Slugfest | ‘Summer of Symbiotes’ leads to ‘Death of the Venomverse’

Plus: Marvel Artist’s Editions, Dark Horse graphic novels, Spider-Verse, variant covers 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 revealed more details and a teaser image for Summer of Symbiotes, something they teased last October along with several other events for 2023. It’s less of a single-story crossover and more of a moniker they are using to describe a whole bunch of different symbiote-themed series, miniseries and events.

While many of the events teased on the image we’ve heard of before, like Carnage Reigns and Extreme Venomverse, there is one new one listed — Death of the Venomverse, which echoes the Death of the Spiderverse storyline we’re seeing in Spider-Man.

Here’s the description from Marvel:

It’s all leading to this! The epic adventures above are spiraling towards an explosive destination, and not all of your favorite symbiotes will survive the journey. The Carnage symbiote is more bloodthirsty than ever and heads to the multiverse for its greatest killing spree yet. But what is it after? Find out more when this upcoming limited series is announced at the Marvel Comics: Spider-Man & the Venomverse Panel at C2E2 2023!

C2E2 is coming up this weekend. Here’s the full teaser image:

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Image Comics announces ‘In Hell We Fight!’ by Layman + Jok

The new series kicks off in June.

Chew and Chu writer/co-creator John Layman is back at Image Comics this summer with a hellish new title — In Hell We Fight!, a new creator-owned title with artist Jok

“I’m thrilled to be back at Image with a new book,” said Layman. “In Hell We Fight is the most ambitious thing I’ve done in a while, and also the most fun. Nonstop action, adventure and general weirdness, with loads of heart, and I can say with confidence this will be the best time anyone will have reading about kids condemned to an eternity in hell. Luckily for me I’ve teamed up with a great artist—Jok—who’s probably the one person on Earth who can capture this unique balance of light and dark, horror and heart. I think this is the perfect vehicle to introduce him to a broader American comic book-reading audience.”

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‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’ gets a comic book prequel

John Layman and Jesús Hervás bring to life ‘Suicide Squad: Kill Arkham Asylum.’

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is the upcoming video game that, like the title suggests lets you play as the Suicide Squad as you take on a mind-controlled Justice League.

The chaos begins on May 26 and will soon be followed by Suicide Squad: Kill Arkham Asylum, a prequel comic book set in the game’s continuity. It’s by John Layman (Chew) and Jesús Hervás (Are You Afraid of Darkseid?, Cyberpunk 2077), and will feature Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, King Shark and of course Amanda Waller, who just took control of Arkham Asylum as part of her latest recruitment drive.

Dc will offer codes for a free in-game cosmetic item in print copies as well as to Annual and Ultra paying subscribers of their DC Universe Infinite service. But purchasers of digital copies get nothing, which kind of sucks given that they charge just as much for digital comics as they do for print.

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Layman + Bradshaw’s ‘Bermuda’ starts in July

The series features a girl who lives on an island populated by dinosaurs, pirates and more.

IDW Publishing has announced that Bermuda, the new series by John Layman and Nick Bradshaw originally announced at the 2019 New York Comic Con, will kick off in July.

“Probably the single upside to the past year has been that Bermuda got some extra time, and it shows on every panel on every page. This is a gorgeous book, just staggeringly beautiful, and it’s been a thrill to see the pages roll in. It’s certainly one of the most stunning comics I’ve ever been a part of — and it’s a whole lot of fun, too,” Layman said.

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What Are You Reading? Justice League, X-Men and more!

See what the Smash Pages crew has checked off their “to read” list lately.

Welcome once again to What Are You Reading?, our weekly journey into the center of our reading lists. This time around, hear about Tom’s endless trek through old Justice League issues, Shane’s adventures with 1990s X-Men comics and my own scattershot batch of comics.

And as always, tell us what comics you’ve been exploring in the comments.

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Layman returns to the world of ‘Chew’ in new series ‘Chu’

The new series, starring Tony Chu’s sister, begins in June.

John Layman will return to the world her created with artist Rob Guillory in Chu, a new series featuring the sister of Chew‘s lead Tony Chu. Dan Boultwood will draw the spinoff series.

“After more than 60 issues of Chew, it was never a matter of if I would return to the world Rob Guillory and I created, but when,” Layman said. “I needed a break after the book ended, but it wasn’t too long after that I started missing the characters and the world, and had the itch to return. It was something I approached cautiously because, while Chew was a complete story, I wanted to return to it in such a way it would be new and say something different, and it took a while to find the right angle. Outer Darkness/Chew was a step in that direction, as well a coda, a flower on the grave that was the story of Tony Chu. Chu is a different take on the Chu family and the Chew-universe, and in many ways it is a mirror, the flip side. I’m confident readers of Chew will enjoy it, but it’s also something totally new, the story of Saffron Chu, not Tony Chu. She was completely absent from Chew, and this first story arc will tell the story of why that is.”

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Layman, Bradshaw team on ‘Bermuda’ from IDW

New series due out next year, featuring dinosaurs, pirates and more.

Chew scribe John Layman is teaming up with Wolverine and the X-Men artist Nick Bradshaw for a new creator-owned title called Bermuda. The series will be published by IDW in 2020.

Bermuda is a story that’s been rattling around in my head for a while, and the type of book I’ve wanted to write for quite some time: high adventure with a jungle hero in a strange, savage land filled with all kinds of dangers and a world that’s both weird and wonderful,” Layman said. “In addition to Chew, my absolute favorite books I’ve ever done have been with IDW – Scarface, Godzilla and Mars Attacks – so I’m hoping lightning strikes a fourth time with Bermuda!”

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‘Red Rain’ Batman sinks his teeth into ‘Secrets of Sinister House’ one-shot

DC’s annual Halloween anthology features new stories by John Layman, Paul Dini, Rafael Albuquerque, Tom Raney and more.

DC’s annual Halloween anthology will return in October with a new story set in the world of Batman & Dracula: Red Rain, among other stories.

Rafael Scavone and Rafael Albuquerque will co-write the story about vampire Batman, with art by Rafael Albuquerque. Albuquerque’s the co-creator of American Vampire, so he’s very familiar with fanged monsters. Released in the 1990s and created by Dog Moench and Kelley Jones, Red Rain was one of the earliest “Elseworlds” stories published by DC. It spawned two sequels.

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Layman + Chan blast off into the ‘Outer Darkness’

Skybound presents a new title in November that combines science fiction and horror.

We are living in a post-Chew world, as John Layman and Rob Guillory’s epic foodie tale wrapped up almost two years ago now. Depressing as that thought is — I still miss Tony and the gang — the silver lining is that both creators have new projects to fill the void. Have you read Farmhand, Guillory’s new title? The first two issues were awesome. Not to be outdone, Layman has two new comics out this year: Leviathan with Nick Pitarra, which kicked off last month, and the just-announced Outer Darkness, which arrives in November.

Layman is working with Afu Chan, artist of Immortal Iron Fists, on the sci-fi/horror title.

“Thanks to Afu Chan and Skybound, we’ve succeeded in making Outer Darkness as perfect and beautiful as I’d envisioned it to be since finishing Chew,” Layman said in a press release. “I’m so unbelievably excited that Outer Darkness is being announced to the world. I’m absolutely in love with this book.”

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Image reveals many, many new titles at Image Expo

New projects announced from Matthew Rosenberg and Tyler Boss, Rob Guillory, J.H. Williams and Haden Blackman, Sam Humphries and Jen Bartel, Annie Wu and more.

As they’ve done in previous years, Image Comics dropped a metric ton of announcements at their Image Expo event, held today in Portland, Oregon.

The line-up of announcements this year includes five new titles from Todd McFarlane’s camp, new titles from Chew creators John Layman and Rob Guillory, two comics from Christoper Sebela, the fact that they’ll publish the Netflix/Millarworld titles starting with The Magic Order and much more. No doubt there are interviews aplenty dropping around the internet on all these new projects, so I’ll start with the text of the press release, then add art and commentary as I find it.

So let’s get to it …

Blackbird by Sam Humphries & Jen Bartel
Sam Humphries and Jen Bartel team up to co-create Blackbird, a modern fantasy story best described as Harry Potter meets Riverdale. It follows a young woman named Nina who discovers a neon-lit world of magic masters in Los Angeles. Now they’ve kidnapped her sister, and Nina is the only one who can save her.

“Blackbird is a labor of love, a coming of age story and beautiful people doing insane things with magic,” said Humphries.

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