Barnstormers is Back!
The new rerelease hits store shelves on 9/7/21 at all major book retailers from Insight Kids and Simon & Schuster. Read all about how the book came together with artist Renny Castellani!
Roscoe and Clyde Fly Again
The high-flying adventures of Roscoe and Clyde are hitting bookstores and online shops everywhere on 9/7/21. Renny Castellani and I put a lot of love into this book and I’m so happy that more people are going to get to read this action/adventure story we created.
To celebrate its rerelease through Insight Kids and Simon & Schuster, I wanted to share some of the history of Barnstormers! and how this book came together.
But before that, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to my newsletter for more fun and exclusive posts like this one!
And now, back to the Barnstormers! action.
The History of Barnstormers!
The year was 2014 and I was frustrated with comics. I had been writing and pitching books after breaking in with the 2012 Top Cow Talent Hunt, but nothing was landing with editors. I was cranking out pitch after pitch of books that I thought editors would like. And while they did say that they thought they sounded cool, nothing really resonated with them.
I had just about given up when two very important things happened. First, I ran into Jason Aaron at a comic book convention. If you’re not familiar with Jason Aaron, he’s one of my favorite comic book writers and is immensely talented. I told him about the situation I was in and he told me not to wait for an editor to pick something up or call me—I should just keep making books.
The second thing that happened was when my wife (then girlfriend) encouraged me to make something that I wanted to read as opposed to something I thought editors or publishers would like.
I thought of all the things that made me excited about comics and action/adventure stories when I was younger. I took a dash of TaleSpin, a little SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron, and a whole lot of The Real Ghostbusters and put my own spin on it. I had always loved pilots, giant monsters, and big action stories. So I took all those elements and wrapped them around a very personal story about taking on too much responsibility and eventually failing.
Once I knew I had the story, it was time to find an artist. Luckily for me, I found someone right away who was super talented.
Tackling a Monster: The Road to Publication
I stumbled across Renny Castellani’s art while looking through DeviantArt pages and searching for something that would capture what I was looking for. Renny is a seasoned artist who had worked on some Disney comics in Italy that looked outstanding. She was looking to work on a creator-owned series and thought the project looked fun. From there, we were off.
I initially wrote a five-page prologue that could act as its own short story. At the time, I was still learning a lot about writing comics, and writing a short felt like the best way to learn how to distill the characters and make them memorable. Roscoe, Anna, and Clyde all got their start in that quirky five-pager, and looking back I wouldn’t have done it any other way.
At the time we started, we had a publishing deal. Sadly, that fell through… and another one after that. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, there was just some changing of the guard at publishers and some shake-ups that didn’t have room for an untested creator-owned book.
But at the time, we had a completely finished graphic novel with no one to publish it. After waiting a couple of years for someone to pick up the book, we decided to take matters into our own hands and did a Kickstarter campaign.
The Kickstarter Campaign
We had a small goal and print run in mind, but we were ecstatic when the project was fully funded in less than 48 hours. Not only that, but I actually met my agent from the initial posting of the Kickstarter project. He loved the book and offered to represent me for any projects I wanted to do in the book market going forward.
Once the Kickstarter was finished, the book went to the printers and then out to the world. I can’t tell you how it felt to hold that first completed graphic novel in my hand… I honestly couldn’t do it justice. After all that hard work, it really felt amazing.
Renny and I didn’t do it alone. We had help from creators like Gale Galligan, Jim Towe, Jon Alderink, and Shawn Lee, who helped us finish a book we were determined to get out into the world.
And after the Kickstarter was finished, something amazing happened—a publisher was interested in rereleasing Barnstormers! to the book market.
The New Barnstormers!
Insight Comics was starting the new Insight Kids imprint and reached out to me to publish the book. We decided to not only reformat the book into 6x9 format, but we also updated some artwork, lettering, and story points to give a new and improved version of the story to young readers picking it up for the first time.
What’s different about this version? Well, my favorite addition is a new scene where Anna gets to drive a truck through a wall at a group of evil henchmen straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. There are also some world-building elements about the monster dimension that we expanded, suggesting that the monsters return to the other world after they’re defeated.
And now that new version is hitting bookstores in less than a week!
Grab a Copy Today
Where can you get Barnstormers! you ask? Anywhere! The book is available for purchase on Amazon and through bookstores like Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Vault of Midnight, Schuler Books, and more! Just ask your local bookstore or comic book store to stock copies.
Also, I’m going to be signing copies of Barnstormers! exclusively for Vault of Midnight—so you’ll want to grab one of those copies as soon as they’re announced!
You can find links to stores that carry Barnstormers! here on my website: