Frank Beddor

Where Do I Start

Wonderland is real, and it is not a short story. This is the order I’d meet it in.

  1. Cover of The Looking Glass Wars: card-soldier warriors
                        in gold armour advancing with spears, the title set in
                        gold above them.

    01 · Begin here

    The Looking Glass Wars

    Novel · Book one of the trilogy

    Alyss Heart is seven years old when her aunt Redd murders her parents and takes the throne. She escapes through the Pool of Tears into Victorian London, tells the whole of it to an aspiring author, and he gets every word of it wrong. Everything below this line depends on this book. Read it first.

  2. Cover of Hatter M Volume 1, Far From Wonder.
    Cover of Hatter M Volume 2, Mad with Wonder.
    Cover of Hatter M Volume 3, The Nature of Wonder.
    Cover of Hatter M Volume 4, Zen of Wonder.
    Cover of Hatter M Volume 5, Love of Wonder.
    Cover of Hatter M: Seeking Wonder.

    02 · The parallel search

    Hatter M

    Six graphic novels

    Hatter Madigan came through the Pool of Tears in the same instant Alyss did and surfaced in Paris instead of London. Book One tells you he spent thirteen years looking for her. This is those thirteen years — Paris in 1859, the American Civil War, Washington in the last spring of it, San Francisco, and home. Read them here, while Alyss is still lost, and you go back to the trilogy knowing what Hatter carried.

    Rather stay with Alyss? Take the six whenever you like — they run alongside the trilogy rather than through it.

  3. Cover of Seeing Redd: Redd Heart in a red gown, arms
                        outstretched, against a blue Wonderland crest.
    Cover of ArchEnemy: an armoured figure with a rifle and
                        dark wings, framed by a burst of green light.

    03 · Back to the throne

    Seeing Redd & ArchEnemy

    Novels · Books two and three

    Alyss has the crown and no peace with it. Seeing Redd asks whether a queen can hold Wonderland while her aunt’s shadow keeps turning up in it; ArchEnemy takes Imagination itself away and asks what is left of a queendom without it. Back to back, in that order — between them they are one long second half.

  4. Cover of The Looking Glass Wars: Crossfire.
    Cover of The Looking Glass Wars: Underfire.

    04 · The war goes on

    Crossfire & Underfire

    Novels · Two books, one story

    The trilogy ends; Wonderland doesn’t. Crossfire finds Alyss on a throne under assault from the rival suit families and sends Ovid Grey — rogue, criminal, ex-Milliner — to Earth after a shard of the Heart Crystal. Underfire is where that decision comes due. Both of them are written for a reader who already knows how the trilogy ended, so keep them for fifth and sixth.

  5. Cover of The Looking Glass Wars: Blade of Time, issue
                        one. A man in a long blue coat and dark cape braced
                        with his arms flung wide, beneath a bladed hat spinning
                        through a silver starfield and trailing a ribbon of red
                        light. Frank Beddor, Curtis Clark and Alex Cormack are
                        credited down the lower right.

    05 · Coming soon

    Blade of Time

    A new graphic novel series

    And then the road keeps going. Blade of Time is the next place it leads. Nothing to read yet — this is only here so you know it is coming.

Not Here for Wonderland?

Automatic Pictures, Frank’s production and publishing company, is a nexus of creative minds developing projects across film, television, publishing, games, audio, and stage. Automatic controls the full creative pipeline on every property it develops — retaining rights, driving adaptation, and building franchises from the ground up.

What we create doesn’t sit in one aisle: ecologically empowering YA, teen noir, television drawn from a life actually lived, comedy with something sharp underneath. Different creators, different mediums, one house behind them.

There’s something here for everyone. Don’t believe us? Explore everything Automatic has to offer under Works.