The second hardcover omnibus volume is out now, collecting the last (and best) volume I did with John Arcudi, Pirate’s Ghost and Metal Monsters of Midtown, as well as the first book, The Iron Prometheus by Jason Armstrong and Mignola, and short stories that were originally collected in the fifth paperback, A Chain Forged in Life. Roughly 470 pages of Lobster.

All the extras from the previous paperbacks are in there (maybe even a few more? I don’t have them all here to compare, but there’s over fifty pages of just that). I forgot a lot of these old cover roughs for the guest artists’ single issues:

I only made this new cover for the Omnibus itself, but it was still nice to revisit and apply some of my present-day self to the material.

The original pitch thumbnail for this one and the revised rough. Leave it to me to make a painted rough for a drawing, instead of the other way around. “Pencils” over that rough —

The collection covers were planned as a set, so here’s both of them side by side. All the stuff I improvised looks much more deliberate and visually rhymes more than the bits that I did plan. Some of it I didn’t even notice until I was finished. Funny how that works. Lessons everywhere.

I forget a lot of this material was out of print for a good while, so it’s nice to have it back as two bricks collecting all of it. I didn’t get to do the first book, but I did spend almost ten years on Lobster, so if you do pick up a book or an issue, I hope you enjoy it — we worked hard to make it as fun as we could. And if you already had or enjoyed some of these stories and pictures, a sincere thank you again from both me back then and me now.

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