After the economic collapse of 2008, I speculated that hobos were the next big cultural phenomenon after zombies. Instead, it was Storage Wars. Undeterred, I paired up with writer, Cecil Castellucci, on a story emphasizing the values we thought should be valued in the new economic climate; ingenuity, imagination and empathy. I wrote and illustrated the above broadsheet for Pood, a newspaper style comics anthology that debuted in 2010 as an introduction to the characters that Cecil breathed full life into in her script for the upcoming graphic novel (title still to be determined). It's still a long way away but the book will be published by Dark Horse, edited by Sierra Hahn and released in the fall of 2014. Here's the recent announcement from Publisher's Weekly:

Castellucci, Infurnari Go with Dark Horse

YA (and graphic) novelist Cecil Castellucci sold North American rights to a currently untitled Depression-era graphic novel to Dark Horse’s Sierra Hahn. The book, which William Morris Endeavor’s Kirby Kim represented, will be illustrated by Joe Infurnari, and is currently set for a fall 2014 release. The story is set in 1932 and follows, Dark Horse said, two misfits “and a relationship built during a train-hopping journey from the cold heartbreak of their eastern homes toward the sunny promise of California.

“Smith is known for high quality work and for getting the work published,” said Smith literary agent ICM's Kate Lee, “and publishers that do graphics know this.” Shooting War, the first webcomic published on Smith, was published by Grand Central Publishing in November 2007 and A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld will be released by Pantheon on August 18th. Current projects being serialized on Smith are Next Door Neighbor, an anthology of next-door neighbor stories edited by Dean Haspiel, and Graphic Therapy, an autobiographical graphic series by Emily Steinberg.

Publishers Weekly posted an interesting piece about webcomics this week. In it they talk about the many ways SMITH Magazine has used webcomics to tell unique personal stories. SMITH magazine success stories, Shooting War and A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge provide context for the site's current projects including Next Door Neighbor. They even acknowledge Alexis Sottile's and my recent Eisner nomination for Vs. Click here to read the article.