Author: JK Parkin

Bunn + Luckert + Leiz flip for horror in ‘Shock Shop’

The new horror anthology arrives in September.

Dark Horse will publish a new “flip book” horror anthology that features stories by Cullen Bunn, Danny Luckert, Leila Leiz and more starting in September.

Each issue of the four-issue miniseries will feature two stories, as well as variant covers by Francesco Francavilla, Fábio Moon, Caitlin Yarsky, James Stokoe, James Harren and Tonci Zonjic.

Shock Shop will be set in a comic shop with “a twisted retailer filled with tales of terror,” in the tradition of Creepshow, Tales from the Crypt and other horror anthologies with a spooky host. Bunn said it will feature “horror yarns and celebration of horror” on Twitter. Bunn previously worked with Luckert on Regression from Image Comics, and with Leiz on The Last Book You’ll Ever Read from Vault Comics.

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Dark Horse will collect Justin Madson’s ‘Breathers’

The nine-issue series originally published by It’s Alive! lives again next year.

Dark Horse Comics will collect Tin Man creator Justin Madson‘s nine-issue series Breathers into a trade paperback next year. The series is currently published by Drew Ford’s It’s Alive! Press, which is crowdfunding the seventh issue now.

“Long before the word ‘pandemic’ became a part of our daily conversation, I started work on Breathers, a story set in a world where the air was deadly to breathe, so everyone had to wear gas masks when they went outside,” Madson said. “Wearing these ‘breathers’ was an accepted part of life since, really, there was no other option. It seemed like a bit of a far-fetched idea at the time, but, as recent years have shown, I was not too far off. I am thrilled to be working with It’S Alive! and Dark Horse to bring my dystopian tale, Breathers, to a wider audience.”

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A new ‘Midnight Suns’ title rises at Marvel

Blade, Magik, Nico Minoru and more come together in September.

Marvel has announced that a 1990s team — with a slight name change and a different roster — will return in September. Midnight Suns by writer Ethan Sacks and artist Luigi Zagaria almost shares a name with the classic Ghost Rider-led team Midnight Sons, but does share its name with the upcoming Midnight Suns video game that Marvel and 2K will release later this year.

The new team will feature several classic and new mystical heroes, including Magik, Blade, Kushala the Spirit Rider, Nico Minoru and Zoe Laveau from Strange Academy. Oh, and my favorite mystical Marvel character, Wolverine. (It used to be that Wolverine would pretty much pop up in every Marvel comic at some point, so it’s kind of funny and appropriate to see him here).

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Quick Hits | Danica Novgorodoff receives the Yoto Kate Greenaway medal

Plus: ‘Duckman’ creator Everett Peck passes away, and news on ‘The Dark Knight Returns,’ Grant Morrison and more.

Awards | Danica Novgorodoff has received the Yoto Kate Greenaway medal — “the UK’s longest running and best-loved book awards for children and young people” — for her graphic novel adaptation of Jason Reynolds’ novel Long Way Down. According to the press release, it’s the first time since 1973 that a graphic novel has received the prize. The book features hundreds of “stunning” watercolors depicting the decision that 15-year-old Will must make when his brother is shot.

“Long Way Down is a book that asks us to empathise with a character who is planning to harm another person, and endanger his own life, out of grief and revenge,” Novgorodoff said in a statement. “He’s in a complicated, difficult situation, and he needs to make a very hard decision. Through the illustrations, I wanted to show this emotional torment, to make his internal feelings come alive on the page. The book doesn’t preach, but it asks readers, ‘What do you feel, and what would you do?'”

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Marvel will return to the ‘Planet of the Apes’ next year

The comics license for the film franchise returns to Marvel for the first time since the 1970s.

Marvel has announced they’ve secured the license to publish Planet of the Apes comics –a license the company first held back in the 1970s, when the original movies were popular.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Planet of the Apes back to the House of Ideas!” Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski said. “The new saga in the pipeline is going explore the limits of what this beloved franchise has to offer through bold comics storytelling, and we look forward to setting foot on this new adventure!”

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‘Marvel’s Voices: Comunidades’ returns in September

Fabian Nicieza, Paco Medina, Edgar Delgado and more will contribute stories to the anthology.

Marvel’s Voices: Comunidades will return in September with another collection of stories by Latinx creators featuring Latinx characters.

Arriving just in time for Hispanic Heritage Month, this year’s anthology will include:

  • A Nova story by writer Fabian Nicieza and artist Paco Medina.
  • A Miles Morales story by writer Edgar Delgado.
  • A White Tiger story by author Alex Segura and artist Rogê Antônio, which will introduce a new character.
  • A Shark Girl/Namor team-up by Novelist Zoraida Cordova and artist Yasmín Flores Montañez.
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Cantwell + García awaken ‘Briar’ at BOOM!

What if Sleeping Beauty had to save herself?

The Blue Flame writer Christopher Cantwell and Ka-Zar: Lord of the Savage Land artist Germán García will retell the story of Sleeping Beauty as “an epic dark fantasy adventure” in a new miniseries coming from BOOM! Studios. They’ll be joined by colorist Matheus Lopes, who has been doing some phenomenal work on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.

Cantwell sited the creator of Conan the Barbarian as an inspiration for the series.

“I’ve never gotten a chance to tell a high fantasy story of any kind, but I’ve always wanted to, ever since I discovered old Robert E. Howard stories. One thing that kept me hesitant was finding a proper way in—something new and different that also celebrates all the sword & sorcery fun seen in the best of the genre,” Cantwell said. “In tandem, as I grow older, the world around us seems less and less stable with so many things falling into crisis. These two things came together in my head in the form of Briar… here’s someone that remembers the world one way, during a time of sheltered innocence, but has now overslept… and found herself in a place of complete entropic disarray. The question is, how will she even survive? And what happens when the plans for the entire rest of your life turn out to be completely meaningless and absurd? Where do you turn to in order to conjure up your own new meaning and purpose?”

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‘Castle Full of Blackbirds’ spins out of ‘Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.’ this September

Mike Mignola teams with novelist Angela Slatter and artist Valeria Burzo for the new miniseries starring Sara May Blackburn.

All the Murmuring Bones novelist Angela Slatter will enlist with the B.P.R.D. this September, has she joins creator Mike Mignola and artist Valeria Burzo for Castle Full of Blackbirds.

The miniseries puts the spotlight on Sara May Blackburn, the precognitive girl introduced in Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Return of Effie Kolb. The miniseries also features colors by Michelle Madsen, letters by Clem Robins and covers by Wylie Beckert.

“I’m thrilled to have Angela writing this series and, honestly, right now I have no idea how that came about,” Mignola said. “She is one of the small handful of fantasy writers I really love reading these days, and we were lucky enough to get her to write a short story for the last Hellboy prose collection, Hellboy: An Assortment of Horrors. After that we somehow got to emailing, and that led to this. About halfway through writing The Return of Effie Kolb I knew our little witch girl was going to want her own series. I had an idea how something like that was going to start, but really had no idea where it might go. I DID know that as it was a book about a young girl, I wanted a female perspective. Someone who would bring something new to the Hellboy world while still playing with the history and mythology we’ve created for the place. Angela was the first (and I think only) name that sprang to mind. Fortunately she said yes, and here we are. I love what she’s done and can’t wait to see where this will go. My hope is that this is just the beginning.”

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Bob Bolling, Don Rico will receive the 2022 Bill Finger Award

The awards will be presented at Comic-Con International next month during the Eisner Award ceremony.

Comic-Con International has announced that Bob Bolling and Don Rico will receive the 2022 Bill Finger Award. The award recognizes creators who made lasting contributions to comics that went largely “unsung,” as Bill Finger’s contributions to Batman went unsung for several decades.

“We’re excited to be back presenting awards in our original format,” Evanier noted.  “And we couldn’t have better recipients than these two men, whose work in comics never received the recognition it deserved. Too often, they worked in utter anonymity, creating work that is fondly remembered even if those who enjoyed it were unaware of its authors’ names.”

Bolling spent the majority of his long career creating comics for Archie Comics, including stories featuring Pat the Brat, Little Archie, Life With Archie, Betty, Betty and Me, Sabrina and more. he also drew Wally the Wizard for Marvel’s Star line. Rico, meanwhile, wrote stories for Marvel/Timely back in the 1940s, working on Captain America, the Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and more. In the 1960s, he scripted the Iron Man story in Tales of Suspense #52 that introduced Black Widow, who he co-created with Stan Lee and Don Heck.

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Rest in peace, Tim Sale

The artist of Batman: The Long Halloween, Grendel, and many other iconic characters and comics has passed away at the age of 66.

Tim Sale, the Eisner-award winning artist of Batman: The Long Halloween, Superman for All Season, Spider-Man: Blue and Catwoman: When In Rome, has passed away at the age of 66.

The sad news was reported on his Twitter feed earlier today. “It’s with a heavy sadness that I must announce that Tim Sale passed away today. He passed with the love of his life beside him, and loves all of you very much,” the tweet said.

While no cause of death was identified, earlier this week Jim Lee had tweeted that Sale was admitted to the hospital with “severe health issues.”

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Another Robin flies solo this September in ‘Tim Drake: Robin’

Meghan Fitzmartin and Riley Rossmo will help Tim Drake soar in this new ongoing series.

Following a solo story in Batman: Urban Legends and the DC Pride special that collected it this week, Tim Drake will star in a new ongoing series, Tim Drake: Robin, starting in September. Meghan Fitzmartin, who wrote the Urban Legends story, will write it, while Harley Quinn artist Riley Rossmo will draw it.

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Moore + Harper raise a glass to ‘Highball’ in September

The new sf comedy features a space pilot who can only hit a target while drunk.

Stuart Moore and Fred Harper, the team behind Ahoy Comics’ recent The Wrong Earth: Purple one-shot, will re-team for Highball, a new miniseries about a “sozzled space pilot” who can only hit a target when he’s drunk.

They’re joined by colorist Lee Loughridge, and letterer Rob Steen for the science fiction/comedy series, which shockingly came to Moore while he was at a bar.

“I was out having a few beers with an AHOY Comics colleague when a funny thing happened,” said Moore. “The more my friend had to drink, the better he got at throwing darts. It was uncanny! And at that booze-soaked moment, the idea for Highball was born.”

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