Ari puts the finishing touches on a page of telegrams.

We’re pretty excited to announce that Pure Steele : The Adventures of James Alexander Steele III in Darkest Africa, has officially found a home at Blind Ferret Press, a division of Blind Ferret Entertainment.

Right now, we’re putting the final touches on the book in a mad dash to hit our deadlines. It’s a whirlwind of stick glue, last-minute rewrites and losing hours to Tumblr and British panel game-shows. But! We couldn’t be happier or more grateful that Blind Ferret has given us the opportunity to share this story and all these characters with you, in elegant-yet-unwieldy book form. We’ve been working on this thing for about three years now and the fact that it’s finally going to be making its way to shelves is both humbling and terrifying.

So! The blog will actually be starting up again! For real this time, we swear. We’ll be posting updates about the process (paper samples for the cover? Ooh la la!), story elements and whatever else comes up. We’ll be including some art, some excerpts and a couple of items from Pure Steele’s companion mini-book, The Ladies’ Adventure Society(that’s a thing, too!).

Right now, we’re looking at a late summer 2013 release, with an official date to come.

Now, if you’re reading this, it’s probably because you know us. So we’d like to sign off by saying you’re awesome, we appreciate all the support and high-fives and critiques and we can’t wait for you to finally read Pure Steele.

(It’s the best.)

Kim and Ari

P.S. Follow us on Twitter at @Bagelofdeath and @MacGillivray514! It wouldn’t kill you!

Now that we’ve announced the fact that our book is going to be a real live book, we’d also like to tell you what it’s about. For that reason, we’ve written up a little synopsis:

“Famed explorer Sir Jonathan Pryce is dead. As the nation mourns, Pryce’s daughter Eleanor begins to suspect that there is more to the story than the newspapers tell. When a parcel delivered to her door provides a clue that her father may indeed still live, she wastes no time in mounting her own expedition to track him down. On her newly-assembled team: a fanatical physician, a hopeless cartographer, a disgraced upperclassman and a meticulous accountant tasked with keeping the whole affair under budget. It is a motley crew, but fortunately, Eleanor has also enlisted the aid of James Alexander Steele, the world’s greatest hunter-tracker and a living legend. With no time to spare, the new Pryce Expedition makes for West Africa to pick up Sir Jonathan’s trail. At first, the task seems simple, but it soon becomes clear that the path ahead leads into a darkness and danger none of them could have foreseen.

From lies to theft to cold-blooded murder, more and more of Sir Jonatan’s secrets are uncovered and the members of the Pryce Expedition find themselves on an unlikely adventure. Told by the men and the woman who were there, Pure Steele is a tale of grand deception, ancient treasure, rampaging elephants and unpalatable French poetry.”

Pure Steele features art by Karl Kerschl, Stephen Morrow, Glenn Belair, Benjamin Dewey, Brian Patterson and Sanjulian and was written and designed by Kim Belair and Ariadne MacGillivray. It’s ultra-sweet, pretty interesting, generally quite funny and also the poems are the best.

We haven’t been updating with any diligence, but we can promise that it’s only because we’ve been working so hard on the book. A major rewrite and a bunch of art later, we’re pleased to say that the end is finally in sight and things are looking…very promising. Updates on how promising things are looking are to come, but for the moment, let’s celebrate our triumphant (read: sheepish) return with some art.

Stephen Morrow is providing some of the illustrations for the book and we’re lucky to have him along. Beyond the art for the book (which we won’t reveal just yet), he was rad enough to create some additional stuff that really impressed. We linked to one piece a while ago, but he recently gifted us with this image of Steele and Eleanor, inspired by Moebius.

Learn more about the process, see a full-colour version and become acquainted with the AWESOME ARTIST at his blog, Minor Distinctions.

Thanks, Ted!

Kim & Ari

Shirtless as always.

Thanks Dean, for the ever-handsome Steele!

Kim & Ari

This week, we’re off to the New York Comic Con, conveniently held in New York City! We’ll be sure to report back on our exciting adventures in the Big Apple, but for now, we’ll leave you with two things. One, Pure Steele: Chapter One in PDF form for your leisurely perusal. And Two, a new picture of James Steele by another contributing artist (this one handling the character busts appearing in chapter bookends), Stephen Morrow of Minor Distinctions. It’s available in both black & white and full colour.

Until next time!

Kim and Ari

We reach the end of Chapter One with Dr. Flemyng’s first steps into the Dark Continent and Karl Kerschl’s first in-book sketch! Thanks for reading so far! We’ll be posting Chapter One in its entirety soon, so that anyone with a PDF reader or awesome tablet can enjoy it at their leisure. Then, it’s all bloggin’, all the time.

And now we come to it, the most boring page in Chapter 1! I blame Kim.

Ah the leopard, Africa's loner cat. Don't worry gang, this leopard was a terrorist so Steele was right to kill it.

Is Steele as handsome and imposing as you had imagined? If you say no then you are a liar!

There is a really cool image of an elephant that we decided to cover up with boring words. Ugh, is Flemyng still talking?!

A stern reminder of Britain's dominion over this book.

The Charles-Christopher-creating, Eisner-Award-winning, Karl Kerschl  provides a number of the book’s main illustrations, standing in for Dr. Henry Flemyng’s eager reproductions of the expedition’s most thrilling moments. Before starting work on the illustrations, though, Karl produced this awesome first sketch of James Steele himself. It’s the dreamiest.

Mmmm! That's good Steele.

You’re welcome.

Next up: The final pages of our Chapter One preview!

Rolling along, here are our first, quick introductions to each member of the main cast, appearing in chapter one and offering a little hint (or lengthy and specific explanation) as to each one’s personality! Do enjoy!

I was shocked to learn that a sulky race was a real thing. Who knew! Also, the horned daisy is not as cool as it sounds.

I am fairly certain that this is a real quote. It describes the Mapsgoode school of cartography to a T.

Poor Alan, looks like he has seen better times. Fun fact: if given the choice, I would cast Alan Rickman as Alan Smith in the Steele movie.

Man, that Cunningham sounds like a real ass. Thomas has written 12 letters of resignation but always ends up chickening out at the last minute.