After self-publishing for 14 years (the last 5 as a webcomic), Carla Speed McNeil has signed with Dark Horse Comics to publish Finder, in a deal negotiated by agent Bob Mecoy. According to Publishers Weekly, Finder: Voice (the first of McNeil’s four Ghost Quartet graphic novels) will appear in February 2011. The following month, Dark Horse “will release the first volume of the Finder Library, a giant 600-page omnibus volume collecting the first four books of Finder’s eight trade paperback releases.” The second will appear six months later, and the following books will appear annually, “until the series is complete.”
McNeil calls the series “aboriginal science fiction”, and PW says the series “follows the peripatetic life and concerns of Jaeger, a shiftless but lovable ‘finder’, a skilled and almost mystically endowed tracker in a far future world of domed cities and wildly imagined technologies.”
In addition to collecting the previously published material, Dark Horse plans to publish new Finder stories in full color in a new version of Dark Horse Presents, the publisher’s anthology showcase. It is the first time Finder has been published in full color.
Dark Horse Editor Katie Moody said she’s “really excited to publish Carla. As many awards as she has received, she still hasn’t gotten the audience that she deserves. Hopefully we can change that.”
McNeil said she hoped the new publishing deal would get her books into more libraries. She also plans to continue “some self-publishing; minicomics and some strip cartoons every once in awhile on the web. The last few years have been bad for my finances but really great creative years.”
McNeil won the 1997 Lulu Awards’ Kimberly Yale Award for Best New Talent, and the Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent in 1998. She also won the Ignatz for Outstanding Series in 2004 and 2005, and the Eisner Award for Best Webcomic in 2009.