Our Flesk 2024 to 2025 Book Release Schedule

New Flesk Books! Our schedule for over a dozen titles coming in 2024 through 2025.

Hi, everyone,

Vicky asked for me to map out a schedule for the rest of this year and into 2025 for her to see. I thought I would share all of these details with you at the same time. There is a lot of information here and I hope you will find this as helpful as Vicky does. After all, we’re all in this together. It’s always very clear to me that none of this could happen with you supporting us along the way.

We’re in an unusual position–one in which we are grateful for. We’ve never had this many books in a nearly completed stage before. We spent years putting these all together. We like to take our time, we never rush, and we let the books tell us when each is ready for the printer. I can safely announce the following books since most are either done, or almost completed.

Please continue to read below to learn about the next books with Arthur Adams, Jeffrey Alan Love, Tran Nguyen, Gary Gianni, Daniel Warren Johnson, and William Stout. The Flesk Direct date referenced is our estimated time when the book will ship to those who order direct from us on our website. This date may shift slightly, but my hope is not by much.

2024 Releases

Portfolio by Mark Schultz
Flesk direct ship date: October 1, 2024

This 432 page collection of Schultz art will be arriving at our warehouse toward the end of this month. We look forward to shipping your pre-orders at that time. All of the details about this book are shown on our website.

ElfQuest Covers 1978-2022
Flesk direct ship date: November 4, 2024

Collecting each ElfQuest comic book cover from the entire 46-year run, with the inside scoop on each one! We have the full details about the book editions on our website. The book has been printed and will be shipping to our warehouse from the printer soon.

Arthur Adams Preliminary Studies
Flesk direct ship date: December 2, 2024

Surprise! We have a new Adams art book done and on the press. Have you seen those beautiful blue pencil preliminaries that Arthur shares on his Instagram page once in a while? We grabbed a big stack of originals from his studio and made this 224 page 5 x 7.5″ book collecting a bunch of our favorites. This format is the same size as the easy to carry and hold Manga books that we enjoy so much. And almost all pieces are shown at the original size.

-Pre-order on our Flesk website in November (day to be announced later)
-Shipping begins on December 2nd
-Paperback Edition $24.95 cover price
-Hardcover edition with jacket $34.95 cover price
-The paperback Flesk direct price will be only $19.95 for the paperback and $29.95 for the hardcover.
-5 x 7.5”
-224 pages
-Hardcover copies will come signed!

2025 Releases

The following Flesk titles are scheduled for next year

The Last Battle at the End of the World by Jeffrey Alan Love
The all new graphic novel by the celebrated JAL! This moving story will come with an additional 48 pages of bonus material with sketches and commentary giving you insight into how this book was made.
Notes From the Shadowed City by Jeffrey Alan Love
New printing with 32 page bonus sketchbook and process section!
The Thousand Demon Tree by Jeffrey Alan Love
New printing with 32 pages bonus sketchbook and process section!

Flesk direct release date for all three titles: March 2025

We are releasing Jeff’s new book along with new printings of the sold out Notes From the Shadowed City and Thousand Demon Tree. During a visit to Jeff’s studio we had the chance to view his sketches and preliminaries. This inspired us to make process sections that take you into Jeff’s mind. We’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for this trio. The launch date will be announced late this year.

Spectres by Tran Nguyen
An all new collection highlighting the painting studies by Tran. We are looking forward to sharing these treasures in this exciting new collection. This will be a 9 x 12″ hardcover book.
Ambedo by Tran Nguyen
This long sold out book had a much too small print run. We’re bringing this back with a new cover to re-highlight the first decade of Tran’s career. This will be a 9 x 12″ hardcover book.

Flesk direct release date: April 2025

Tran’s star continues to rise and we are honored to showcase her works in these two upcoming collections.

Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea Art Book–by Mike Mignola and Gary Gianni
Flesk direct release date: May 2025

With Mike’s support, we have finished working with Gianni on an updated trade edition of the Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea art book. This collection goes into great detail about how this comic was made. We’ve introduced some new insight and details that didn’t make it into the original edition. We originally advertised this book as a fall 2024 release, but solely due to our workload being a little heavier than expected, we ran out of time to get it out this year. We decided to push this book to next year when we can best promote it. This beautiful book is done and ready for the printer.

View the Gary Gianni library of books on our website.

The Art of Daniel Warren Johnson
Flesk direct release date: August 2025

This book is amazing! Much of it is done and well mapped out. We originally planned on having this book come out in late-2024, but decided to push it to 2025 since DWJ has so much material from other publishers coming out in 2024. This gives us more time to fine tune this book by adding more commentary and recent art.

William Stout Comics
The big three-volume set that will total over 800 pages!
The Playing Card Art of William Stout
A two-volume set collecting Bill’s playing card art.

Flesk direct release date: October 2025

Five magnificent books packed with Stout art. In addition to hundreds of Stout pieces, the Comics collection has a substantial amount of text that shares stories about Bill’s career and those who he worked with. These legends include Harvey Kurtzman, Russ Manning, Bill Elder, and many more. We’ve been teasing this massive collection for years. It’s finally coming–next year! As a bonus, we have the two-volume playing card books to enjoy.

“Art of Bruce Timm” titles
A series of new books!

Flesk direct release date: To be determined

There are no B.T. titles or dates that we can announce at the moment. But rest assured that we are working with Bruce on a new series of books that collects his art. These are a blast to produce and we are eager to share the details once we are able to. We’ll reprint The Big Tease alongside the next new book.

Thanks for reading! We hope you are excited as we are about the new fifteen books that we have coming out between the remainder of 2024 and throughout 2025. We sure do appreciate you all for allowing us to make books for a living.

Enjoy,

John

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May 23, 2023May 31, 2023

Upcoming Events and Artist Appearances

Murder Falcon artwork by Daniel Warren Johnson

Upcoming Events and Artist Appearances

Monsterpalooza

Brynn Metheney will be exhibiting at Monsterpalooza this weekend in Pasadena, California. We will be announcing the details about Brynn’s first book from Flesk soon! You can visit Brynn at this show to see her amazing art in person.

Wendy Pini–Celebrating 45 years of Elfquest!

Did you know that 2023 marks the 45th year anniversary of Elfquest? So exciting! Richard and Wendy Pini are making some appearances this year to celebrate. To start, Wendy will be appearing all three days at áyA Con this June 9-11, 2023. This event is located at the McNichols Civic Center Building in Denver, Colorado.

Heroes Con

In two and a half weeks we’ll be heading to Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina. The show runs from June 16-18th.

This will be our first time exhibiting at this show and we’re bringing a variety of art books with us. We’ve heard a lot of great things about this show and look forward to seeing everyone there!

Four artists who we are actively working on new books with will be making special appearances.

Daniel Warren Johnson, who is the artist for this fun Murder Falcon cover, will be at the Felix Comic Art table signing all three days. We’ve been working hard on his upcoming book to have the first pass available to show Daniel when we see each other. Pretty exciting!

William Stout and Mark Schultz (Xenozoic and Carbon art book series) will be with us at our Flesk table throughout the event. Both will be signing and have an assortment of original art with them. We have the massive three-volume Stout Comics retrospective in development, and something planned with Schultz, too.

We’re also fortunate to have Jeffrey Alan Love (Thousand Demon Tree and Notes From the Shadowed City) with us at the show. Jeff will be signing between our table and the Felix Comic Art area. We have a new book with Jeff that is getting very close to being done.

Between now and the show we will be continuing to work on these new books. I’m looking forward to seeing these artists as much as you all must be!

Enjoy,

John

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April 25, 2023April 26, 2023

A Visit With William Stout

We made a short trip to Southern California to visit William Stout last week. We photographed a bunch of recently completed artwork, filmed Bill coloring in some of his new ink pieces using watercolor, and discussed his new Comics three-volume set.

Bill is like ten artists in one. He can do anything and everything! Each time we visit we come up with a new project to start. I’ll give you an example. As Vicky and I were leaving Bill’s studio I noticed a large stack of recently finished originals that he completed for a project. Vicky and I immediately started brainstorming a book idea. I asked Bill if we could take the art home with us to photograph, and before we knew it we were the caretakers of over 100 originals while driving home and talking about the our approach to the new book.

We aim to bring you a fresh library of new Stout books!

Enjoy,

John

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March 29, 2021

Flesk 2021 Book Updates!

This is a brief overview of our year and what you can expect to see from us.

I’ll start with the photo. It was taken during a visit to the Al Williamson studio a few years back. Being able to see the “Savage World!” original art was a special moment. Especially while the pages were resting on Al’s drawing table.

Here’s a shipping update on the Williamson and Mark Schultz books.

If all goes well, we will have Al Williamson: Strange World Adventures, Carbon 4 by Mark Schultz, Xenozoic by Mark Schultz and the Al Williamson and Mark Schultz Astounding Sketchbook next week. The books are still at the port waiting to be offloaded from the shipping vessel. We will begin shipping our Kickstarter pledges and Flesk online pre-orders just as soon as they arrive.

As for our next wave of Flesk books, we have five other books at the printer. These include The Drawings of Edwin Austin Abbey, Covenant: The Art of Allen Williams, new books with Frank Cho and Gary Gianni, and a new printing of the Bruce Timm Naughty and Nice collection. Once the books have been printed and are being shipped to us I’ll reveal more and open them all up for pre-orders. We would like to see how the shipping transit times are looking before we announce the release dates.

In the meantime, we are working on the new Franklin Booth book, two new Arthur Adams books, three new William Stout books, plus we are wrapping up two books by a pair of new artists. Then we have the J.A.W. Cooper book to start in June, plus two other new artists who we will start working with in the summer. Then we will have more books featuring Mark Schultz and Al Williamson to work on for 2022. There’s more, but this is what we can share to date.

For the rest of 2021 we do not have any plans to exhibit at any shows. This includes the San Diego November show that we will skip. We will start fresh with events in 2022. Until that time we will continue to make the best books that we can.

You have our thanks for supporting us.

All my best!

–John

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October 28, 2020

William Stout Interview!

William Stout is a famously diverse artist of international renown in many fields: themed entertainment and motion picture design (specializing in science fiction/fantasy/horror films), comic book art, book illustration, poster design, CD covers, public murals, and dynamic yet accurate reconstructions of prehistoric life. His endeavors in the fields of movies and comics have gained him a loyal following, making him a popular guest at comic book, science fiction and horror movie conventions around the world.

FLESK: What experience do you hope viewers have while looking at your art?

STOUT: I think that having an emotional impact is far better than appealing solely to one’s intellect. I want the viewers of my work to feel awe, or experience beauty, or share empathy, or feel sad because of a depiction of gross societal unfairness, or laugh at the subversive humor that runs through most of my work.

Peter Green (from *Legends of British Blues*)

FLESK: Much of your art features an array of more-than-human imagery. What is it about human reality combined with metaphysical elements that speaks to you?

STOUT: For me, the art that I strive for needs to excel in three combined areas: the physical, the spiritual and the intellectual. If I capture all three in one picture, I’m a happy guy.

FLESK: What emotion tends to guide your creativity the most?

STOUT: Fear! Like a lot of artists I know, deadlines are a great source of inspiration. Waking up to a feeling of deadline terror really motivates me. I am also terrified that my next piece won’t be good enough to bear my signature. I never want to let myself or my followers down.

In my work I often like to capture a sense of breathtaking awe. I feel elation when a picture is going well but some panic and dread when it’s not. Since my goal is to always do the best that I can, I know that through due diligence I will probably end up with a decent piece at the very least.

FLESK: What is your favorite fantasy subject to illustrate?

STOUT: That would be anything organic in nature. I hate using a ruler. I’d much rather draw ancient ruins and old Victorian homes than skyscrapers. I love illustrating animals as well as humans. During non-COVID times I host a figure drawing workshop on Sundays at my studio. Right now, though, I’m missing all of my lovely naked gals…

FLESK: How has your artistic style changed over the years and where do you see it heading?

STOUT: My artistic styles have always been all over the place; I call it “the slow path to fame”. If you desperately desire to be famous, then do the same thing (or draw the same character) over and over and over. I treasure my ability to duplicate a wide range of styles. I don’t want my pictorial problem-solving capabilities to be limited by just one or two or a small handful of styles. I always let the problem dictate the visual solution.

FLESK: Do you have any upcoming projects you would like to share some information about?

STOUT: You bet! Somehow, I’ve been busier than ever during the COVID-19 quarantine. I guess it’s because I mostly work at home anyway. I have been primarily focusing on the completion of three of the books that will be part of my multi-volume autobiography (William Stout – Prehistoric Life Murals was the first volume): one on all of my comics work, one on all of my music-related work and one on all of my underground comix work. Later, I’ll be putting together a book (or books) on all of my designs for film (I’ve worked on over 60 movies).

I’ve also finished translating and illustrating Pablo Neruda’s book Stones of the Sky, and have completed the second book in my blues series. That one is entitled Legends of British Blues and contains 111 full color portraits and bios.

Website: williamstout.com

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William Stout art and answers © 2020 William Stout. John Fleskes text and photos copyright © 2020 John Fleskes. Videos © 2020 Flesk Publications. Artwork © 2020 its respective artists. All rights reserved.

September 18, 2020October 9, 2020

New William Stout Book In Development From Flesk!

Hi, all,

It has been far too long since we last published a book on William Stout. We have a new collection in the works that will bring his comics work together. We’ll share the full details once the book is closer to completion.

Prehistoric Life Murals remains one of our favorite books. It contains all of Stout’s stunning murals for The Houston Museum of Natural Science, Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom, and the San Diego Natural History Museum. We still have some signed copies available.

Sample pages and more details can be found here:
https://www.fleskpublications.com/william-stout

Enjoy

John

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