Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: antony johnston, Comics

Antony Johnston Signs The Coldest City in the Coldest Cities

Published Tue, 01 May 2012 03:00:17 -0500

Last updated Tue, 01 May 2012 10:59:23 -0500

Alasdair Stuart writes for Bleeding Cool;

Okay, maybe not the coldest cities but it is pretty damp and miserable up north as I write this.

Antony Johnston remains one of the best writers, not to mention best kept secrets, in modern English language comics. He's as happy working in romantic comedy as he is action, has a deep, nuanced understanding of narrative and even better, a cheerful fondness for unpleasant people doing unpleasant things for what they hope is the greater good. His Queen and Country: Declassified mini-series was an early example of this and since then he's gone on to play with Marvel's two most morally ambiguous heroes, Daredevil and Wolverine and create one of the two definitive post-apocalyptic series of the last ten years, with Wasteland.

But whilst you can leave the cold war, the cold war never quite leaves you. Which brings us to The Coldest City.

Antony Johnston Signs The Coldest City in the Coldest Cities

Illustrated by Sam Hart, The Coldest City is the story of one of the last MI6 operations in Cold War-era Berlin. Just before the wall falls, an MI6 officer is murdered. He's carrying a NOC list detailed every undercover agent from every side who is active in the city and MI6, desperate to retrieve it, send in veteran agent Lorraine Broughtons. Unrest builds, the wall collapses and Lorraine goes off book. Until she returns to London to tell her story, and the chaos really starts…

Antony's doing a signing tour to promote the book but he's going about it in a genuinely unique way. First off, the tour is limited to the branches of Travelling Man, Page 45 and, rather wonderfully, The Bookshop in Colne, near where he lives, on these dates:

Friday May 18, Manchester @ 5pm
Saturday May 19, Leeds @ 12.30pm
Saturday May 19, York @ 3pm
Sunday May 20, Newcastle @ 2pm
Thursday May 24, Colne @ 7pm

Even better, each signing date will feature a local comics professional whose work he likes. The guests are still being locked in but, at time of writing, Al Ewing, the creator of the magnificently horrible Zombo! and some of the best recent Judge Dredd stories, will be the guest at the York store. Oh just to sweeten the pot, the Travelling Man stores and Page 45 are the only places you can pre order a signed, book-plated edition of The Coldest City.

A top flight book, by two of the best creators in the game, and a chance to meet not only the writer but some other great local creative talent as well. Who said it's grim up North?

The Coldest City is released on May 16th. We'll be talking to Antonyabout it and his future plans for the shadowy world of espionage fiction in more detail very shortly.

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