Welcome to Everlasting Productions

Tom King & Elsa Charretier's new and exciting comic book playground

All right, life is short, let’s do something awesome.

First, hello. I’m Tom King, I write comics.

Second, more importantly, though I’m writing this sentence you happen to be reading on this Substack, this happens to not be my Substack. This is the Substack I share entirely with the genius artist, Elsa Charretier.

Hi, Elsa Charretier here. Welcome! I figured, Tom’s the writer, let him handle the talking. I’ll be around for our second post, showing you pictures—my weapon of choice. Back to Tom.

Elsa and I are building, operating, and panicking about this platform in complete tandem. This is entirely a moment for we and not I.

For example, today, exclusively on Substack, we are launching our new, ongoing, creator-owned book, Love Everlasting. It’s a romance comic about romance comics that we’ve been working on for a while. It is gorgeously colored by Miracle Matt Hollingsworth, it is perfectly lettered by Cool Clayton Cowles, and we are extremely proud of it.

(Oh, and here’s the astoundingly cool logo designed by Terrific Tom Muller:)

So. We welcome you and we and thank you for being here, for giving us and this new—and we hope wonderful—creation a chance.

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Love Everlasting, our first collaboration, my first creator-owned, a work of insane ambition that we have poured our hearts and souls into, an ongoing series in which we will explore the limits of storytelling through the lens of romance and heartbreak—it’s entirely, completely free.

24 pages of new content each month. Written. Drawn. Colored. Lettered. For free.

Subscribe to this Substack by just entering your email, and you’ll gain access to #1.. Today. Now.

Seriously. It’s ready. Go and read it. Here’s a link :

Then in a month, you’ll get issue two—also free. Then in three months, issue three—that’s going to be free. Four? Free. Five? Let’s go with free.

In addition, if you subscribe, you’ll also get a newsletter from us talking about all the things that are in all the hep newsletters these days: upcoming projects and appearances, breakdowns of past and future creations, thoughts and recommendations, pictures of my dog—all that nerdy stuff.

If you want to get to know us, if you’d like to participate in our community, you can read and join in. I would recommend the dog pictures at least; Roxy is highly adorable, if terribly behaved.

Elsa, popping in here real quick on behalf of cat lovers. Rest assured, there’ll be cats too, my cats, the craziest, most goofiest of all. I like dogs enough but… just so you know.

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Well, you smartly say, if I get something for free that means it’s either going to send me a bunch of ads or it’s a way for a former CIA officer to take over all my devices. I assure you neither of these is the case. We do not want ads interrupting our beautiful comics, and when I was in the CIA, we still used paper maps, so…

The truth is, we just love this comic, we have faith in this comic, and we want to get this comic out to the largest audience possible. Simple as that. Read it. Talk about it. Have fun. It’s on us.

However, we are going to do extra content for the cool, kind people who want to pay for extra content.

We’re going to create a place for people who want to see all the nitties and gritties that go into making a project this intimate and intricate—the scripts, the ideas, the pencils, the inks, the debates, the birthings and killings of so many, many darlings—and all that’s available for a subscription fee.

Also, Elsa and I are well-trodden veterans of the comic industry who are still making comics for many of the big publishers. We have a constant conversation going on about all things comics, and we want to share that with you here.

So.

Elsa is going to do posts about drawing and storytelling.

She’s going to do livestreams where she pencils and inks and talks. She’s going to post her layouts and her pencils and her inks and talk about how she got from this stage to the next to the final, not just on this book but on all of the cool stories she’s created.

I’m going to do posts about writing and storytelling.

I’m going to put up my never-before-seen scripts and pitches for everything from Vision to Mister Miracle to Batman to Sheriff of Babylon to Rorschach to Elmer Fudd to Supergirl.

We’re both going to do podcasts and AMAs that will be exclusive to this platform.

We’re going to be laughing and chattering on about what we love in the world and occasionally some of what we hate.

Basically we’re going to create a space to talk with you about heroes and villains and nerd and stories—and all that’s available for a subscription fee.

Finally, we’re going to send some exclusive stuff out to people who want exclusive stuff: limited print issues, the first trade, original art...

I’m a hopelessly addicted collector of art and comics, and I know the joy of getting something physical and, frankly, really rare. If you’re a crazy nerd like me—all of that’s available for a subscription fee.

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So there are two tiers you can join. Here’s the breakdown:

LOVE TIER

(Because we love you for doing this.)

For $6 a month or $60 annually you get:

• A monthly comic (well, I know, that’s free, but I’m still counting it!)

• All the behind-the-scenes stuff and conversations and scripts and pitches and podcasts and AMAs and livestreams I just mentioned. It’s going to be fun, and I hope you’re there.

PLUS we’ve got some bonuses if you subscribe fast.

The First 500 Annual Subscribers also get access to two yearly zoom calls with both us where we do a long AMA and some live sketching.

The First 250 Annual Subscribers get that, plus an exclusive Love Everlasting mini-print (shipping fees not included).

The First 100 Annual Subscribers get everything above and will be entered in a raffle to win a Love Everlasting original page signed by us.

EVERLASTING CLUB

(Because our love for you is everlasting for doing this.)

For $250 a year (shipping not included), you get:

• The monthly comic, which is free, but…you get it, plus all the above stuff, joining the community and reading about all we do and all that.

• An exclusive print copy of the Love Everlasting Trade before it hits the market.

• Exclusive first access to buying any Love Everlasting art (starting issue 2).

• The first printed edition of Love Everlasting #1. We will only print 1,000 copies of this edition. The cover used here will never be used again. This will be the rarest of rarest comics.

PLUS we’ve got some bonuses if you subscribe fast.

The First 1,000 Everlasting subscribers will also get:

• An exclusive and rare Artist Edition of Love Everlasting #1, limited to 1000 copies.

The First 50 Everlasting subscribers (for US subscribers only) will also get:

• A sketch by me. This will be an absolutely terrible sketch that will probably involve a stick figure Batman. But it will be unique and I love doing them and if you’ve seen my Twitter they’re actually kind of fun, if, and I cannot emphasize this enough, always kind of horrible.

- REWARDS CHART

So that’s the breakdown. If you’d like to pay, pay. If you just want the comic and the newsletter, that’s cool too. We’re not here to pressure you, we’re here to entertain you.

Now, all that said, if you’re reading the free comic and you enjoy it and just want to say it’s worth something to you, a good way to do that is to…

You don’t have to. But if you want to, it’s very kind and appreciated.

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Enough about commerce. Time to talk about art.

This whole newsletter thing is a lot of fun, and is going to be even more fun as we come together as a community, but at its heart, it’s about a comic: It’s all about the launch of Love Everlasting.

So what is this new ongoing title? Why does it matter? Anything free probably sucks, right?

Love Everlasting is an epic, mind-blowing tale of hope, death, and rebirth

set in a world as frighteningly fantastical as any found beyond the stars or after the apocalypse:

The Romance Comics of the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

In this blood rose-tinted reality, Joan Peterson slowly discovers that she is trapped in a seemingly endless cycle—a problem to be solved, a man to marry—and every time she makes it, falls in love, kisses him, she disappears into another teary saga. She needs to find her way out, find who she is, what this world is. To escape, she must deconstruct her stories and reconstruct her identity.

Romance comics sold millions of copies. They are a reflection of America’s ongoing obsession with finding the happy, nice, right utopia to which we all might conform.

This comic is an examination of the perversity of this obsession, of the damage done, the hearts broken, the lives lost in pursuit of the beautifully impossible: of love everlasting. This is not just a mystery to be solved; it is an ongoing adventure, an exploration of the need for love. As Watchmen did for superheroes and Sandman did for horror, Love Everlasting will use the tropes of romance to explore the heart of humanity.

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Okay, we’ve rambled enough and you’re going to hear from us often. We’ll be doing an FAQ shortly to follow up on this. Post any questions below that you’d like to have answered.

But for now, let us close by saying what a joy this is for Elsa and I. This is our dream project and we get to do it without limitations. We love making comics, and we love making this comic about love.

And the reason we have this opportunity is because of you, because of your willingness to read through all this scribble and consider this and pass this on. We are humbled and grateful that you’re here and that you’re a part of this new endeavor, and we hope you’ll join us.

Thank you. And see you soon.

Tom