COOL, CALM, AND COLLECTED

The coming months will see the release of a number of collections of my work—some of which I’ve literally waited decades to see back in print. 

It all starts with Moonshadow—The Definitive, Expanded Edition from Dark Horse in May. This is the trade paperback version of the Eisner-nominated hardcover that came out back in 2019. Why “expanded”? Because I dug into my files and found even more behind-the-scenes goodies for our back pages, while Moon’s illustrious illustrator, Jon J Muth, contributed a new afterword. This is truly a definitive edition.

Also in May is the first ever collected edition of my Dr. Fate run, starting with the mini-series that my old friend and collaborator Keith Giffen illustrated and moving on through the entire two years of the Dr. Fate ongoing series, illustrated by the brilliant Shawn McManus. Fate was that rare case where I was given the freedom to make an established DC character completely my own. It was as deeply personal as any of my creator-owned work.

July sees the release of the Spectacular Spider-Man Omnibus, collecting two years of Spidey stories I consider one of the peaks of my superhero work (and much of the credit for that goes to artist Sal Buscema, whose visual storytelling was comic book perfection). For years, people have been asking me when these stories—including the entire Harry Osborn/Green Goblin saga—will be collected and my answer was always, “Your guess is as good as mine!” But now, at last, I have an answer.

When people ask me what I consider my absolute favorite out of the dozens of projects I’ve worked on over the years, it usually comes down to three: Moonshadow, Abadazad, and Brooklyn Dreams. I don’t know if we’ll ever see Abadazad back in print, let alone continued (it’s locked up tight in the Disney vault), but, in addition to the new Moonshadow collection, there’s a brand new edition of the autobiographical Brooklyn Dreams coming from Dark Horse in September. I’ve written an introduction for the collection, artist supreme Glenn Barr has provided a new cover, and we’ve packed the back pages with behind-the-scenes extras. 

The final collection, also releasing in September, was a complete surprise to me: It’s the Scooby Apocalypse Omnibus, collecting the entire three year run of the horror-comedy series I co-wrote with Keith Giffen— with illustrations by Howard Porter, Pat Olliffe, and many more fantastic artists. S.A. was a job that seemed, frankly, silly when we started working on it—the main reason I agreed to sign on was because I never turned down an opportunity to work with Keith—but it turned into a gig I absolutely loved, one of my favorite Giffen-DeMatteis collaborations.

These are projects that are all near and dear to my heart and I’m thrilled to have them back in print. There are other projects of mine I'd like to see make their return—Blood: A Tale and Batman: Going Sane, to name two—but, for now, I'm in collected edition ecstasy!