Image announced today that Hickman’s highly anticipated oversized one-shot, Feel Better Now, is now going to be delayed. On the plus side, though, the reason for the delay is pretty great: Hickman is expanding the story to be a full-blown original graphic novel.
Feel Better now focuses on a group of psychiatrists who decide to start recreationally tinkering with the lives of their patients, making a game out of it. Of course, as things go, it spins out of control pretty quickly to create a greater conflict.
Originally slated to be a 40-page one-shot written and illustrated by Hickman (at the meager price of $3.99) as part of his new line of PLUS! comics, Hickman is pulling the book off of Diamond’s solicitations and planning to re-solicit it at a later date. The reason? While working on the original 40-page script, the story apparently “got bigger,” beyond what 40 pages could let him do. Hickman, who is certainly well known for his careful plotting, will in turn continue to illustrate and write the book to be released at an unknown time, although he hopes that the outcome will be worth it.
On the plus side, though, Red Wing will not be delayed and neither will its trade, and the deluxe edition of Nightly News will also come out according to schedule. In addition to this, Hickman assures that the books he is working on with Ryan Bodenheim and Nick Pitarra for next year (Secret and the Manhattan Projects, respectively) are both on schedule and will not be delayed.
Either way, we can deal with patiently waiting for this. Well, we think we can, anyway.
Check behind the cut for the full press release from Image.
Jonathan Hickman’s FEEL BETTER NOW, originally solicited as a $3.99, 40-page one-shot is being delayed and retooled for a 2012 release as an original graphic novel.
“I regret to inform everyone that FEEL BETTER NOW will not be shipping on schedule,” said Hickman. “Unfortunately, during the course of creating this story, it got bigger. Far beyond the 40 pages we had allocated for the book, and, as a result, I have decided to give the story the scope I feel it deserves.
“Right now, we think the best thing to do is pull it from Diamond and re-solicit the book at a later date when we can firm up the final price point, page count and delivery date. I apologize for the inconvenience, but sometimes these things take on a life of their own and FEEL BETTER NOW is a story that deserves a full canvas.”
“This is one of those cases where the material really will benefit from a little more time,” explained Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson. “Simply put, we could have put the book out as planned, but Jonathan wouldn’t have been satisfied with it. He knew there was more story to mine here and felt the best way to do that was to expand upon it. Instead of just shipping the book late, everyone involved felt the best way forward was to give Jonathan as much time as he needed to tell the story he wants to tell and re-solicit when it’s ready. I think anyone familiar with Jonathan’s understands it will be worth the wait.”
Hickman added: “I would also like to note that THE NIGHTLY NEWS ANNIVERSARY EDITION HC and THE RED WING TP will still ship as scheduled, and that work has already begun on next year’s ongoing series SECRET and THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS. Both myself and Image Comics are extremely excited regarding our plans for the next 12 months.”
THE NIGHTLY NEWS ANNIVERSARY EDITION HC (SEP110423, ISBN: 9978-1-60706-4619), a 300-page full-color hardcover graphic novel for $34.99, will be on sale in stores November 16. THE RED WING TP (OCT110470), a 140-page full-color trade paperback for $14.99, will be on sale in stores December 14.
ABOUT IMAGE COMICS
Image Comics is a comic book and graphic novel publisher founded in 1992 by a collective of best-selling artists. Image has since gone on to become one of the largest comics publishers in the United States. Image currently has five partners: Robert Kirkman, Erik Larsen, Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri and Jim Valentino. It consists of five major houses: Todd McFarlane Productions, Top Cow Productions, Shadowline, Skybound and Image Central. Image publishes comics and graphic novels in nearly every genre, sub-genre, and style imaginable. It offers science fiction, romance, horror, crime fiction, historical fiction, humor and more by the finest artists and writers working in the medium today. For more information, visit www.imagecomics.com.
