The AV Club reports writer Ed Brubaker, artist and letterer Marcos Martín, and colorist Munsta Vicente have debuted the first issue of “Friday” on Panel Syndicate, the pay-what-you-want digital comics website. “Friday” is described as a “post-YA” comic that takes inspiration from young adult detective novels from the 1960s and 1970s like Harriet the Spy and the Encyclopedia Brown series. The comic follows the titular Friday Fitzhugh as she returns to her hometown of Kings Hill after giving up sleuthing to start a new life at university. Reuniting with her best friend, Lancelot Jones, the duo get pulled into another “small-town gothic horror mystery.”
Brubaker shared his thoughts on the series through his newsletter From the Desk of Ed Brubaker: “I describe “Friday” as Post-YA, which is a genre that doesn’t really exist. But it’s about an 18 year-old girl who grew up as a teen detective, fighting crime and exploring occult mysteries, the sort of Watson to her best friend’s Holmes. It’s an idea I’ve wanted to explore for a long time, to take that concept of the teen detective, but then let them grow up and have all [the] same problems we all do, and encounter a much more dangerous world. So, kind of a horror story. I think one of the first things I said to Marcos was this book should feel like Lovecraft’s New England is colliding with Edward Gorey’s.”
Martín also wrote about developing a new artistic process for “Friday,” saying “I had been wanting to experiment a bit with my drawing style and get away from my comfort zone for a while now, contemplating the possibility of cross-hatching, a technique I’ve never really looked into. So when Ed pitched me the idea for ‘Friday’ with its mixture of Edward Gorey and Lovecraft set in a New England-ish town in the late 60s/early 70s, I was surprised to find how perfect it was for what I was hoping to develop. It drove me to look into comic book artists and book illustrators I had always liked but never had found a way to incorporate. Artists like the aforementioned Gorey, who is probably not only the strongest influence in the character designs but also conceptually, in the overall visual mood and atmosphere of the book. And also Tove Jansson, Crepax, Matsumoto or Harry Clarke among others have been a constant reference in my struggle to find the right balance between the strong and simple black and white areas and the more intricate linework.”
After the series’s completion, the creators plan to publish a print collection of “Friday” with Image Comics. “Friday” will be available in two formats: a widescreen view meant for computer screens, and a single-page view for electronic readers and tablets.
Panel Syndicate’s publishing initiative promotes a pay-what-you-want model where consumers pay whatever amount for a DRM-free copy of the comics offered. Previous comics published on Panel Syndicate include Brian K. Vaughn and Martín’s “The Private Eye” and “Barrier,” and Ken Niimura’s “Umani” (which received the 2019 Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic).
