082 The Rebuild is Here!
Radiant Black #31 in stores now! All the latest Will Friedle videos! Plus, join us LIVE tonight!
Hey everyone! Welcome to March, which has definitely come in like a lion. Last week, I flew to Baltimore to kick-off Radiant Black #31 with a launch day signing at the incredible Third Eye Comics. This is a store I’ve wanted to visit for some time now, and I could not be more impressed by what Steve and the gang have built. We had a killer turn out and I want to give a big thank you to everyone who came by with new stuff and old. This was my first signing in Baltimore (outside of last year at Baltimore Comic Con), and it’s awesome to meet so many east coast fans.
But right after the signing, I flew back to Chicago and stayed an extra day to see my dad, who just had an unexpected triple bypass. He’s doing well, and has already been released from the hospital. But it was a whirlwind few days.
On Friday night, I flew back to LA in order to get back in time for our big Rebuild Launch Signing at Collector’s Paradise, where Brian Buccellato, Melissa Flores and I were joined by Radiant Black himself, Will Friedle.
And in a nice surprise, we were also joined by Reginald James, who voices Blaze in our Radiant Black VS Blaze short film as well as playing him all the way back in our 2008 film, The League!
Both signings were fantastic events— a big thank you to Ed and Steve for putting them together and helping us launch this thing right.
Our New Promos
And on the topic of launching things right, if you follow us on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube, you may have started to see animated ads for upcoming issues of Radiant Black… and soon, Rogue Sun.
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You may recognize Will’s voice on all of these and your next question might be that if we’ve already done these for issue 31 and issue 32… does that mean we’re going to keep doing them for future issues? And the answer is yes, which means you’ll be getting new Will Friedle Radiant Black content every month, through the audiobook release and beyond.
But on top of that, I’m excited to say that this approach isn’t just limited to Radiant Black. Thanks to Johnny Yong Bosch, Rogue Sun is about to get in on the promo game as well!
We’ll be dropping Johnny’s first ad next Monday, timed to Rogue Sun #25. It’s a really fun one!
I’m also excited to announce that we’re bringing back a long-running staple of Massive-Verse creators. The way that Mat Groom, Michael Busuttil and I met is through their fantastic podcast, Ranger Danger. They were kind enough to host me for an interview right as I was starting the Power Rangers comics, which subsequently led to a monthly podcast called Ranger Danger Boom Room where the three of us would discuss that month’s issue of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. A cross between a director’s commentary and a chill hangout with friends, we did this for all three years of my time on the books and then the guys continued the series with Ryan Parrott.
We’ve toyed with doing something like this for Radiant Black, including a twitch livestream version hosted by the awesome Meghan Camarena. But after the first few issues of the book, our workload became crazy and we fell off from figuring out what our preferred video version could be.
Well, we’ve figured it out! Or, we think we’ve figured it out! Starting tonight, we’re going to be live streaming each month, discussing every issue of Radiant Black, Rogue Sun and Inferno Girl Red the Monday (most of the time) after release, where you’ll be able to watch our creators breakdown the book, ask questions, and even get an early peek at what’s coming next.
And if you’re not able to tune in, don’t worry— we’re going to be releasing an audio version via the newsletter, which will also include links like this one, to the full stream as a YouTube video.
We’ll also be cutting up clips from each stream for retailers and for social.
Radiant Black #32
Radiant Black #32 is on FOC today, so I wanted to make sure that I took a second to show off our covers one last time as well as a few early preview pages!
Preview:
Okay, that’s going to do it for me today! But before I go, a quick reminder that if you’re heading to Emerald City Comic Con this weekend, come find me in Artist Alley. I’ll have books, prints, variants, pins and a bunch of cool stuff!
Hope to see some of you over the coming days!
Kyle
Los Angeles, CA
How do I get my paws on that sweet Jock variant?
This is all so cool. It's really awesome seeing you guys take on all these different initiatives in order to spread public awareness of the books. I've loved what you've done with Radiant Black and can't wait to see the ones for Rogue Sun (especially when a Mr. Johnny Young Bosch is involved). Also, who came up with the Burger King Kids Club line for issue 32? Was it you or Joe?