My new comic: FREE PLANET

Series details, preview images, the team and how you can help

May 7, 2025: The shape of comics to come.

Free Planet is an ongoing geopolitical space opera cocreated with my frequent collaborator Jed Dougherty (Savage Hearts, Archie vs the World), with colors by Vittorio Astone, letters by Taylor Esposito, and design by Mark Kaufman. It’s about the first completely free planet in human history, its unique energy source, and the revolutionary heroes tasked with defending it from a pair of rival galactic superpowers.

Suffice to say, if you subscribe to this newsletter, this book was made for you. This is fitting because I need your help to make Free Planet a success.

The absolute best way to help Free Planet succeed is to pre-order it at your local comic shop. If you don’t have a local comic shop…

• Use the Comic Shop Locator to find one, give them a call and say that you’d like to subscribe to Free Planet, on sale May 7 from Image Comics.

• If there’s not one nearby, you can always preorder the first six issues from my local shop, Collector’s Paradise, choosing the A covers, B covers or a special set with a sketch by series artist and cocreator Jed Dougherty.

Free Planet is an important book for me and the culmination of years of work from Jed and myself. I embarked upon extensive research into real-world revolutions and civil wars, which informed the planet Lutheria, its revolutionary war, and its residents’ efforts to create a new world. Over the coming months, I’ll use this newsletter to dig into the most influential components of Free Planet’s bibliography.

Meanwhile, Jed engaged with a staggering degree of design work, which occurred in tandem with our shared worldbuilding. It’s because of Jed’s heroic design efforts that the world of Free Planet looks unlike any other and yet is as rich in verisimilitude as any real-world location. Frequently, Jed’s designs influenced character, plot and themes, emblematic of our holistic approach to the project. For more insight into the development of Free Planet, I highly recommend that you back Jed on Patreon before he realizes how absurdly low he’s priced membership.

Our holistic approach to Free Planet would not have been possible without such game and generous contributors.

Colorist Vittorio Astone was caught between Jed’s lush pages, overflowing with tones and textures both traditional and digital, and my hyper-granular thematic and narrative requirements and yet somehow managed the impossible: He made both of us incredibly happy, meeting all of our requirements for the utilization of color as a narrative tool, while still delivering something entirely unexpected.

This is my umpteenth book with letterer Taylor Esposito. Taylor always does incredible work but on Free Planet he went above and beyond. Even with my having thumbnailed and Jed doing balloon placements as part of his layouts, fitting everything in remained a Herculean task, not to mention all of the brand-new, innovative lettering approaches that the book required.

Finally, in order to give Free Planet the book a distinct visual identity, we brought on the incredible designer Mark Kaufman. He’s the one to thank for our arresting cover treatment, an aesthetic that carries through the book all the way to the back cover. It’s this approach and Mark’s undeniable skill that will render the printed version of Free Planet a true objet d'art.

In addition to embarking on more research than I’ve ever done for a book, (including The Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling), I made fundamental and seismic changes to my process on Free Planet. If you’ve seen my comics breakdown posts, discussing formal comics theory and the way pages work, you have an idea of my rigorous approach to this project. Instead of writing a series of scenes, Free Planet is built, first and foremost, of spreads designed to overwhelm with the richness of visual information contained therein.

What’s more, I made thumbnails a crucial component of my process on Free Planet. My first pass would take place prior to scripting and I continued to refine them as I sripted, forcing me to remain focused on creating overwhelming visual experiences. I never sent my thumbnails to Jed but, down the line, I’ll share some of them with you here.

Free Planet is a different kind of comic book: Complex, enveloping, challenging, and rich with visual information. It’s a dense book, one requiring and rewarding study and rumination. While that’s not traditionally a recipe for massive success, I think it’s telling that the fine folks at IGN compared us to a pair of other dense, complex narratives: East Meets West by one of the biggest writers in comics Jonathan Hickman and one of the biggest artists in comics Nick Dragotta and Dune, which is currently more popular, successful, and appreciated than its ever been.

Of course, spread across the entirety of a newsletter is far from an ideal way to read such a complex, dense work. I encourage you to go read the first six pages of Free Planet at bit.ly/forlutheria; that link is also great for forwarding friends, as it includes options to find a local comic shop and/or pre-order the first six issues. And, of course, shares of Free Planet on social media are always appreciated. I’m “aubreysitterson” everywhere.

Free Planet is the shape of comics to come, an approach that’s entirely new for me as well as comics as a whole. I have an immense amount to share with and show you between now and the release of issue #1 on May 7, 2025 and it all kicks off in Glendale, California this week for the ComicsPro retailer summit.

If you’re a retailer attending ComicsPro, do not miss the roundtables, as I’ll be giving out exclusive ashcans of Free Planet #1, limited to a 407 copy print-run, as well as posters and other goodies. Everyone else? I’ll see you back here next week for a full report.

Aubrey