Ahoy Comics celebrates five years with several new projects

‘Project: Cryptid,’ an anthology title featuring the work of Grant Morrison, Alex Segura, Mark Russell, Zander Cannon, Hanna Bahedry, Liana Kangas and more, will kick off in September.

Ahoy Comics will celebrate five years of publishing with several fun projects — an anthology titled Project: Cryptid, a “back matter” prose project titled “Partially Naked Came The Corpse!” and several anniversary specials.

“Five years of AHOY?! It doesn’t seem possible!” said editor-in-chief Tom Peyer. “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the comic books of our lives. September ’23 will mark the fifth anniversary of The Wrong Earth #1, the first comic we ever shipped. Jamal Igle, June Brigman, Stuart Moore, Mark Russell, Greg Scott, Grant Morrison — these artists and writers who helped launch AHOY — will return, and new creators will join them in the wildest celebration this young century has seen! The boisterous bacchanalia begins with our bestial new anthology Project: Cryptid and continues with a wave of projects, familiar and new, through the end of the year.”

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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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What Are You Reading? | ‘Batman: Fortress,’ ‘The Closet’ and more

See what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately, which includes ‘Avengers Forever,’ ‘JLA Classified,’ ‘Little Monsters,’ ‘Strange’ and more.

Welcome to What Are You Reading?, our look at what the Smash Pages crew has been checking off their “to read” list lately. Today’s reviews include some Batman, some Justice League, some Avengers and some horror comics.

Let us know what you’ve been reading lately in the comments or on social media.

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Mail Call | ‘Love Everlasting’ comes to print in August

Plus: more from Chris Eliopoulos on getting the rights back to ‘Cow Boy,’ plus free comics from Grant Morrison, Saladin Ahmed and more.

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

Love Everlasting, the Substack comic created by Tom King and Elsa Charretier, will make the jump to print, courtesy of Image Comics. The ongoing series kicks off in August.

The comic, which is up to issue #3 on Substack, plays with the tropes inherent to the romance genre:

In Love Everlasting, Joan Peterson discovers that she is trapped in an endless, terrifying cycle of “romance”—a problem to be solved, a man to marry—and every time she falls in love she’s torn from her world and thrust into another teary saga. Her bloody journey to freedom and revelation starts in this breathtaking, groundbreaking first issue.

Here’s a look at the variant cover to the first issue, along with two variants by Clay Mann and Tula Lotay:

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The Superman family of titles expands in July

Tom Taylor, John Timms, Grant Morrison, Mikel Janin and more tell new tales of the Man of Steel, the Woman of Tomorrow and the Son of Kal-El.

DC Comics has announces several changes to its Superman titles for this July, including the launch of three new titles.

Launching in July will be:

  • Superman: Son of Kal-El by Tom Taylor and John Timms, focusing on Jon Kent. It replaces the regular Superman title.
  • Superman and the Authority, a new miniseries by Grant Morrison and Mikel Janin.
  • The previously announced Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow miniseries by Tom King and Bilquis Evely.

Here’s a rundown of the new titles + storylines from DC:

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Morrison + Child + Franquiz + Bonvillain take a trip down ‘Proctor Valley Road’

The horror miniseries debuts from BOOM! Studios in March.

BOOM! Studios has announced Proctor Valley Road, a new miniseries from the team of Grant Morrison, TV writer Alex Child, artist Naomi Franquiz and colorist Tamra Bonvillain. The comic is being developed in partnership with NBCUniversal, who hope to turn it into a TV series.

“I fell in love with these characters when I read Alex’s original series proposal and I’ve had an amazing time working with him and with Naomi to bring them to life for a spooky rollercoaster ride that feels like Nancy Drew on ‘shrooms!” said Morrison. “Get your kicks…on Proctor Valley Road!”

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The Justice League at 60, Part 7: Pantheon

With the team’s first appearance arriving in December of 1959, Tom Bondurant looks back at the different eras that have defined the Justice League over the last 60 years. This time around: JLA!

Check out part one, part two, part three, part four, part five and part six of this series!

Throughout the 1960s, Justice League of America was the standard-bearer for DC Comics’ superhero teams. In the 1970s, the series boasted an expanded roster and solid, steady Dick Dillin art. The 1980s brought sweeping, lasting changes, from Detroit to the JLI; and the early ’90s turned the League into a franchise. Still, was any of that ever really cool?

I can’t tell you for sure, but I can say this: starting in the summer of 1996, the Justice League was cool enough for Wizard. The breathless self-appointed arbiter of mainstream superhero comics’ cutting edge was all over JLA in the series’ early years, including a 1997 special issue devoted entirely to the title. It was a super-high concept executed by Grant Morrison, one of the era’s hottest writers. Of course Wizard was going to notice.

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Comics Lowdown | BOOM! asks for CBLDF’s FCBD anthology to be destroyed

Plus: News on 2019 comics sales, Joe Sacco, Cavan Scott, Grant Morrison, Mexican horror comics and more.

Following the controversy that has come to light recently about the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and its former executive director, BOOM! Studios has asked for a Free Comic Book Day anthology they organized for the CBLDF to be destroyed, according to a report by Newsarama’s Chris Arrant.

A CBLDF Free Comic Book Day anthology has been assembled by numerous publishers over the years, and then published by the CBLDF for the annual event. This year’s event, of course, was cancelled in May due to the pandemic, but the comics are still being distributed to comic shops to be given out from July through September.

“In light of recent events surrounding the CBLDF, Boom! Studios asked that this year’s planned FCBD issue from the CBLDF not be distributed,” BOOM! told Newsarama. “Unfortunately, the issue was shipped out to retailers early in error (without being billed). We’ve requested the CBLDF and Diamond to ask retailers to destroy the copies they received, and a destruction notice should be sent to retailers shortly.”

CBLDF president Christina Merkler told the outlet that they respect BOOM!’s wishes and will leave it up to retailers whether they want to distribute the free comic.

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‘Green Lantern: Blackstars’ debuts in November

Grant Morrison ‘rewrites reality’ in a new miniseries that spins out of his work on ‘The Green Lantern.’

DC has announced a new miniseries spinning out of Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp’s The Green Lantern series. If you’ve been reading that series and would rather not have it spoiled, it might be safer to stop reading now.

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Comics Lowdown: Batton Lash, Ron Smith pass away

Plus: News on Grant Morrison, Tintin, Stan Lee and more.

Batton Lash, the creator of the long-running comic-strip-turned-comic-book Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre (later re-titled Supernatural Law) passed away Jan. 12 at the age of 65 from brain cancer.

Lash’s comics career began in the late 1970s when Wolff and Byrd began running as a weekly comic strip in The Brooklyn Paper and then later in The National Law Journal. In the 1990s, he and his wife, Jackie Estrada, formed Exhibit A Press, which began publishing Wolff and Byrd comics under the title Supernatural Law. It later migrated to the web. His other works included writing the Archie Meets The Punisher crossover as well as Bongo Comics’ Radioactive Man book, which received an Eisner Award in 2002. He also collaborated with James Hudnall on Obama Nation, a conservative political comic strip that appeared on one of Andrew Breitbart’s websites.

Many of the creators and industry professionals who knew Lash have started to share their remembrances, including Heidi MacDonald and Rob Salkowitz. The Comics Reporter has a round-up of more of them.

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Morrison + Sharp relaunch ‘Green Lantern’ in November

Hal Jordan gets a solo title that’s about ‘the everyday life of a space cop.”

Grant Morrison will return to the DC Universe this fall with Liam Sharp, as they tackle hard-nosed space crime in a new series that features Green Lantern Hal Jordan.

“Instead of the big, epic, 12-part stories, we’re focusing down on the everyday life of a space cop. Basically, it’s no more apocalypse-ending storylines,” Morrison told IGN. “The basic concept is that [Hal Jordan] is like a space cop that patrols a sector of the universe where anything can happen. We’ve made it more like a police procedural.”

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DC, Morrison announce ‘Arkham Asylum 2’, reveal ‘Wonder Woman Earth One’ Vol. 2 art

At the ‘Meet the Publishers’ panel in San Diego, Morrison showed up to share some news with Dan Didio and Jim Lee.

Today at Comic-Con International, DC co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee welcomed a special surprise guest to their “Meet the Publishers” panel: Grant Morrison, writer of, among other things, the Arkham Asylum graphic novel and the more recent Wonder Woman Earth One graphic novel. And he brought news concerning both.

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