Some… Years in the making, the second volume of the Power of Five graphic novel series -’Evil Star’ – will be out… Wait for it… Right now!
This is the volume I drew entirely on my own – pencils and inks – and its the longest book I’ve had out on own yet; weighing in a a hefty 170 pages!
The story is a continuation of the the five-novel series written by Anthony Horowitz and adapted by Tony Lee. In the first novel, 14 year old Matt Freeman was fostered as part of a government scheme to a small village in Yorkshire where he slowly learnt that all wan’t quite what it seemed, and the local folklore of witches might not be quite so dead after all. A little bit like The Wicker Man, all the villagers are actually in on an occult plot to reopen the portal that’s sealed away an evil ‘Old One’, monster. In Evil Star, it turns out that there’s another gate holding back Old Ones in Peru, South America, and the organisation that helps Matt sends him there to investigate. And then there are adventures! Obviously!

So after months of stapled script booklets, separate bits of paper with pencils on and inked artboard in piles, the finished product looks like this! (Note festive tablecloth also.)
You can buy the book from the publisher Walker Books themselves, Amazon UK or Amazon US, and a bunch of other places!
There’s a preview PDF of some lettered interior pages up on the Walker Books page, to read it, click here!
The story starts straight away as soon as you open the front cover – no title pages or publication information pages…








So since we only had black and white to play with for interiors, I used a few storytelling tricks to help make the tale feel a bit richer. Here, the folk-art style border means the characters are in an Incan town.
Here, the grey instead of white means the scene is taking place in a shared dream world.
And the grey linework and mottled brushwork shading here means it’s a flashback.



So here’s the book sitting on top of all the pages of artwork on Bristol board that went into its creation.
So here’s a spread with the original art next to it.
And another.
So since the series is being reprinted to fit in with the style of the prose novels a bit more, Evil Star and Raven’s Gate look pretty good next to each other, hm?

Looks pretty good together on the shelf too…
(Not that my work deserves such good neighbours, but you get the general idea…)