Dynamite is welcoming Duane Swierczynski as the latest high-profile writer to contribute to their growing Crime Line of comic books, with an all-new thriller called Ex-Con.  This announcement arrives in conjunction with the writer’s appearance at San Diego Comic-Con as a Special Guest of the show.

The premise of Ex-Con fits perfectly alongside Dynamite’s current roster of hard-hitting Crime Line titles, Red Team (by Garth Ennis and Craig Cermak) and Uncanny (by Andy Diggle and Aaron Campbell).

As the name implies, the series will be following a jailbird freshly sprung from San Quentin after five brutal years. This is a high-level con artist who thought he could out-think the cops, his marks, his competitors — pretty much everybody — and five years later, he’s still reeling.  To stay alive inside, he had to promise a favor to a convict who’s pretty much a living nightmare in a cage, and now that our man is out, he dreads having to pay up.

Swierczynski also hints at a twist in the storytelling.  ”

There’s also a psychological angle to Ex-Con that I don’t want to spoil quite yet, but it’s something to do with neurology, and you’re going to see it on the very first page of the conflict.  I love crime stories with unreliable narrators… but our guy is unreliable in a completely different way.  I’m hoping readers of my crime novels (like Fun & Games and The Wheelman) will feel right at home with Ex-Con.  Likewise, I hope comic fans who have followed me through series like Punisher, Judge Dredd, and X will give this a shot, too.

Tim Bradstreet will provide cover artwork for the Ex-Con series.