We're coming up to the 1 year anniversary of Jeff Weigel drawing the Phantom Sunday strip, and it seems he's quietly made a couple of key announcements to celebrate the occasion.
ChronicleChamber spoke to Jeff for an episode of X-Band: The Phantom Podcast not long after his strips started appearing in the newspapers, and he explained then that he was drawing all of his Phantom strips digitally.
Of course, this meant that there was no original art produced for him to sell to those of us who would love to add it as a showpiece in our Phantom collections. At the time, Jeff recognised that this was something he would eventually have to correct.
Well, it seems that time is now!
In a recent Facebook conversation with phans cajoling him for original artwork, Jeff succumbed, "As soon as I finish the graphic novel I’m working on (sometime before June 1) I’ll start doing Sunday Phantom strips on Bristol in ink."
Then, in a very exciting statement for Australian phans, Jeff followed that up by telling phans he would be "amassing art for when I guest at Supanova 2019."
Has that sunk in yet?
Jeff has been producing great work in his short tenor with his recent story The Rat with the action, memorable bad guy, colours, lighting and art style making a big impact (or punch) on many phans.
Importantly, with Jeff making the switch to old school pen and paper before the beginning of June, this should see him have almost a whole year worth of strips to sell to potential customers, who you'd expect will be lining up around the block at Supanova 2019.
It is a while to wait as we have 2018 to enjoy and celebrate first, with guests for the LFMBEC dinner and Supanova yet to be announced, but if Jeff is able to follow through on these promises to phans, this is something that we just had to share and get excited about.
In the meantime, do have a listen to the brilliant interview he did with us and enjoy his Sunday strips.
