“Friday” From Ed Brubaker & Marcos Martin Available on Panel Syndicate!

Award-winning writer Ed Brubaker, acclaimed artist Marcos Martin, and colorist Muntsa Vicente have “surprised readers” with the debut of Friday, a previously unannounced comic on Panel Syndicate.

Considering the times we are all living in, I’m all for creators continuing to release new content for readers to enjoy. Now, DC Comics recently announced it will resume shipping new titles by the end of this month. Let’s see if all goes as planned. While we wait for the bigger publishers to figure stuff out, there’s been a bunch of titles released (over these past weeks) on various platforms for you to try.

According to the press release, the official description for Friday reads:

In the series, Friday Fitzhugh—girl detective—and Lancelot Jones—her best friend and also the smartest boy in the world—spent their childhoods solving crimes and digging up occult secrets. But that was years ago. And now Friday is in college and starting a new life on her own. She’s moved on. Until she returns home for the holidays and is immediately pulled back into Lance’s orbit. This is literally the Christmas vacation from Hell and neither of them may survive to see the New Year. FRIDAY Chapter One, “The Girl in the Trees,” is available now on Panel Syndicate in English and Spanish, with fans paying what they want to read the story.

“One of the first things I said to Marcos was that this book feels like Lovecraft’s New England is colliding with Edward Gorey’s,” shared Brubaker. “And I like to describe FRIDAY as post-YA, which is a genre that doesn’t really exist. It’s an idea I’ve been circling for a long time, that lets me tap into my own nostalgia for my youth and the YA books I loved back in the 70s and 80s – stuff like The Great Brain, or John Belliars books, or Harriet the Spy, or Encyclopedia Brown. I want to take that concept of the teen detective and those supernatural mysteries aimed at kids, but then let the protagonists grow up, so they have all the same problems we all do… and they encounter a much more dangerous world.”

This latest release marks the first major collaboration between Brubaker and Martin.

“Ed Brubaker has always been one of my favorite comic book writers,” said Martin. “There’s a unique quality to his writing, like a sober sadness that permeates all his work and always shines through, whether it’s on his crime noir stories with artist extraordinaire Sean Phillips or on his superhero projects at Marvel or DC. We had the chance to collaborate briefly on a Captain America Annual almost 15 years ago and I remembered the experience fondly, so when the time came last year to start thinking about what creator owned project I wanted to tackle next, I was hoping he’d had a similar positive memory of our past work together. But most importantly, I had his email address.”

Friday is available on Panel Syndicate in two formats: one for computers and laptops where it’s a double-page spread, and one for iPad, where it’s a single page view.

For those who don’t know, back in 2013, Marcos Martin founded the online platform Panel Syndicate with writer Brian K. Vaughan and illustrator/colorist Muntsa Vicente, in order to distribute their creator-owned comic, The Private Eye.

“Panel Syndicate was born as an example of a distribution model I felt was fair to both readers and creators, and eventually, comic publishers and retailers who can make more informed decisions with the books they were publishing and stocking on their shelves,” said Martin. “Our payment model also establishes a direct relationship between readers and creators. As creators, we’re responsible for creating quality comics to the best of our abilities, and the reader then gets to decide the value they think those comics have, according to their own perception and personal circumstances.”

If the name Ed Brubaker sounds familiar to you, well there’s a very good reason behind it. Brubaker has a very impressive resume. His work includes writing for DC, Marvel, HBO’s Westworld and a lot more. He was also in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Let us know if you have read Friday.

Author: Farid-ul-Haq

Farid has a Double Masters in Psychology and Biotechnology as well as an M.Phil in Molecular Genetics. He is the author of numerous books including Missing in Somerville, and The Game Master of Somerville. He gives us insight into comics, books, TV shows, anime/manga, video games, and movies.

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