With the news that The Rainbow Orchid is to be published in 2009 by Egmont, the UK publisher of the Tintin books, it seems this may well actually come to pass (and Jez's justice will be done!).

When I started the strip, this was not at the forefront of my mind. My main concern was to write and draw a comic that I could enjoy whole-heartedly for myself (see the introduction I wrote here). As more and more reviewers picked out Orchid from BAM!, and then seeing the non-stop interest first-hand as I sold the black-and-white collection at the London Winterfest, and, more recently, seeing the excellent global reaction to the online version, the possibility of it being published with a wider audience in mind became apparent.

One of the really nice things about this process is that, while I had the idea I would finish Orchid before even contemplating finding a publisher (or indeed self-publishing it), events were rather hurried along somewhat by several publishers contacting me along the way. All this eventually led to my agent, Oli Munson at Blake Friedmann, approaching several of these publishers late last year, and successfully getting a deal with Egmont - the best publisher I could have wished for my story.

It's early days yet, but as Tim Jones, Egmont UK brand manager, was off to the Bologna Book Fair a couple of weeks ago, it was thought that this was as good a time as any to make the deal public, so to coincide with his mentions at the fair, a press release was sent out on April 1st. (Unfortunately, this coincided with my website's database going down, thus rendering my site somewhat inhospitable to visitors, and it took a week before Streamline were able to get the problem fixed - it was a server issue their end, so I was helpless).

Anyway, that's a bit of an overview for you. I also received a number of emails about the online strip being whittled down to just two preview episodes. This will remain the case for a while yet, though there will definitely be some new stuff going up at some point. For the moment all my energies are being directed at my new story for The DFC, Charlie Jefferson and the Tomb of Nazaleod. You can read a little about that here.

Lastly (for now), but most importantly, an enormous thanks to all those who wrote with lovely messages of congratulations on the Egmont news - it's been one of the best bits so far to hear from long-time fellow comic creators and brand new readers alike.

Newsspread and a tip of the hat...