There's been a considered appeal this year for artists to regain recognition for their work as part of a collaborative creative process, and this convention season has seen several publishers apparently completely ignore that request.

There are some artists attached in this launch announcement, but they're listed here as writers - Brian Stelfreeze will be involved in an anthology, according to the announcement, alongside work by Amy Chu and Neil Gaiman. Hopefully we'll get to hear more later this week, because this is an interesting list of writers - but comics aren't comics without an artist.