Hobtown Mystery Stories III: The Secret of the Saucer is out in stores and…people like it! Despite the book having a disjointed psychotic story told in reverse chronological order, we’ve received such a warm reception that Alex and I are genuinely touched by it. I won’t lie and say it was easy to make, because it was actually one of the most difficult projects I have ever undertaken, and the trust I received from our readers (and most of all from Alexander Forbes, my dear friend and collaborator, who had to draw it) means a lot. I’ve spent years worrying that I wasn’t going to pull it off, that it was going to be incomprehensible, and that people who loved the other two books would hate this one.
With Hobtown, we’re always trying to do something different. Each book (and I hope it’s clear by now) is meant to be stylistically different from the last, crossing genres and asking a little bit more from the readers. Some readers were shocked (and even complained) when the second book was so different from the first, but it was crucial to us to establish this changing status quo so that we could try something like this book. It’s been our dream to make this book, a story that drops the reader on their head and has them try to make sense of what is happening.
Incredibly, among the people who understood (and enjoyed) what we were trying to do were the likes of The New York Times, who were effusive in their praise. For anyone who writes books, you know it is almost impossible to make anyone care about them, and The Times overlooks plenty of wonderful, important works. To have garnered their critical attention with our book is almost unbelievable. To see my back-matter doodles and a mention of “Lincoln, New Brunswick” in the nytimes is fully insane to us.
(Special thanks also, to Boing Boing, which I’ve loved and read for maybe 20 years straight. Being in “The paper of record” is really something, but seeing your work in the thing you click on twice a day means almost more.)
Lastly, for anyone who wants to read more about our process making this book, check out my interview with Adam Szym, a very smart and talented comic creator (whose Little Visitor & Other Abductions is out with ONI PRESS—and linked to in these articles). It’s maybe my favourite one, and I returned the favour and interviewed him in the same pages (link below).
Thank you for visiting Hobtown! There’s more coming. Look for A Journey Into The Abyss next!