Upcoming DeMatteis comics news

So, interesting news coming from the always-interesting J.M. DeMatteis that he's co-creating four very different books with four very different artists/co-creators (all of whom he has some history with), to be launched under the umbrella of "The DeMultiverse" from a new publisher, Spellbound Comics.

The four titles are:

LAYLA IN THE LANDS OF AFTER with Shawn McManus

WISDOM with Tom Mandrake

GODSEND with Matthew Dow Smith

ANYMAN with David Baldeón

Details are gradually being announced. LAYLA is set in the afterlife, WISDOM is some kind of fantasy/western hybrid, the other two look like variations on super-heroic myths.

From what I can gather, the plan of the publisher is to publish the first issue of each series, both as standalone comics and a collection of all four, through pre-sales on their own website and Kickstarter, and then let people who ordered the books decide which one will continue on to more stories first, with the plan to eventually continue them all, presumably more quickly the more successful the publisher is. Maybe a bit convoluted to my tastes, but a new publisher has to do what it must to launch, and I'm sure that DeMatteis is able to craft the four stories so that they're satisfying reads on their own, while holding the promise of even more if/when they're able to continue.

Also, good on DeMatteis for having the artists all listed as co-creators right up front, and good on Spellbound for the books being creator owned (by both writer and artist), not work for hire like many new publishers where the books read like movie pitches disguised as comics, owned by just the company or just the writer and the company.  These look like comics undisguised as comics.