Ben Templesmith Caged

This Saturday (15th November) Insomnia will be at the Thought Bubble festival in Leeds for the first time. The comics convention is part of a longer festival in the city designed to "celebrate sequential art in all its forms".

At the show you will be able to get your hands on a limited number of pre-distribution copies of Cages by Xander Bennet and Melanie Cook before its official release in December.

We sent a copy of Cages to the Horror Master Ben Templesmith himself. Here he is with Xander, and the book, at San Diego Comic Con, ready to sign some copies. Everyone who pre-ordered a copy of the Layer Zero special edition at this year's Bristol Expo was entered into competition to win a copy signed by Xander Bennett Melanie Cook, Jonathan Hickman, and Ben Templesmith.


Being a lovely man as well as one of the most talented artists working in comics today, he agreed to write us a foreword. Here are some of the things he said:

"Cages is quite a book.

You can tell from the first page there's a love for the medium. You can clearly see the labour of love gone into this book, and clocking in past 100 pages is no mean feat in an age when many artists struggle to merely pencil a 22 page book.

I have to say, I'm a sucker for tentacles (yeah, bad pun). If anyone is familiar with my work, they'll know of this... and probably worry that I've got some rather strange fetishes. But by Odin's hairy balls, it's not a real book unless there's some tentacle action, if you ask me.

Cages has it in spades. You can't beat talking critters in bio-tubes either. In fact, the world Melanie and Xander have created here, the vibe they've given the work, is really quite lovely. And disturbing. Let's not forget disturbing."

And really, you can't argue with that.

If you want to see the tentacles in action before making up your mind to buy, then head over to myebook where you can read the first chapter for free or visit the Cages Comic website for more from Xander about the book.

In other news this week:

• Insomnia have signed up the cult hit Fallen Heroes by novelist and co-host of the Geek Syndicate Podcast, Barry Nugent for adaptation into a graphic novel. Fallen Heroes is a stylish supernatural thriller with a rich dark heart. The sharp, multi-layered plot and slick characters of modern crime writing juxtaposed with shadowy agencies, ancient magic and pulp adventure heroes make for a heady fusion of action romp nostalgia. The creative team is yet to be confirmed but details here as soon as it is.
  
  
• Average Joe by Thomas Romeo and Kelvin Chan has also been signed up for publication in around 12-18 months time. Joe is an ordinary Glaswegian who has become Death, the job having been passed on to him randomly after he freezes to death one night in his car. The story of how the team for this project came about, and how it came to us is an inspiring tale in itself - but that deserves a post of its own. For now we will just say "Thanks to Millarworld".

Time's up for this week, come by and say hello if you're going to Leeds.