News from the North

Two separate reputable sources agree: The Executor was the seventh best graphic novel of 2010 - Playback:STL Comic Book Resources (I am amused by their precision of agreement. There's more overlap than I would have expected, actually; four books appear on both lists.)

Wikileaks of some interest to those who have read my novel NIGHT OF KNIVES: WikiLeaks cables reveal secret plan to push Mugabe out in Zimbabwe American officials welcomed the idea, noting that it was "increasingly in circulation" in the capital, Harare, and "may not require outside intervention". Washington requests biometric information for African leaders 2) Rebel and Militia Groups (SRCC) -- Efforts by rebel or militia groups or non-state actors--especially entities such as the FDLR that contain Rwandans who participated in the 1994 genocide--to obtain control of or greater participation in national or local government; to obtain control of natural or financial resources; to integrate into the Congolese armed forces (FARDC) or to cooperate with the FARDC in the exploitation of economic resources. [...] 6) Terrorism (TERR) -- Individuals and organizations supporting international terrorism, including legitimate businesses and financial transactions, money launderi...

You can now pre-order the gorgeous Porcupine's Quill edition of Beasts of New York from Amazon.com , Amazon.ca , and chapters.indigo.ca . (And, of course, you can buy the Kindle edition from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com , and the iBooks version from Apple's iBookstore .) (And, of course, you can download it in its entirety for free from Feedbooks and Manybooks .)

So I've started writing for TechCrunch . My inaugural post: How RIM's PlayBook Could Have Succeeded. Also, I have a new Walrus post up: The Long Arm of the Cyberlaw .

I was briefly interviewed by TravelPost.com, which gave me the opportunity to confess about those termites at long last.

I wrote A thing about Burning Man . And another about the Taliban . They're more alike than you might expect. Meanwhile, Jim Westergard's wood engravings for the upcoming Porcupine's Quill edition of my novel Beasts of New York are now online ( warning : implicit spoilers behind that link.) And you can order prints! A couple of samples: Hawk Launches Squirrel Rat King

I have mixed emotions about this Comics Journal 1 review, because in Part I the guy really slams the first few Vertigo Crime books 2 , and in this one he disses Andrea's awesome artwork; but he also uncorks this great line re The Executor : Can’t Canadians ever think up any other vision of human tragedy than having one’s hockey career end in a freak injury? which you have to admit is pretty funny. Oh, yeah, and he also says The Executor is the first in the series where a non-comics writer—in this case, Canadian crime novelist Jon Evans—pulls off a seriously good script. In fact, this is the most successful story produced in the series thus far [...] The Executor succeeds because it is a well-written and taut mystery that manages to engage far more deeply than one might expect with legacies of race and violence (and repression) [...] [a] hard, edgy and quite genuinely surprising script. Which, y'know, sure beats getting hit in the knee with a baseball bat, at least from my PO...

I'm just back from a month in Australia: you can check out pictures here and especially here . In the meantime, there've been some more reviews of The Executor : "DC Comics' Vertigo Crime strikes again with The Executor , and it is their biggest score yet ... the narrative takes off and never looks back until the final graphic panel ... compelling and emotionally crushing ... don't miss The Executor ." -  Pulp Serenade "A classic yarn ... a tremendous accomplishment in this combination of medium and genre. It's the kind of compelling crime drama that had me eating out of its hand. I hope this isn't the last we see of Jon Evans in comics ... Artist Andrea Mutti offers some truly knockout visuals ... I've read most of the Vertigo Crime offerings, and The Executor is an easy favorite." - Paul Montgomery, iFanboy "Vertigo Crime delivers another pulpy treat ... Both writer and artist perform extremely well by keeping a page-turning pace...

(Click to see it larger.) Also, a great review from The Onion 's AV Club: The latest in the stark, gritty Vertigo Crime graphic-novel series, The Executor (Vertigo) is a winner. From its creepy cover to its cathartic ending, it hits all the notes of a top-flight thriller, and its few weaknesses are overcome by its strengths. While novelist Jon Evans (Invisible Armies) lets his script get a tad too bogged down in exposition early on, it recovers quickly and delivers a handful of moments so startling, they jump off the page. And while the slim-lined art by Italian cartoonist Andrea Mutti (Le Syndrome De Caïn) isn't ideal for the book's tone, his outstanding use of shadow and light and his moody backgrounds more than make up for it. The Executor tells the story of former hockey goon and small-town boy made good Joseph Ullen, who returns to his roots in upstate New York when he's made the executor of his high-school girlfriend's will after her mysterious death. The wi...

Well, actually, this time 'round it's really just reviews, for The Executor : " The Executor is full of evil surprises... Writer Jon Evans ( Dark Places ) is savvy enough to know he must add sufficiently engaging twists on a well-worn path, and does. And Italian artist Andrea Mutti ( Nathan Never ) is amazingly accomplished." —  Scripps News "Andrea Mutti's use of shadows and ability to really get the most out of the black and white is amazing... Evans has some wonderful characters in this story and the way he weaves in and out of various threads of the plot eventually bringing them all together is almost magic. The ending is bittersweet and yet perfect. Evans has raised the bar for this group of books from Vertigo." —  Crimespree Magazine "Evans' story is unsettling, laying bare the inhumanity, the anger and the violence that can ruin even the best. The plot is fast-paced and filled with physical action... and if the ending isn't a storybo...

The Executor 's blurbage is in, and: "Jon Evans and Andrea Mutti deliver a neat little package about big dirty secrets. This book lingers." —  Brian Azzarello , New York Times best-selling author of FILTHY RICH and JOKER. "A razor-sharp journey into a forgotten town, where the heroes have given up, and all that is left are the broken, and the corrupt. Reminiscent of David Peace's Red Riding Quartet, Evans' prose and Mutti's spare, haunting artwork make THE EXECUTOR impossible to put down." —  Sarah Langan , Bram Stoker Award-winning author of THE KEEPER, THE MISSING, and AUDREY'S DOOR. "In THE EXECUTOR, Jon Evans and Andrea Mutti have taken many of the time-honored tropes of the Roman Noir--a fallen hero, a lost love, deeply buried secrets--and run with them in a direction that is constantly surprising and refreshing." —  Howard Chaykin , influential writer and artist of AMERICAN FLAGG!, BLACK KISS, BLACKHAWK, and AMERICAN CENTUR...

In 2007, while researching my novel Cannibals & Thieves , I interviewed a San Quentin inmate and then visited the prison myself. I dug this research out for a friend of late, and decided to clean it up and post it here. I also decided to remove details which could identify J., the subject of the first part. Which is kind of a shame, as they're very colourful, but it seems only polite. Part I Discussions with J., who did ten years at San Quentin. For what it's worth, while the proverbial grain of salt is probably a useful spice here, I didn't get the sense he was prevaricating about anything much, if at all. J. doesn't look like a ex-con. He's a wiry guy, about five foot six, with the sides of his head shaved and bangs dangling from what remains. He's laid-back, laughs easily, very sharp, I liked him immediately. Only his slightly uneven teeth, and the edges of solid-colour tattoos visible beneath the collar and above the cuff of his blue, short-sleev...

I've been a couple of times, to visit my friend L., who now lives back in New York City, and to research this piece I wrote for The Walrus about MSF's obstetrics hospital there. Estimates of the ultimate death toll range from "thousands" up to 100,000 or even 500,000 - although "both men admitted that they had no way of knowing." Haiti's poorest of the poor, a large number, live in tin shacks like these in La Saline: The one virtue of such shacks is that when they collapse in an earthquake you probably won't be either immediately killed or buried beyond recovery. So that's sort of a good thing. However, slightly more affluent Haitians tend to live in dense warrens of concrete boxes like the ones on the right here: Also, Port-au-Prince is a very hilly city, and thanks to the security situation, there are walls everywhere: and up another economic notch, you get rickety, often-incomplete, multi-story concrete buildings, which are probably the mo...

Uh-oh. According to Canada's Criminal Code, 163. (1) Every one commits an offence who (b) makes, prints, publishes, distributes, sells or has in his possession for the purpose of publication, distribution or circulation a crime comic. Definition of “crime comic” (7) In this section, “crime comic” means a magazine, periodical or book that exclusively or substantially comprises matter depicting pictorially (a) the commission of crimes, real or fictitious; or (b) events connected with the commission of crimes, real or fictitious, whether occurring before or after the commission of the crime. ( source ) ( commentary )

Well, this is wacky: my article Blood, Bullets, Bombs and Bandwidth was recently cited in Culture Machine , which is apparently an "international open-access journal of culture and theory, founded in 1999." Piracy as a Business Force , Adrian Johns, CM 2009. (PDF) ( Browser-friendly version )

Next summer (winter in the Southern Hemisphere) the entire world will descend into a flag-waving, horn-honking, vuvuzela -blowing orgiastic frenzy for the World Cup. There will also probably be some fantastic games played by some of the world's finest athletes. So for those of you who like the idea of soccer but don't really follow it, in honour of today's draw that partitioned the World Cup teams into groups, I give you my group-by-group, team-by-team breakdown and analysis, to use as a kind of Bluffer's Guide. Don't thank me. No, really. Especially not by name. Just remember that you heard it here first. Group A South Africa - "Bafana Bafana", aka The Boys, are probably the weakest host team in the history of the World Cup. The host team has never failed to progress beyond the group stage. Until now. Mexico - A decent team, headlined by defender Rafael Márquez of Barcelona and young striker Carlos Vela of Arsenal, but they struggled to convince in the...

Since I have a rather personal interest in the Vertigo Crime line, I went out to look for a list of all its extant and forthcoming books: but to my surprise, no such list existed. (Vertigo Crime doesn't even have its own subpage on the Vertigo web site yet, oddly.) So here's what repeated Googling taught me, recorded so that you don't have to repeat my slightly tedious research. Click on a cover to go to a book's Amazon page, if one exists. Title Cover Release Date Author/Artist Notes Dark Entries August 25, 2009 Ian Rankin / Werther dell'Edera Rankin is one of the world's foremost mystery authors. Filthy Rich August 25, 2009 Brian Azzarello / Victor Santos Filthy Rich hit the New York Times bestseller list. Luna Park November 17, 2009 Kevin Baker / Danijel Zezelj This looks awesome. Also, Grand Theft Auto IV -esque. The Chill January 12, 2010 Jason Starr / Mick Bertilorenzi A supernatural sexual serial killer. Bronx Kill March 9, 2010 Peter Milligan / James ...

This here looks suspiciously like a cover: I think I really like it. I also think I like that it's coming out in hardcover. (I was expecting paperback.) But I do not like their innovative spelling of my name . Sigh. Ah well. At least they got it right on the actual cover, and they do generally (though not always) fix this sort of thing before the actual publication date. eta: aha, it's on Amazon.com as well as those .ca sites above. Go forth and pre-order your little hearts out! Meanwhile, I intend to commence the rewrite-to-editorial-order of Beasts of New York next week. (Reductive surgery, but otherwise no major changes.) Oh, and Invisible Armies hardcovers are on sale from Amazon.com, for a presumably limited time, for the bargain price of $4.46 . ( etaa: said price has now skyrocketed back to $19.96. If you snoozed, you losed!)

I am pleased to announce that Beasts of New York , my epic Homeric-quest fantasy novel about a squirrel in Central Park, which I released online under a Creative Commons license a couple of years ago, will be published onpaper next year by The Porcupine's Quill , a very cool Canadian literary press whose founders were recently awarded the Order of Canada for their "important and enduring contribution to Canadian literature." BoNY has been doing well online, too; it's been downloaded a respectable 6,000 times from Feedbooks and Manybooks (with no publicity whatsoever save for word-of-mouth - it wasn't even me who put it up on either site) and has, to my surprise, become my most-popular and highest-rated book on Goodreads .