Little Bird creators tease a prequel, Precious Metal

(Image credit: Ian Bertram (Image Comics))

Image Comics' Little Bird was one of the big surprise critical hits of 2019, culminating with a 'Best Limited Series' win at the Eisner Awards. How do Dancy Van Poelgeest, Ian Bertram, and everyone involved plan to follow that up?

With a prequel, of course.

(Image credit: Ian Bertram (Image Comics))

Precious Metal is scheduled to debut in 2021 from Image Comics, and this teaser was released recently.

2019's Little Bird focused on the titular protagonist - a vengeance-obsessed Canadian girl waging a grass-roots war against a dictator who has merged church and state into an overarching, oppressive force. 2021's Precious Metal is a prequel to that narrative - although given Little Bird had some time-jumps, this story could as well.

Poelgeest and Bertram have been talking about a follow-up to Little Bird for a while - even before Little Bird was released.

"Little Bird is actually one of several connected stories," Van Poelgeest said back in the December 2018 Previews catalog, prior to the release of Little Bird. "Obviously, we won’t get into that too much right now, but I’m really excited about what comes next."

"Without getting ahead of ourselves or giving too much away, Darcy and I have things planned for the Little Bird universe," Bertram added. "There is a velocity to it that we want to keep exploring."

This prequel was first mentioned in the backmatter of Little Bird #5, and in recent months several pieces of art from the series have been released online. Here's what we've been able to find:

Image 1 of 5

Precious Metal preview

Look for more on Precious Metal in the coming months on Newsarama.

Chris Arrant covered comic book news for Newsarama from 2003 to 2022 (and as editor/senior editor from 2015 to 2022) and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comic Shop News, and CBR. He is the author of the book Modern: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)