Detroit within the late Nineteen Eighties was the proper setting for city dystopian fiction. Its postindustrial panorama, tough avenue life, and corrupt politics not solely impressed well-known classics like Robocop and The Crow, but additionally supplied the backdrop for the early work of one in every of comedian’s best artwork stylists, the late Tim Sale, greatest identified for depicting a variety of DC and Marvel characters together with Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, and Captain America.

The Motor Metropolis looms massive over Billi 99, an edgy, politically-charged motion thriller written by Sarah Byam and initially printed as a 4-issue miniseries in 1991 by Darkish Horse. Acclaimed on the time of its launch, garnering three Eisner Award nominations and promoting fairly properly, the ebook went out of print for greater than three a long time regardless of Sale’s later fame.

Final 12 months, Byam and Clover Press sought to treatment this oversight, launching a Kickstarter marketing campaign to print a brand new collected version with colours by José Villarubia that ended up elevating over $42,000. Kickstarter backers began receiving their books in December 2024, and the Clover Press version is out there now.

“I had virtually no background in comics,” Byam advised PW. “I used to be mates with Invoice Messner-Loebs [The Flash, Adventure of Wolverine MacAlistaire] and shared a number of of those gritty city tales I had written. He checked out me and stated, ‘Do you have got any extra of them?’”

Messner-Loebs linked Byam with different comics professionals together with agent Mike Friedrich, who agreed to characterize her, and editor Dick Giordano, who gave her tips about make her literary-influenced prose tales extra interesting in a comic book market dominated by heroic style tales.

At a time when there have been few sturdy feminine protagonists in mainstream comics, Byam got here up with Billi, a crusader for justice in near-future (1999!) Detroit, the place civil and political rights had been beneath siege by corrupt company pursuits. Billi defied then-current stereotypes of comedian heroines by being petite and athletic, with a persona and sense of justice modeled on somebody near Byam’s coronary heart.

“Certainly one of my earliest recollections was of the 1967 riots in Detroit,” Byam recalled. “We had been within the automobile and needed to cease as a result of a bunch of youngsters had been combating on the street with sticks and bats. My mom, bless her coronary heart, was 5 ft tall and weighed 98 kilos soaking moist. She acquired out of the automobile and broke up the battle between the teams of boys. She advised them, ‘Cease that proper now! Your moms could be ashamed of you! Go house!’”

DC confirmed curiosity within the pitch, however Byam ended up going with Darkish Horse as a result of they let her preserve the rights. “Plus, Darkish Horse didn’t want me to show her right into a bombshell,” she added. “It was necessary that she be sturdy, not attractive.”

With the publication rights nailed down, Byam went in quest of a visible collaborator. When DC first expressed curiosity, veteran artist Gene Colan had been connected to the challenge, however his fashion was thought of too quaint for this sort of story. Mike Friedrich steered one in every of his different purchasers, Tim Sale, who was simply breaking into the trade drawing impartial and small press books. Byam noticed a standalone illustration he had carried out of a medieval avenue scene for a comic book known as Thieves World and instantly fell in love along with his capacity to depict characters and settings with depth and authenticity.

“I moved from Detroit to Seattle whereas Bill99 was being created and Tim occurred to dwell in the identical neighborhood,” stated Byam. stated Byam. “His household and I had been all politically lively. His mom ran the native chapter of Nationwide Group of Ladies. Tim was all the time quiet about his politics—I believe Billi was possibly essentially the most political piece of labor he ever did—however I do know he was very happy with the ebook.”

Sale was nonetheless evolving artistically at the moment. He had not but developed his distinctive, high-contrast look, and was utilizing a course of known as duotone, fairly than ink wash, so as to add shading and halftones to the linework. Byam stated that this created a technical downside as a result of the duotone yellowed with age and have become very tough to breed, which is a part of the explanation that the work had been out of the general public eye for thus lengthy.

Following the acclaim that Billi 99 obtained in its preliminary launch, Byam did a pair extra initiatives within the comics trade and was invited to hitch the Vertigo imprint by editor Lou Stathis. “If I’d been smarter, I’d have taken that chance, however I actually didn’t perceive what it meant to pay your dues,” she stated. “I acquired in so simply, and I felt that at a sure level, they had been asking me to begin over from the bottom up, after I already believed I had confirmed myself. So when [senior Vertigo editor] Karen Berger stated she was keen to take a look at what I may write, I simply stated no thanks.”

Byam spent the subsequent few a long time doing different industrial work and dealing along with her husband, cartoonist/illustrator David Lee Ingersol. She says she started discussions with Sale within the late 2010s about bringing Billi 99 again into print in a brand new, coloured version. “We talked about it for almost 5 years earlier than he died [in 2022],” she stated. “We simply couldn’t discover a writer who may fund doing the colour.”

She says she approached a number of publishers together with Darkish Horse and Picture, who steered doing a Kickstarter. Quickly, the San Diego, Calif.–based mostly indie writer Clover Press got here into the image and introduced acclaimed coloration artist José Villarubia into the challenge. “Sadly, all that occurred after Tim had handed,” stated Byam. “However he and I had talked fairly a bit about what we wished to do with it, and I believe he would have been very proud of the outcomes.”

This text has been up to date for readability.