The Promise Part 1 News – Gene Yang Presentation and New Preview Pages
Airspeed Prime here to bring you the latest news on the upcoming graphic novels from Dark Horse, The Promise Part 1 (Released 25th January 2012). I will do so in the order it came in, to give an idea of how think and fast it did this past week, and how went from knowing a bit about the comic to a ton of new info.
With a release Date of January 25th 2012, The Promise Part 1 will be the continuation of ATLA.
The first thing to mention is that Gene Luen Yang, the writer, did a presentation at San Francisco Library about comics where he mentioned he would be talking about The Promise. The contents at first were not put online, but some fans emailed Gene Yang about the Avatar content and he replied here,
http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Uiop60/Email_from_Gene_Yang
The content at this presentation included
- Zuko with a mullet, which was later changed
- Thumbnail sketches and final art for a page of the novel
- Comparison shot between the characters as they look in 321 compared to a year later in here.
- Information about the format of the story of the book, the first few pages of the book are set immediately after the end of 321 including: The second half Zuko and Ozai’s conversation about Ursa, and the aftermath of Aang and Katara’s kiss in Ba Sing Se.
He said he would contact Dark Horse to see if he could post these images online and he got the go ahead, below is the post about the presentation. All of the images are in the youtube video Gene Yang made, so check out this video / post.
http://geneyang.com/atla-behind-the-scenes
I this post is the youtube video where Gene Yang himself talks in depth about making The Promise.
The second news story about The Promise Part 1 is that one fan got an advanced copy of the book and posted a few details and panels from the book online. The person is http://royally.tumblr.com/. You can also check out a review of the promise by Slytherclaw here
The first image we got was this panel from a year on in the book with Zuko and Katara
Zuko and Katara in the Promise, the context is that Katara started a fight and Zuko is stopping her.
With this the person mentioned that Aang and Katara a year on are boyfriend and girlfriend and call each other “sweetie”, Awwww 
Then this image was posted
An image from the start of the book, immediately after THAT KISS. Sokka's reaction is perfect.
and along with this the person gave us a description of the main plot as well as some info on Zuko’s hair.
-Zuko’s hair is usually his long, wavy boyband style. This is just a couple of panels where he’s in full blown Fire Lord attireI feel like I picked a bad panel! Zuko normally looks much younger throughout the comic, the full blown Fire Lord attire and hairstyle definitely makes him older. However with his boyband wavy hair and ‘normal’ season 3 attire, he looks a lot more like his 18 years.
A bit of a spoiler, but the main plot revolves around Zuko, Aang and Kuei working together to try to rid the Earth Kingdom of the Fire Nation colonies. A lot of the tension actually happens between Aang and Zuko, if that makes it any more intriguing for you.
And yes, Zuko does get backlash from the Fire Nation families who are in the colonies, absolutely.”
So there you go guys, the info is really coming thick and fast in relation to the comics. Just over 2 months until Part 1 and once that is out we get a great stream of Avatar content
- The Promise part 1 January 25th 2012
- The Promise Part 2 May 2012
- The Promise Part 3 July/August 2012
- The Last Airbender Legend Of Korra Mid/Late 2012
The covers of Part 1, 2 and 3 in Full, pencils and thumbnails respectively.
The Promise Part 2 Cover
Last but not least, making all of the above info feel like nothing, the Preview went up on Amazon for the book and they made a rather large mistake of pretty much showing off most of the book through the surprise me button, it was soon fixed so only a select few images can be seen. We have decided only to post a few here and link to the rest just because I know a lot of people really care about Spoilers. We know know stuff like the exact plot and what “The Promise” is and so many returning characters.
Preview of Comic is available here
Here is a panel of Toph at her Metalbending school.
The return of Sneers, and we get to see Smellerbee and LongShot again,
So I will finish this news update post by giving my thoughts on the 30 or so pages I have seen. My opinion on the quality of the book is that this is truly the Book 4 of the show, everything feels EXACTLY like in the show. This is Avatar at it’s best, it works just as well in comic form as it does in the show. I will not talk about spoilers but I have to say this book does have an incredibly interesting and dark plot.
Thank you for reading, keep an eye on the site for more Avatar news.
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Well, this looks promising
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Admin / Jordash Reply:November 15th, 2011 at 11:12 am
Haha, nice
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uber avatar fan Reply:January 15th, 2012 at 9:14 pm
Ha pun
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By the way, Zuko looks like freaking Darth Vader!!
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The real standout so far is the Art, it is so clean and characterful.
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Admin / Jordash Reply:November 15th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Yeah I was a little worried about the cover, but so far i’m liking the artwork in the comics for the most part, looks pretty sweet.
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Airspeed Prime Reply:November 15th, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Yeah the cover does not fully show off the age difference. Aang especially is pretty Tall now.
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uber avatar fan Reply:January 15th, 2012 at 9:16 pm
Ya know I agree for the most part, but I don’t love the work they did with katara she doesn’t look like she did in the show in some of these scans
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Airspeed Prime Reply:January 16th, 2012 at 3:30 am
But is that not the point, they have new designs that show they have all grown.
That and the art style is purposefully not exactly like the show, you have to take at least some artistic licence with Comics, unless they got Mike and Bryan in doing the comics or the animation team, it was not going to be exactly spot on to the show.
That and the big image of Zuko and Katara is the only panel in the comic that looks like that ,it’s not the cleanest art in the book.
But this art is clearly Avatar, it is clean and Characterful.
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uber avatar fan Reply:January 16th, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Well yes but it has only been one year and just about everybody else looks the same. Maybe they are just bad scans but I don’t like the katara art very much especially on the bottom scan where she says “isn’t that smellerbee”
im so excited i do not know how i will wait!
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This is amazing! I just read the link you had top the BIG spoilers, and i can honestly say… did i just read that? I mean its been 3 years and i READ what happened Right after the END. Like Oh my god im so excited!!!!!
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I am very excited. Seeing Aang older and more…manly makes me tear up. Its so weird hearing or seeing Aang and Katara call each other sweetie. It really freaks me out and seems very OOC. I WANT MORE SUKKA
But I am also very glad Katara and Aang’s relationship is going strong. For the very last panel with Zuko and Ozai GR. GR. GR. GR. GR.GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
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Also anyone notice that Sokka called Smellerbee “He”, lol
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Admin / Jordash Reply:December 24th, 2011 at 4:52 pm
lol, I didn’t notice that until you mentioned it. Gives me hope that the author paid that much attention to details.
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uber avatar fan Reply:January 15th, 2012 at 9:19 pm
But smellerbee is a girl?
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Airspeed Prime Reply:January 16th, 2012 at 3:22 am
But the attention to detail is in the fact that Iroh mistook her for a boy, so Sokka doing it now is a great reference. Amazing attention to continuity.
uber avatar fan Reply:January 16th, 2012 at 7:23 pm
Wow I never thought of it like that.
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lol yeah thats funny
well they never really did find out and it was a year
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Airspeed Prime Reply:November 16th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
and also the way the speech bubble is shaped to lead to everyone’s mouth except LongShot. Keeping the fact that he only talks when he really needs to.
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The last page with Ozai and Zuko does not look good. Thankfully, we know he’ll get it together by the end of part 3 so he and Aang can form the United Republic.
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I hav seen the whole promise part-1!!! want its link?go here-link removed
and do u want 2 see korra intro? go here for that-Link removed
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Airspeed Prime Reply:December 11th, 2011 at 4:09 am
The reason I removed the links is because The Promise stuff is very spoiler heavy and is in fact only half the book so not the full story. I don’t want people to believe they have read the full book and think they do not need to actually buy the book.
And the Korra Intro because it is pirated and Mike (one of the creators) has requested that it not be posted on fansited or spread around. We do not want the site to get the site in trouble for allowing links to them.
Feel free to discuss either on our forums
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something that would make this even more awsome is that if Katara got more sperit water and actually made Zuko’s scar go away !!!!!!
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Ahmed Reply:December 14th, 2011 at 5:52 am
Yeah…
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Airspeed Prime Reply:December 14th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
But the problem there is that it would not have worked, we see that the spirit water did not heal the scar on Aang’s back after he was killed. That is why Katara is the last one to trust Zuko, because she was willing to use that water, if she had then Aang would have stayed dead, to Katara it is like that is what happened.
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waterbender rissa Reply:December 18th, 2011 at 3:54 pm
oh yea thats true. but i was meaning to say that like after the war was over that katara could get more spirit water, not when they were imprissiond together.
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Airspeed Prime Reply:December 18th, 2011 at 5:14 pm
But that is what I was saying, no amount of Spirit Water would heal the scar.
Yes she could get more, it just doesn’t work on scars as far as we know, as Aang had his scar from when Azula hit him with lightning and it wasn’t healed when Katara used it.
Donna Reply:December 29th, 2011 at 5:26 pm
IMO…. Zuko was flash burned by a burst of Fire from his own father – lasting possibly 2-3 seconds – Aang was burned by Lightening for at least 5 seconds by Auzla – Lightening being the more deadly and damaging of the 2 fire elements leaving huge scar tissue difference… Aang’s scar would probably never heal, though through Katara’s healing abilities – she did manage to remove the rest of his wounds except for where the lightening entered Aangs back and possibly exited via Aangs feet. However, I do think that Zuko’s 3rd degree flash burn may heal under Katara’s healing ability with the aid of Spirit Water as she healed Aang of a 3rd degree flesh burn in book 1 ep 16 – the Deserter – after Aangs fight with Zhao with just plain water from her water sack, so am thinking that Spirit charged water would probably be way more powerful healing qualities and after all did bring Bang back to life at the end of Book 2… only just…. In bk 2 ep 20 – crossroads of destiny – we see Katara being way more sure of her healing abilities and though she states it may not work, I believe that she would not of offered it to Zuko had she not had some faith that it would at least remove some if not all of the scarring…. The scar however is what makes Zuko – Zuko and I do feel that I’d prefer him keep it – as a reminder not to become like his ancestors…
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in ther last pic why is Aang hugging Toph???
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Airspeed Prime Reply:December 18th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
Because at that stage in the book, this is one year on from the Finale Sozins Comet, Toph had been away from them at her Metalbending school and this is their reunion. Aang was meditating when they first met her on Appa and this is his reunion with her.
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Admin / Jordash Reply:December 24th, 2011 at 12:07 am
Yeah that’s a good point.
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I can’t wait for this comic to come out!
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Things are definitely a lot more quick!
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Airspeed Prime Moderator Notice/ I removed your link, we are keeping links to the Promise leaks out of our news posts, Dark Horse Comics have requested no one spread this around too much, the main reason is so that no one will feel as if they do not need to buy the book having seen most of the story, feel free to discuss the leaks in the spoiler thread in out Comic section
http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/groups/avatar-books-and-comics/forum/topic/the-promise-part-1-spoiler-discussion-lots-of-spoilers-inside/
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I can not wait to read this comic!! From what I’ve heard, only a fraction of the book was actually leaked, so unless someone purchased the book, scanned it, then made it public there is no way of seeing this in its entirety. Either way, it looks like it’s gonna be a great read for folks of all ages!!
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Airspeed Prime Reply:January 5th, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Yep, only just less than half of the book leaked so there is still a lot to see.
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Julla Reply:January 5th, 2012 at 3:40 pm
I know!!
I’ve seen quite a bit, but bc there’s so much more to see, I’m online looking for the book now, lolol.
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Airspeed Prime Reply:January 5th, 2012 at 3:50 pm
I hope no one puts the rest of the book online, that would only eat into sales and put any chance of future Avatar comics at risk.
The preorder numbers on Part 1 and 2 seem good so far, hopefully it gets better at release
Admin / Jordash Reply:January 5th, 2012 at 3:53 pm
Yeah I agree, I haven’t even read any spoilers yet, I’m going to wait until the book officially releases.
Julla Reply:January 5th, 2012 at 6:10 pm
Agreed. That would hurt sales. I’m glad they’re keeping the “leakage” under wraps. Whenever I have a “spoiler craving”, I check out the fanfiction and am temporarily satiated, lol.
uber avatar fan Reply:January 15th, 2012 at 9:21 pm
Yeah I’m doing my best to stay away from spoilers and wait for the book but that is easier said than done
this looks so hard to draw :/
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soka is sooooo immature
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Sokka he looks a bit confused
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I regret what I said
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