The Amory Wars Sketchbook

The Amory Wars Sketchbook is a single issue comic written by Claudio Sanchez and illustrated by Gus Vazquez. It was published by Evil Ink and had a limited, special release at New York Comic Con in 2006. It is also known as "Comic Zero" since it outlined the first issue of The Amory Wars: The Second Stage Turbine Blade, released later that year.

Summary
The issue begins with a section called "Machinations" which is subtitled "Issue Zero." It is followed by a nine-page written outline of a twenty-two page issue that will start the aforementioned Second Stage comic. (Certain elements were changed in the final release.)

The next section is called "Instruments" and outlines nine characters which totals eighteen pages (2 pages per character which includes a character design page with a description). These characters are, in order: Coheed Kilgannon, Cambria Kilgannon, Claudio Kilgannon, Newo Ikkin, Inferno Kilgannon, Mariah Antillarea, Paranoia, Wilhelm Ryan, and Mayo Deftinwolf.

The last section is called "Catalyst" and outlines Sanchez's early life and inspiration for the story.

Trivia

 * Some of the material that was altered between this initial outline and the ultimate release was concerning other characters and elements of the story that were elaborated on later. For example, there were suppose to be two full pages of what happened with Leonard Hohenberger, but this was instead changed to the revelation Deftinwolf gives the paternal Kilgannon in Second Stage ' s first issue.
 * Another thing this outline did was give us information that the comic couldn't convey, such as the fact that there were only eight Onstantine Priests, which were created of the original eleven mages Ryan fought in The Mage War. This fact was left a bit unclear in Year of the Black Rainbow since the fate of some of the Mages was unclear.
 * It is unclear why, but during the Catalyst section, it is cited that Sanchez's fateful Paris trip was in 1998, rather than the widely cited 1995.