BOOM! announces ‘The Displaced’ by Brisson + Casalanguida + Cunniffe

The story of a forgotten Canadian city kicks off next year.

A project that was almost writer Ed Brisson’s first published comics project will finally see the light of day, as BOOM! Studios has announced The Displaced, which is about a city that has vanished without a trace and that no one can remember.

Brisson is joined by artist Luca Casalanguida, colorist Dee Cunniffe and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou on the project, which kicks off in February.

The Displaced was almost my very first published work. About a year before Comeback was picked up by Shadowline/Image, I had pitched The Displaced and had interest from a publisher. However, after months of back-and-forth notes, the book ended up veering away from the book that I wanted to do, so we amicably parted ways. It was a tough call to make, but ultimately, the right one. This book is too dear to me, I didn’t want to lose that,” Brisson said in his email newsletter. “The concept sat in a digital drawer for years. I’d periodically take it out, blow off the dust, and work on it. Yet it always felt like there was a piece missing. At some point during 2022, that piece finally fell into place and I set out to pitch it again — the first time since that 2011 experience.”

Brisson has worked with BOOM! in the past, on titles like Cluster and The Last Contract, and The Displaced marks his return to the publisher for the first time in about seven years.

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Slugfest | Mary Jane officially becomes a superhero in ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ #31

Plus: News on the Witcher’s next comic series, White Widow, ‘Coda’ returns, Ram V and Filipe Andrade reunite, ‘Killer Queens’ is back, and more.

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you. Hit the links for more information.

Marvel has been teasing Mary Jane Watson’s new power set, most notably in the recent Mary Jane & Black Cat miniseries, but the longtime supporting character will put on a costume and go full superhero in Amazing Spider-Man #31.

The oversized issue will not only feature a story by the regular creative team of Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr., but also will include a story by Celeste Bronfman and Alba Glez that features Mary Jane suiting up to become Jackpot.

Here’s a look at her costume, designed by Humberto Ramos:

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Mail Call | Tynion offers first ‘Blue Book’ for free

Check out news and updates from Marvel, Dark Horse, Top Shelf, Image Comics and more.

Mail Call is a roundup of cool things we’ve received in our mailboxes recently from comics publishers, creators and more. Hit the links for more information.

James Tynion IV was one of the first creators out of the gate with his plans for his premium Substack newsletter subscription, announcing a new comic called Blue Book with artist Michael Avon Oeming that he planned to share with paid subscribers.

But even if you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can still check out the first one, which he posted for free a couple days ago.

Blue Book is a passion project for myself and Michael Avon Oeming,” Tynion wrote. “We share a lifelong fascination with UFOs and a lifelong frustration with how those stories have been adapted into other media. There is a strangeness in the original accounts of UFO sightings that usually gets swept aside, but Michael and I want to lean into the strangeness. These are human stories of ordinary people who brush against the unknown and must grapple with what they see there. There is a deeper truth, whether you believe in the accounts or not, that lies in the many ways people tell these stories.”

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comiXology Originals announces three projects with Curt Pires

The digital comics imprint announces ‘Youth Season Two,’ ‘Lost Falls’ and ‘Memoria.’

With Youth Season One set to arrive in print this week from Dark Horse Comics, comiXology Originals has announced three new series with writer Curt Pires, including a second season of Youth that will debut on Tuesday.

They also announced two additional series Pires is writing: Lost Falls and Memoria.

“I’m very excited to finally pull back the curtain and unveil these projects we’ve spent the last year in the trenches working on,” said Pires. “With Youth Season Two, Lost Falls and Memoria, I issued a challenge to myself and my teams to make the greatest comics we could—comics that rival the greatest comics published anywhere by anyone in any format—and I’m excited to unveil the results of our labor. These books represent what I believe to be the future of comics: bold innovative genre storytelling that’s representative of our diverse and expansive modern world. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.”

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Sunday Comics | Award winners, bizarre cowboys and the Scarlet Witch

Check out recent comics from Alex de Campi, Dan Piraro, Kevin C. Pyle and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

Comics writer/editor Alex de Campi declared Aug. 28 to be “Nice Day Wanda,” a day when only good things happen to Marvel’s Scarlet Witch. If you’re familiar with the Scarlet Witch’s comic book history, you know that things don’t always go well for her — she’s accidentally destroying the Avengers one day, eliminating mutants the next, finding out her kids aren’t real, watching her husband lose his feelings … #NiceDayWanda was long overdue. To celebrate, de Campi worked with several artist on short comics where “nothing bad happens to the Scarlet Witch.”

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‘Crossover’ blurs the line between fact and fiction [Preview]

The new title by the creators of ‘God Country’ arrives in November.

Image Comics has released a preview of the first issue of Crossover, the new series coming from Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, Dee Cunniffe and John J Hill that was revealed this week during Comic-Con@Home.

Referred to by Cates as the “scariest” project he’s ever tried to produce, but also “the most exciting thing I’ve ever done” during their CCI@Home panel Crossover is about what happens when a big summer event book crosses over into the real world.

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CCI@Home: ‘Crossover’ team reveals details on the new title

Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, Dee Cunniffe and John J. Hill discuss their upcoming ‘anti-event’ title.

After teasing their new comic earlier this month, Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, Dee Cunniffe and John J. Hill revealed more details about Crossover during a virtual panel as a part of Comic-Con@Home.

“Crossover is the scariest goddamn book I have ever attempted to produce in my entire life, and that is why it’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done,” Cates said. He compared it to “Avengers: Endgame, but as Cloverfield,” then shared that the idea came to him while talking to Geoff Shaw about event comics back in 2017, before he worked for Marvel.

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Cates + Shaw reteam for ‘Crossover’

The upcoming Image Comics title declares, “Superheroes aren’t myths….they’re viruses…and they’re spreading…”

Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw, who previously worked together on God Country, will reunite for a new Image Comics titled Crossover. They’ll be joined by Dee Cunniffe and John J. Hill.

“Superheroes aren’t myths….they’re viruses…and they’re spreading…” Cates posted on Twitter, then called it “An Anti-Event for the ages…”

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Mail Call | Defend-ing the Hero Initiative, new ‘Bad Karma’ and more

Plus: News from DC, Image, Humble Bundle and more.

Mail Call is a roundup of the announcements we’ve received from publishers in our mailboxes recently. Hit the links for more information.

DC Comics has announced a change in the variant covers for the upcoming The Dreaming: Waking Hours #1. The cover shown below, by Yanick Paquette and Nathan Fairbairn, will replace one from Bill Sienkiewicz that they first showed us in May.

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Pires + Diotto team for ‘Youth’ digital weekly series

‘Olympia’ creators Curt Pires and Alex Diotto team with Dee Cunniffe and Micah Myers for a new comiXology Originals series.

The co-creators of the excellent Image Comics series Olympia are reuniting for a weekly four-issue digital series that will debut from comiXology Originals May 12.

Youth tells the story of Franklin and River, who “struggle to navigate family, friends, high school, work, drugs and all the pressures of growing up. As a queer couple, they yearn to escape their lives in a small, bigoted Midwest town. They steal River’s stepfather’s Mustang and hit the road. Their destination? California. But along the way, the car breaks down. They meet some kids who are traveling the country, partying and attempting to find themselves. They party some more … and soon everything changes.”

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Smash Page Q&A: Alex de Campi

The prolific creator pulls no punches as she discusses her brand-new Panel Syndicate comic, ‘Bad Karma,’ and a whole lot more.

Alex de Campi made a splash writing the 2005 miniseries Smoke and ever since then, she’s been a creator who’s been hard to pin down. Some of that is simply because she’s so prolific. De Campi is a writer who’s worked on My Little Pony and Judge Dredd, Josie and the Pussycats in Space and two Archie vs Predator series. She’s created series like Grindhouse, Kat & Mouse and Agent Boo, comics like Mayday and Bad Girls, Bankshot and Semiautomagic. She created the digital comic Valentine and wrote, edited and lettered the Image Comics anthology Twisted Romance

One theme that has run through much of her work is responsibility. De Campi does not write moralistic stories, but many of them revolve around people taking responsibility for who they are for what they’ve done, only to be forced to understand that doing the right thing is often harder than they ever considered. Omar famously said in The Wire, “a man’s gotta have a code,” and so many of de Campi’s characters live similarly. Or finally make a stand and choose to live by a code, only to find that decision often becomes their undoing. Ethan and Sully in Bad Karma did not return from war better and stronger and more successful, but when they learn that someone is on death row for an assassination they carried out, they decide to do something about it. Their road trip and what follows are dark, funny, incisive and some of the best work de Campi has ever written.

Bad Karma from de Campi, Ryan Howe and Dee Cunniffe launches on Panel Syndicate today, with a new chapter coming out next month.

I joked with de Campi that she’s always working on a dozen different projects, and this year is an especially busy one for her. She’s editing and working on the comics anthology True War Stories, she’s collaborating with Erica Henderson on Dracula, Mother f**ker! and she’s writing Madi, a collaboration with filmmaker Duncan Jones that she can’t talk much about, all of which come out this fall. Meanwhile she’s serializing a graphic novel on Patreon, and her debut novel The Scottish Boy comes out the beginning of June from Unbound.

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Curt Pires teams with his dad for ‘the most personal and raw comics I’ve been a part of’

Curt Pires, Tony Pires and Alex Diotto present ‘Olympia,’ coming in November from Image Comics.

Wyrd writer Curt Pires‘ next project is not only a love letter to superhero comics, Jack Kirby and Spielberg movies — it’s also very personal. His co-writer, Tony Pires, is also his father, who passed away from cancer, and they conceived the comic while Tony was in the hospital.

“We started working on Olympia just about three years ago when my father was first hospitalized as a means of giving us something to look forward to, to hope for, in dark times. All these months later the book’s finally coming out, even after he’s left us,” said Curt Pires. “Beyond any Extratextual reasoning I can throw at you, though, this is just good comics. Plain and simple. It’s a love letter to the Spielberg movies we loved so much smashed against the cosmic epicness of the Jack Kirby joints that laid the foundation of our modern entertainment landscape. These are the most personal and raw comics I’ve been a part of, and I hope you’ll join us.”

The stories they imagined together are being brought to life by artist Alex Diotto, who previously worked on Brigands and Southern Dog for Action Lab.

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