C.S. Pacat announces new comic series with artist Joanna the Mad

If you guys have been following me for any length of time, you know that my favourite writer is C.S. Pacat and my favourite book series is her fantasy series Captive Prince. 

Today, Pacat announced her “Top Secret Project” and I wanted to share it with everyone on here because I know a lot of my friends on here are all LGBTQIA+ fans, and comics fans. (And I also wanted to freak out with other people because I literally cannot contain my excitement!!)

The new comic series is written by Pacat and illustrated by amazing artist Joanna the Mad and is a sports comic called Fence. It’s about … FENCING …. (bet you didn’t see that one coming!)

The following is taken from the original announcement article: 

“The main character is Nicholas. He’s sort of talented but roughly trained, he has the potential to be a world-class fencer but only if he can learn discipline and control.

Unknown to everyone else in the comic, he’s the illegitimate son of U.S. fencing Olympic champion Robert Coste. His half-brother is Robert’s legitimate son, and fencing golden boy Jesse. Those two guys have never met before.

Nicholas grew up in tough conditions and gets in trouble a lot. He’s often in detention but he loves fencing. He’s drawn to it out of a kind of yearning for his father.

As a result of his passion he gets a scholarship to an elite boys school called Kings Row where he’s a fish out of water initially. But he learns to make friends and improve along the way.

The other main character is Seiji. Because I fell in love with sports comics in Japan, it just made sense to make the best fencer on the team Japanese.

Seiji is like a young fencing prodigy. He’s 16 years old and he’s been training since the age of 6. All the other fencers either want to be him or beat him. But because of his talent, he’s somewhat isolated. He spends his time with adult fencers or with coaches. Until he meets Nicholas he’s lived quite an isolated life that’s only about fencing and winning.

Then there’s the supporting cast.

We’ve got Aiden the mean playboy with a heart of gold, and Harvard, the goodhearted team captain. There’s Coach Sally, a former Olympic fencer in sabre. Her lifelong rival in sabre, Alessandra, is coach of the rival team school. So Nicholas and Seiji will be facing off against their coach’s greatest rival and her team throughout the series.”

HOllllyyyyyyyy crappppp son

THE SERIES IS ALSO GOING TO FOCUS ON LGBTQIA+ ROMANCES *cue Laura screaming*

From article:

“There’s going to be some romance between the boys. How important is it for you to portray queer love stories in your work?

Really important. It’s something that I’m interested in doing across all my art.

I feel like there’s so much potential, especially within sports, which can be quite male-dominated but in a way that’s often excluding other groups. As a female sports fan you can sometimes feel marginalized [because] sports are generally packaged only for the male gaze.

I was really interested in taking a lot of the energy within sports that are often sublimated and just bring them out to the surface. That includes the female gaze approach and also includes openly queer characters. But not in any sort of sad way. I hope to be writing something that’s very joyously and unabashedly queer. That’s very important to me.”

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Apparently the series is slated for release this November – but because it is a comic book series, I assume they will release one issue weekly or maybe even monthly? *sigh* It’s like 6 years ago when Pacat was still an original writer and we had to wait MONTHS for her to release a chapter of Captive Prince. Ah well. I love her and her works so much, I am willing to *IMPERSONATING AARON BURR* … wait for it, wait for it.

Read the full article here!

Please share your thoughts in the comments? Are you as excited as I am? Even if you don’t know who C.S. Pacat is, I hope you consider reading this series!! 

❤️ Laura

** Artwork belongs to Joanna the Mad and Kevin Wada (who did the new, beautiful Carry On cover). This post is just me freaking out about a new series that I already know I will love. **

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