Fantagraphics to publish Ed Piskor’s ‘Red Room’

The comic series will be 12 issues of ‘subversive, stand alone stories that are all part of a larger, twisted narrative.’

Hip Hop Family Tree creator Ed Piskor will debut his first creator-owned, shared universe in a new comic, Red Room, which debuts in May from Fantagraphics.

“Red Room is a cyberpunk, outlaw, splatterpunk comic that you can’t unsee once you feast your eyes on the mayhem,” said Piskor in a press release. “Think of Red Room as modern day E.C. Comics, infused with the dream of Black Mirror. These are subversive, stand alone stories that are all part of a larger, twisted narrative.”

Piskor has been sharing pages from the new project on his Patreon, where he describes it as an “epic in the funnybook tradition of Faust, The Crow and other comics that make parents nervous.

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Dark Horse announces ‘Jenny Zero’ for April

The ‘hard-drinking, hard-partying’ daughter of a superhero goes monster-hunting in April.

Dave Dwonch, Brockton McKinney, Magenta King and Megan Huang are teaming up on Jenny Zero, a new series about the ‘celebutante’ daughter of a superhero who tries to give up the party lifestyle to become a superhero herself.

“When Dave and I started working on Jenny Zero we wanted to get back to the idea of making ‘fun comic books’ simply for fun’s sake,” said McKinney, who is co-writing the comic with Dwonch. “And the end product, the idea of an ass-kicking lush who hunts monsters, most certainly is. But as we worked, and as series artist Magenta King began to bring Jenny and her world to life, it also took on the themes of self-responsibility, parental contrition, and the idea that no one but yourself can define who you are. All that, set against the backdrop of off-the-wall characters and otherworldly creatures. But yeah, in the end, it’s still very much about getting a good buzz on and going monster-hunting.”

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New ‘Beasts of Burden’ miniseries tells a story from the past

‘Beasts of Burden: Occupied Territory’ heads to post-WW2 Japan in April.

The Eisner-winning Beasts of Burden returns in April with a new miniseries, Beasts of Burden: Occupied Territory.

Writers Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer tell a story set in post-World War II, as a member of the Wise Dogs must deal with a curse that creates an army of crawling heads. They’re joined by artist Benjamin Dewey and letterer Nate Piekos, while series co-creator Jill Thompson will provide a variant cover for issue #4.

“I’m very excited to have a new Beasts of Burden story for the fans and I’m extremely happy with the way everything came together working with Sarah, Benjamin and Nate,” Dorkin said. “Why post-war Japan? I used to half-jokingly ask editor Daniel Chabon if we could have his Shiba Inu, Zell. He said we should have a Shiba in the series, instead. One thing led to another, one idea led to three more, and that’s where our latest story of dogs fighting supernatural evil ended up.”

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Forward into the Past: Marvel solicitations for April 2021

Carla Hoffman dives deep into what to expect from Marvel in April.

Let’s take a moment, Dear Reader, to look forward to the future.  I know, it’s been a while since we’ve indulged in this sort of thing, the idea that the next few months could be predictable enough to make plans accordingly, rather than surviving by the seat of our pants.  But just in case the aliens don’t land, wild boars don’t mutate and dominate the East Coast, or that the comics publishing business won’t go belly up in a matter of weeks and lock down all new content from our humble shelves, let’s look forward into the past at the solicitations of April 2021 from Marvel Comics.

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Zdarsky + Ferry cast a ‘Spider’s Shadow’ in April

The What If?-style story examines what might have happened if Peter Parker kept his symbiote suit.

Chip Zdarsky, Pasqual Ferry and Matt Hollingsworth will explore a “What If?” style universe where Peter Parker not only kept the symbiote suit he found on an alien world in the original Secret Wars, but he also embraced its darkness.

Spider-Man: Spider’s Shadow will tell a darker Spider-Man story in April.

“I’m thrilled to be kicking off a new era of What If? stories with this tale of a Spider-Man gone bad! How bad will he be? Will he have a goatee and no hyphen in his name? Pick up issue one to find out! But seriously, I feel that with Spider’s Shadow we’re exploring some dark situations with Spidey and the Marvel Universe, while making it cool and fun to read. I think longtime fans will love it and new readers will be amazed at what Marvel lets us do,” Zdarsky told Marvel.com. “Pasqual and Matt are producing amazing work on this book. When every page comes in, I share them with all of my friends even though Marvel says I’m not allowed to do that.”

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The State of Future State, Part 1

JK, Shane and Tom take a look at DC’s Future State titles, starting with ‘The Next Batman,’ ‘Superman of Metropolis,’ ‘Wonder Woman’ and ‘Flash.’

DC officially kicked off Future State earlier this month, and the comics we’ve seen give a rough — emphasis on “rough” for some heroes — idea of what possible futures look like for their characters. This line-wide event, or publishing initiative, or whatever we want to call it, will go on through February and has replaced their regular titles until March.

With the event now in full gear, Shane Bailey, Tom Bondurant and I decided to discuss each one, roundtable style. Also, since the titles are all set at different times — some are just a few years into the future, while others jump forward thousands of years — I thought it might help to share this timeline of when each one is set:

I know it has helped us as we’ve been reading them.

So let’s get started …

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DC Universe Infinite launches this week

The service eliminates some features as it focuses exclusively on comics.

DC’s revised and rebranded comics subscription service, DC Universe Infinite, will officially launch this Thursday. Formerly known as DC Universe, the service will feature comics, as its video programming, like Titans, Doom Patrol and the Young Justice cartoon, have all moved over to HBO Max.

In addition, the community forum can be found outside the app at community.dcuniverseinfinite.com, while the store will also live at a new web address: https://shop.dccomics.com/. It’s up and running with several T-shirt designs, masks and more.

DC Universe Infinite will be available for iPhone, iPad, Android Phone and Tablets and online for web and mobile web at dcuniverseinfinite.com. Some platforms it was on before, like Apple TV and XBox, for example, no longer carry the app as of last month.

So, for the service itself, that leaves comics, and DC is adding a whole bunch of them to the service this week.

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Can’t Wait for Comics | ‘Crimson Flower,’ Iron Fist and more

New comics arrive this week from Larry Hama, Zac Thompson, Andy MacDonald, Peter David, Javier Pina, Donny Cates, Ryan Stegman, Saladin Ahmed, Matt Kindt, Matt Lesniewski and more.

Welcome to Can’t Wait for Comics, your guide each week to what comics are arriving in comic book stores, bookstores and on digital.

This week brings another wave of DC’s Future State and another issue of Marvel’s King in Black events series, as well as new titles from Dark Horse, Marvel, BOOM! Studios, Oni Press and AfterShock, among others.

You know the drill — check out a few recommendations below, or visit ComicList for this week’s full list of new comics arriving in stores, and the comiXology new releases page for what’s available digitally.

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Mail Call | DC reveals more details on April’s relaunch of ‘Green Lantern’

A round-up of recent news on ‘Aliens,’ DC Future State, IDW’s Canto and more.

Mail Call is a roundup of the announcements we’ve received from comics publishers in our mailboxes recently that we haven’t already covered. Hit the links for more information.

When Green Lantern returns later this year after the events of Future State, Geoffrey Thorne and Dexter Soy will chart a new path for John Stewart, Sojourner “Jo” Mullein from Far Sector and Teen Lantern, the hacker Green Lantern who appeared in Young Justice.

Here’s how DC describes the first issue: With the majority of Green Lanterns called back to Oa, John Stewart arrives alongside Teen Lantern Keli Quintela, whose homemade gauntlet could be one of the most powerful and unstable weapons in the universe. With the entire landscape of the universe in flux, is this the end of the Green Lantern Corps…or a new beginning?

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Bunn + Torres re-team for ‘Phantom of the Scan’

The team responsible for ‘Cold Spots’ reunites in a new series from AfterShock Comics about psychic warfare.

AfterShock Comics has announced that writer Cullen Bunn and artist Mark Torres, the team behind Cold Spots, will reunite for a new miniseries titled Phantom of the Scan.

The story is set 20 after a comet fell to Earth and gave people psychic powers, but they come with a price — every time you use your powers, you lose part of your life force. The story will feature a group of six psychics who come together to bring an end to their gift.

“You’ll see a lot of different psychic powers in the book — you might be familiar with some, others might be a little new to you,” Bunn said. “The ways different characters use their gifts will show some new angles to those ideas you’re familiar with. Our lead character, Matt, is perhaps the most unique: Matt is an omnipath — he possesses many, many psychic powers. All of his powers manifest through ‘a little dead boy’ — a ghost-like figure that accompanies him, invisibly, everywhere he goes. This ghost, Dorian, is decaying. Every time Matt uses a power, Dorian rots more and more, a symbol of how the powers are killing the user.”

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What Are You Reading? | ‘Reckless,’ ‘Scout’s Honor’ and more

See what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately.

Welcome to What Are You Reading?, our weekly look at what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately.

Let us know what you read this week in the comments or on social media.

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‘Hardened and thick’ Batman heads to Europe in ‘Batman: The Dark Knight’ miniseries

Tom Taylor and Andy Kubert send Batman to the UK on a very personal mission this April.

Ton Taylor and Andy Kubert are taking Batman on a European vacation this April — only it’s not the present-day Batman, but an older, “hardened” version of the character.

Batman: The Dark Knight features a Bruce Wayne with “a lifetime of broken bones but not a broken spirit” heading to the United Kingdom for a very personal mission.

“This series is a different take on the character than I had done before,” said Kubert. “Every story that I have done with Batman has been different in tone, and the art takes on a life of its own as the story dictates. Batman and Son, Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader and Dark Knight III-The Master Race along with Flashpoint Batman, had their own look and feel for that particular story. Batman: The Dark Knight is no different.”

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