Can’t Wait for Comics | ‘Conan the Barbarian’ returns to conquer comics

Plus: Iceman is Astonishing, Kitty Pryde returns to the shadows, Thessaly goes Hollywood, and the Last Vampire Slayer returns.

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

I’ve pulled out some of the highlights below, but for the complete list of everything you might find at your local comic shop and on digital this week, you’ll want to check out one or more of the following:

As a reminder, things can change and what you find on the above lists may differ from what’s actually arriving in your local shop. So always check with your comics retailer for the final word on availability.

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Slugfest | Have a very ‘Criminal’ Christmas

Catch up on recent news and announcements on Criminal, Dragon Age, Blue Beetle, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Prism Stalker and more.

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you from comics creators, publishers and more.

Image Comics is serving up a Christmas treat for Criminal fans in the pages of their Image! 30th anniversary anthology. Creators Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have created a Christmas story starring Teeg Lawless in a take-off of Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol.

“I’ve been wanting to do a Christmas-themed Criminal story since we first started the book,” said Brubaker. “So, Sean and I had a blast returning to that world for ‘Teeg’s Christmas Carol.’ Twelve pages of bad dad Christmases and history lessons.”

Phillips drew the cover, which features a cigarette puffing, Santa-hat wearing Teeg:

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Smash Pages Q&A: Sloane Leong on ‘Prism Stalker’

‘It’s a weird sci-fi biopunk adventure about colonization, autonomy, the pain of desire and the wonder, power and horror of expression.’

Comics readers might know Sloane Leong as the artist of From Under Mountains. She’s also drawn fill-in stories for a number of comics, including Prophet, Glory and Bravest Warriors, and has contributed to gallery shows, but starting this week, she will be known for Prism Stalker.

The ongoing series launches next week from Image Comics, and the first issue is simply stunning. It manages to convey a lot of information about this world, much of it through suggestion. Her pages quite frankly do not look like most comics pages but are instead complex works of design that echo the musicality within the story and defining the pacing. The story itself, which is about language and culture, memory and what is passed down, could not be more relevant today. Like the very best science fiction, the issue manages to depict something strange and truly alien, while drawing parallels to the present, the past and our own experiences.

For many, writing, drawing and coloring a monthly series is more than enough, but Leong is also finishing a graphic novel, A Map to the Sun, for First Second Books, and writing a regular review column for The Comics Journal. Happily, she somehow found the time to talk with me.

Leong will be at Emerald City Comic Con this weekend at Table #208 where she’ll have advance copies of the first issue for sale. It will be available in stores on March 7.

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