Carla Speed McNeil is one of our great living cartoonists. I said it. Their long running science fantasy comics FINDER is a complex stew of intrigue, anthropology, magic, quotidian drama and…kind of everything. Immersive world-building at its finest, and yes, it takes it’s own sweet time going anywhere, but that’s the whole point, presented with a voice that’s all-knowing and down to earth at the same time. The art has a sort of inventive, intuitive storytelling that made McNeil a valued collaborator on comics they didn’t write for folks from Greg Rucka to Alex de Campi and many more.
Maybe Finder was TOO immersive; McNeil has been on a burn-out induced break from turning out any sizable work for years…but that ends this weekend at SPX, the Small Press Expo, when they debut Settlers of the Storm Worlds. As McNeil posted on BlueSky:
My first new comic in years will debut next weekend at SPX. Saddle-stitched preview of SETTLERS OF THE STORM WORLDS, signed and numbered limited edition, $10 in beautiful black and white. Read for free on my Patreon. www.patreon.com/carlaspeedmc… please share and recommend, thanks muchly
— Carla Speed McNeil (@carlaspeedmcneil.bsky.social) 2025-09-07T13:16:55.957Z
The story is described thusly:
Ellery Rummage and his family are rolling out in a covered wagon full of everything witchy folks need, hoping to travel through the eye of a vast, destructive hurricane made of torn reality, like a magical black hole. For fans of portal fiction, genre clash, and journeys of self-discovery!
You can indeed read a few pages of Settlers of the Storm Worlds on McNeil’s Patreon. And with this reappearance, McNeil also showed up on Reddit in a thread called “Whatever happened to Carla Speed McNeil?”to explain where they’ve been:
People kept sending me this thread! Sorry about the disappearing act, but that was an epic burnout.
I thought I’d let you know that I am printing a 20-page preview of a new book that will debut at SPX 2025. I’m posting this book in three-page chunks on my Patreon also, where you can read for free if you’re broke or support me, the usual.
New book is called SETTLERS OF THE STORM WORLDS, a portal-fiction mixed-genre gumbo of fantasy and science fiction. It gently shits on a certain franchise if you’re into that, but that’s not the main point of it.
No, it isn’t FINDER, but what I want to do is to make the first chapter of each of five different books that have been jammed in the doorway of my mind for years— one of which is FINDER, absolutely. I have to get all of these out onto paper. So I started with this one, and I will move on to the next one, and eventually I will get to FINDER again.
And RACCOON CRIME SQUAD, that’s a lot of fun, involving a baby raccoon and one of those centrifugal-force bird feeders, among other things.
Thanks to everyone who is still looking for my work. It’s coming.
Five new series and a raccoon crime squad? Why am I so excited? Here are a few pages of SETTLERS that I shamelessly ganked from the Patreon. I’m invested!
When you get to SPX, make a beeline for Carla’s table because this is sure to sell out FAST!
