2016 — et voilà

HAPPY NEW YEAR, one and all.

Best way to rise and shine to a new calendar? …Not the editing I’m doing now (for the next novel — necessary but yawn-inspiring).

No, I’m talking up three brand new beautiful pages of finished artwork for the upcoming Magpie comic I do with Frantz Kantor — for Nat Karmichael‘s Oi Oi Oi! zine @ Comicoz (this art’s actually from Magpie #2) — and seeing an awesome write-up on that series thanks to the cool cats @ Comics Alliance.

In this series we’re paying homage to, nodding, winking and piss-taking everything – from Roy Thomas to Ghost in the Shell (see artwork above), M.C. Escher wrestling Russ Manning’s Magnus, Robot Fighter, and on into mass-media current affair programs, even 2001: A Space Odyssey, Fantastic Voyage, and Lost in Space.

Look out for the first installment of Magpie inside Oi Oi Oi! #7, out at the end of January in newsagencies across Australia.

Also this month, the rejigged comic book version of my graphic novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat (2014), which is in turn based on my 2011 debut novel of the same title, will be published shortly in America via Project-Nerd Publishing. There’s a great cover variant by Claudia Everest, and the two first issues can be pre-ordered HERE.

We finished 2015 very nicely, thanks to this wunderbar review of Trista & Holt #11 by Steven Alloway @ Fanboy Comics:

“Andrez Bergen’s gritty, ’70s noir thriller is a unique and exciting story which gives us new things to love about it in every issue. If you weren’t hooked from the very first issue, chances are you will be by now, particularly now that our titular characters are finally together and can give us that odd couple interplay that Bergen so excels at…

“Their escape has action aplenty and involves a car chase and a hail of gunfire. Not to mention a bit of rapid-fire banter between our two leads. It’s enough to keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the entire issue.”

Thank you, mate.

Also, we had the inclusion of my previous series Bullet Gal (alongside a slew of more worthy Image Comics titles) by Zeb Larson in a Best of 2015 write-up for Flickering Myth.

Lastly, Trista & Holt #12 will be published via IF? Commix in February, so we’re three issues from the series’ conclusion. There’s a nice spotlight on the issue at First Comics News.

Otherwise?

In case you missed the “memo”, my new novel Small Change has just been published via Roundfire Fiction in the UK, and it features Roy Scherer and Suzie Miller from the Tales to Admonish series: think a mix of noir, horror, mirth, and homage.

One homage, clearly from the cover art and title alone, is to the great Tom Waits.

This week’s reading of my own?

A lot of Raymond Chandler (The Little Sister, and now Trouble is My Business), along with Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Sleeper and Incognito).

I’m hanging for the next issues of Brubaker and Phillips’ The Fade Out, and Brubaker and Steve Epting’s Velvet.

However… starting a new year with a seriously heavy head-cold that’s descending to the chest?

Not so much fun — especially trying to final-edit a novel in this groggy state. The medication *might* help make Black Sails, Disco Inferno a tad more surreal, but that’s not quite the intention behind this book.

:p