K. A. LAITY, Writer
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Jane Quiet



"Think 'Denise Wheatley,' if you will, unleashing the most voracious vagina dentata in recent memory. While most of their readers will think of John Constantine, Buffy, and their immediate contemporaries, K.A. Laity and Elena Steier are actually digging deeper and tapping more venerable genre veins. Algernon Blackwood and Dennis Wheatley, make room: Kate and Elena are here, and their heroine Jane Quiet is taking no prisoners in the occult wars. This is a momentous breakthrough for Laity and a real change of pace for Steier, whose always-delightful macabre cartooning is usually closer to the realms of Charles Addams and John Stanley. Finally, mind the hot sauce and avoid Jane's home bar: I suspect it's the most dangerous domestic speak-easy in existence."
-- S.R. Bissette, SWAMP THING, TABOO, TYRANT, THE PRINCE OF STORIES: THE MANY WORLDS OF NEIL GAIMAN

Story by K. A. Laity
Pencilled, inked and designed by Elena Steier
40pp / B&W interior / Full color cover
Publication date Issue #1: March 5, 2008. Order it from Previews (April)!

If you can't wait, order direct now (don't forget to mention if you want it signed):
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Who is Jane Quiet?

Epiphanies come in all kinds. I had one recently when I looked around me and realized that I was surrounded by a lot of really talented people and that I should be making better use of them. One of these people was Elena Steier, cartoonist and creator of The Vampire Bed & Breakfast and The Goth Scouts comic strips. We share a love of the macabre which infuses her artwork and my fiction, so I said, "Elena! We should do a comic together!" Fortunately, she agreed. All she asked was that we have a kick-ass monster.

I think it was Elena's idea to riff on John Silence, the psychic investigator created by Algernon Blackwood, master of the weird tale, about a hundred years ago. John Silence was rich doctor, skilled in weird science and keen to explore occult phenomena. It was an idea ripe for reinvigoration.

"We keep hearing about the lack of female presence in comics. Jane Quiet is one strong wave in the growing tempest of comics by women and for everybody. It fits no real genre perameters, because it doesn't have to; it stands alone on its own strengths. It reminds me of Wolf and Byrrd, but only for its strong senses of narrative and humor. It features one of the scariest, nastiest and most graceful monsters going; you can almost hear its tiny claws clicking in the dark."
-- Donna Barr, THE DESERT PEACH and STINZ

Our Jane Quiet shares some of Silence's characteristics, but we've made a few twists, too. Most obviously we've switched the gender of the good doctor. We've also moved her to New England (instead of "merry olde" England) and made her a little less of a loner than her prototype. Jane has a network of friends and a strangely devoted personal secretary, Dorayl (more about him in a later arc). While she has some of Silence's reserved manner, Quiet has a little more patience with the less-enlightened public. However, she does share Silence's subtle and mordant sense of humor.

This opening episode in the Jane Quiet saga plays with the theme inherent in both their names - it's an entirely silent comic. Elena and I both found this kind of narrative a perplexing challenge at times, but a fitting (if ironic) tribute to Blackwood, that master of the subtle detail. While he achieved that subtlety through the slow accumulation of words, we hope to have achieved a similar effect with the swift juxtaposition of images alone.

Oh -- and, of course, there's a kick-ass monster.

Settle yourself in a comfortable chair, turn the lights down low and enter the strange world of Jane Quiet. Magic, mayhem, and mysteries await...

"JANE QUIET is my kind of woman: smart, sexy (it's the smart that makes her sexy), fearless when fighting monsters from beyond this mortal coil...and, well, she doesn't say a lot but she knows how to kick monster ass! This long overdue collaboration between Laity and Steier is a delightfully estrogen-fuelled supernatural romp that left me wanting more -- much more!"
-- Philip Nutman, multiple award-nominated author, screenwriter and producer (WET WORK and JACK KETCHUM'S THE GIRL NEXT DOOR)


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