ARCANUM: What's with this Hiatus, Then?

This technically doesn't happen until Arc Two ...

Basically, I neglected to quit my day job.

When Leverage wrapped, I had two projects to occupy my downtime: the Thrillbent 2.0 launch and the founding of my own production company, Kung Fu Monkey Productions. It takes a good year of development to pull any projects together for TV development, so I figured I had some room to spend exclusively on Thrillbent.

Arcanum is a difficult comic series -- it's meant to duplicate a TV series, which means breaking 13 full interlocking stories per arc, rather than a single serialized story. There's also, for a fantasy series, a ridiculous amount of research. Savvy readers will be able to figure out from the real-world clues already dropped under exactly what location the Arcanum facility is constructed. The full timeline of all the plot links stretches from historical figures of the mid 1800's through World War One to modern times. This is my Big Swing, so to speak. But, as I'd just gone from "A Show Eating My Life" to "Relatively Unemployed", Todd and I jumped in with a certain comfort in the lead time we'd built up.

What I did NOT anticipate was rapidly closing the deal with my friends at TNT for a new pilot or two, my friend Dean Devlin getting the rights to a dream project we'd talked about for years, and the fine folks at Cinemax giving me a call for ... something. Never mind the ruthless efficiency of the young people who work at my company, who scared up about 20 projects I'm NOT writing for development. Essentially, my TV career post-show did not suck at quite the volume I believed it would.

All that to say there was no way we could keep jamming the art through as my Arcanum scripts got farther and farther behind. We needed a gap for me to get the first batch of stories fully completed and give Todd and Troy a chance to do their best work. I'd also like to start doing what the Eighth Seal lads are doing -- offering Arcanum issues on Comixology ahead of their Thrillbent release. 

And so Arcanum takes a rest until September, with the exception of some concept art and research notes we'll post occasionally. In the meantime, the Monday slot will be filled with Todd and Geoff Throne's great indie action book, Prodigal. Supernatural treasure hunters who punch stuff, fight ninjas and dragons, and banter. It was this book which made me ask Todd to come on to Arcanum, and of course you all know Geoff Thorne from Leverage, so I'm sure you'll dig the series as much as I do.

Thanks for your tolerance as we screw around with our little publishing experience, and be sure to check out Thrillbent's other titles.