Welcome to The Forgotten Five
And how you can help make the story a reality!
Hey friends!
Happy Friday. Hope you’re doing as well as can be in these weird, wild, very troubling times.
Anyway, I wanted to draw your attention to The Forgotten Five, a new Patreon that we just “soft” launched last week. What is The Forgotten Five? Well, I’m glad you asked.
On the surface, it’s a new comic book series from me, co-writer/co-creator Sara Century, and artist/co-creator Pat Kennedy. Sara’s an acclaimed horror writer, podcaster, and friend. I’ve known Pat forever, and was his editor on work like Jughead: The Hunger and Vampironica/Jughead: The Hunger. He’s a skilled, dynamic artist who has been severely underrated over the years. We’re also getting help from friends like Priya Saxena, Chas! Pangburn, Connor Goldsmith, and Chad Anderson.
When Sara and I first started talking about this project over a year ago, it sprung from conversations about our own favorite comics - and, more importantly, favorite comic book runs — long stretches with the same creative voices driving the narrative. Like Chris Claremont’s epic first run on X-Men (particularly the Outback era with Marc Silvestri), or Jaime Hernandez’s Locas stories, or Keith Giffen’s Five Years Later Legion of Super-Heroes saga, or the Silver Age Doom Patrol of Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani. Obviously, we’re not daring to compare this book to these stone-cold classics, but that’s where our heads were at.
But in an increasingly challenged marketplace, it was tough to envision a way (for us) to tell a longform story that allowed for not only big, epic stories - but the subplots, soap opera, and character development that we loved when reading long, 30+-issue runs on a given book. It just felt like a non-starter. Still, we couldn’t shake the idea, and once Pat was involved and started designing these characters, we knew we had to bring them to life.
So, what if we just did it ourselves?
The Forgotten Five is a story told in two eras - in the not-so-distant past, a group of teens are captured, and realize that powers they long harbored have been activated against their wills. On the run from the shadowy organization responsible for their accursed new abilities, the kids find refuge with a mysterious woman, becoming part of her crusade against the group known as The Contingency. At the same, in the present, we catch up with some of the teens - now adults living private, separate lives. What happened in the interim? And what evil force is driving the former heroes back together for one last adventure?
The Forgotten Five is a story about coming to grips with your past, the power of found family, and a love letter to our favorite superhero comics, with the hope and goal of telling the story for a long time.
While we shopped this idea around a little bit, one of the big things for me was making sure we had the ability to let this book breathe. We have the first two or three years loosely planned, and this is the kind of story that needs more runway than a one-shot or mini-series can provide. That’s not a diss on the industry - it’s just realistically a challenge to tell a longform story or start to without knowing if you’ll be able to conclude it. By launching on Patreon, our hope is that we’ll be able to provide readers with new chapters (8-10 pages) of black and white comics every 4-6 weeks that we can then eventually collect in print, colored and repackaged.
In addition to the comic itself, we’ll be creating some additional materials - a podcast, zines, merch - to help entice folks to join the party. But for now, the best thing you can do is sign up at Patreon - we’re launching the first chapter very soon, so if you want to sign up as a paid patron, now is the best time.
Also, if you have a Patreon of your own, feel free to “recommend” The Forgotten Five, too!
Thanks for reading - and welcome aboard!
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UPCOMING RELEASES
GREEN HORNET/MISS FURY #4 - April 9 [Dynamite]
DICK TRACY #9 - April 16 [Mad Cave]
THE QUESTION: ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER #6 - April 30 [DC]
FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2025: STAR WARS - May 3 [Marvel]
STAR WARS #1 - May 7 [Marvel]
DICK TRACY #10 - May 14 [Mad Cave]
GREEN HORNET/MISS FURY #5 - May 14 [Dynamite]
STAR WARS: THE BATTLE OF JAKKU TPB - June 3 [Marvel]
STAR WARS #2 - June 11 [Marvel]
DICK TRACY VOL. 2 TPB - July 1 [Mad Cave]
WHAT IF…? GALACTUS TPB - July 1 [Marvel]
GREEN HORNET/MISS FURY TPB - July 29 [Dynamite]
MARVEL ZOMBIES: BLACK, WHITE & BLOOD TPB - July 29 [Marvel]
SPIDER-SOCIETY: ENTER THE SPIDER-VERSERS TPB - July 29 [Marvel]
THE QUESTION: ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER TPB - August 26 [DC]
DICK TRACY VOL. 1 DELUXE EDITION HC - September 9 [Mad Cave]
UPCOMING EVENTS
A NIGHT OF LITERARY FEASTS (Fort Lauderdale, FL) - March 29, 5:30-7:30pm EST
LA TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS (Los Angeles, CA) - April 26-27
BOUCHERCON (New Orleans, LA) - Sept. 3-7
Excited for this one 🙏