Comic-Con@Home: AHOY Comics Expect More

AHOY had their very own panel online over the weekend with Mariah McCourt, Eisner Award nominated Steve Pugh, Mark Russell and moderated by Stuart Moore. Recognising that not everyone tuning in will be too familiar with AHOY Comics, Moore wisely gave everyone a run down of the company’s brief history and output before hading over to the various creators to pimp their books. All of which we’ve covered in some way or another on here, so I imagine you’ll be familiar with such titles as Second Coming, Captain Ginger and Ash & Thorn. If not, then were have you been?
Mark and Steve wax lyrical on getting to work together again since their original partnership on The Flintstones, on Billionaire Island, talking about the revenge-plot that drives this ‘end-of-the-world’ that sees the wealthiest people of hightail it to an elite island to sit out the coming apocalypse with Steve mentioning the various tones in this socio-political dark comedy. “It goes into much darker places at times,” as he says. For anyone interested in Billionaire Island, you may want to know that the trade will be coming out on 24th November, as you’ll see for yourself in the full panel represented again below:

We also get a quick summary of the Second Coming sequel, Second Coming: Only Begotten Son, in which Christ gains more followers and encourages us all to look after one another as God has all but given up on Earth and has become a very absent landlord. Targets to be aimed at are the mega-churches that pray (geddit) on the nave and gullible and out at the end of the year.
Mariah talked about Ash & Thorn, a relatively new book that was greatly effected by the pandemic with the first issue stuck in a Diamond warehouse for three months. A book that explores ageing in a sensible way that we done usually get in comic books with Lottie, one of the main characters, being an amalgamation of a lot of women Mariah has known through her life.  We ran our own interview with Mariah recently ourselves. If you like what she has to say on this panel, you may want to know more about this supernatural series.
Of course, as the host Stuart would be daft not to include a mention his own recent book, Captain Ginger and all the research – mainly cat-based – that goes into the series he produces with artistic partner June Brigman.
Also joining in on the panel is AHOY Comics’ EiC Tom Peyer who talks about Dragonfly and Dragonflyman and The Wrong Earth. We get to learn that Jamal Igle – co-creator of The Wrong Earth – is to return for the new third series. Peyer also talked about Penultiman, a series rescheduled to now be part of their next wave of books, we’ve previously reported upon. Agai, he simplifies AHOY Comics mantra to keep comics fun and to offer more, both of which they have delivered on in spades in each of their series.
After the soft sell of AHOY comic books there was time to simply sit back and shoot the breeze in a more informal manner. In that sense, this really did feel like a good old fashion proper comic book panel you’d get at any decent comic-con.
But, rather than go through the whole panel, why not watch it back for yourselves here and now and discover the thoughts and feelings of these creators and their creations. Well worth your time.