Thanks for the great series!With issue #4 in, we can officially call it a wrap on Negation! I’m happy to have delivered this extra-sized event on time (mostly) and under-budget (aka for free).
I’m immensely grateful to everyone that read the series. A big thank you to everyone who wrote tie-ins! It was a lot of premise, with a fair amount of off-the-beaten-path properties mixed in. I have now officially tricked all of you into writing CrossGen fanfiction! I’m guessing you never expected to be doing that.
Special thanks goes to nx01a, who loaned me Annihilus on the condition I not break him, and who did not offer any complaints when I ended up doing exactly that. (I fixed him! He might know Kung-fu now!)
As always, I’m tremendously impressed by the work Exciter does for us. On top of this massive event, I also dropped *two* additional anthologies on him with little warning. You all might not know this, but we actually first did collaborative fiction together a literal decade ago! So, thank you, Gurt (as I first knew him), for always being willing to pick up my nonsense and run with it.
Negation marks the end of a long-form story I’ve been telling since I joined AOM, back with Sorcerers of the Stars #1. Now, did I always know how exactly this was going to end? Hell no. In fact, I was originally going to end SotS at issue #17! When I realized that a legacy #25 was in sight due to the Civil War tie-ins, I pushed it to #21. Then I realized that those extra few issues could be the on-ramp to something bigger... and the rest is history.
I have made you all roll with some true nugu pulls during this odyssey. Obviously, we had CrossGen coming in strong. But there was also Crystar! Futura! Krugarr! The Master of the Sun! And that’s not even mentioning the stuff in Ultimates.
I’d also like to add that I was actually the first to propose a Annihilation sequel involving a malevolent magical threat that can attack from anywhere, Al Ewing, if you’re listening.
If this all seems to have an elegiacal tone to it, that’s because I’m probably not going to be as involved for the foreseeable future as I have been until now. Speaking truthfully, I’m tired!
I have ADHD, which basically means I alternate between all my focus being on a project, and having no focus at all. I’ve relied on hyperfocusing to get a *lot* of my solicits done — I actually wrote the first 16 issues or so of both Ultimates and SotS within a few weeks on submitting the first issues to this project! But it’s not something I can rely on, which is why for the past year or so I’ve been a little spotty.
To confirm what I’ve said before: my tenure on both Sorcerers of the Stars and The Ultimates has come to a close. I’m officially letting go of all my claims for SotS. (I’m still sorting through the cast of Ultimates and Negation, to who I’ll hold onto for my next project). I leave AOM Cosmic in the very able hands of kalai!
The Negation is really the big event Crossgen Comics should get!