In a press release from Dark Horse and on her own website, Kel McDonald announced that her upcoming book from Dark Horse Comics, Misfits of Avalon, would also be serialized on her website each weekday until the publication date.
McDonald describes it briefly as follows: "As I told Publisher’s Weekly yesterday, Misfits of Avalon will be about a group of magical girls who are jerks. They are giving magic rings and must retrieve a magic sword." Dark Horse adds that the series will tie in with the Arthurian myths, and that "they [the girls] may not be the heroes in the story..."
The complete first book (McDonald states there will be three in all) is scheduled for an October print release, and serializing it will give the book time to build an audience, just as McDonald has done for her other projects, including Sorcery 101. She is an extremely prolific creator and anthologist, being the person behind a series of fairy tale books featuring legends from different continents.
This is not the first time a book has seen a web pre-release, and it makes sense because many webcomic readers also want a hard copy for their bookshelf or a collection for their digital device, either to read a story for the first time or re-read it all in one bite.
Naturally, there are only a few pages up at this time. We see one of the girls looking very much like any ordinary young woman, starting her day--or maybe, not starting it, as the case may be. The linework is McDonald's usual quality, refined over time. She does a great job with setting up the panels with lots of details, like notes on the fridge or a stray wine bottle, that give us an idea of who this person is before we've even gotten to know her.
It's nice to get in on this one from the start and see how it develops. You can find the comic here, and it is available to read via the best way to read webcomics, Comic-Rocket as well.
Misfits of Avalon will publish in October from Dark Horse Comics.