The Comics Super Blog!
A ‘Tails’ omnibus and a second Bridget Lee volume are due from the creator next year.
Dark Horse Comics has announced two new projects from Ethan Young, creator of Nanjing: The Burning City and The Battles of Bridget Lee: Invasion of Farfall.
First up is an omnibus collection of his Tails webcomic, titled Life Between Panels: The Complete Tails Omnibus.
Continue reading “Dark Horse announces two from Ethan Young”
Marvel’s Vice President of International Development Brand Management moves into the top position over Marvel’s comic line as Alonso leaves the company.
Marvel Entertainment has announced that Axel Alonso has left the company. Marvel veteran C.B. Cebulski will replace him as editor-in-chief.
“C.B. is one of the most well-known, liked and respected editors and personalities in the comics industry. He has a keen understanding of the Marvel brand, and knows the importance of publishing within the larger Marvel ecosystem,” said Dan Buckley, President, Marvel Entertainment, in a press release. “As our characters continue to reach unprecedented levels of global popularity, we need to ensure our core comic business sets the standard with fresh and compelling graphic storytelling that excites both our longtime fan base and new fans. Marvel has set a high bar for super hero stories for over 75 years, and we believe C.B. is perfectly positioned to take Marvel Comics to new heights.”
Prior to this, Cebulski was Vice President of International Development Brand Management and Vice President of Marvel Brand Management and Development in Asia. He also worked for Marvel as a talent recruiter, so he brings both a global perspective as well as a lot of earned goodwill with creators.
Alonso has been with Marvel since 2000, and was named editor-in-chief in January 2011. No word yet on what’s next for him.
Continue reading “C.B. Cebulski replaces Axel Alonso as editor-in-chief at Marvel”
Image’s mini-convention returns in the company’s new hometown, Portland, Oregon.
After skipping 2017, Image Expo, Image Comics’ mini-convention featuring creators and title announcements, will return next year. The event is scheduled for Feb. 21 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Leftbank Annex in Portland, Oregon. Tickets are now available for purchase.
The all-day event is open to fans, retailers and press, and will feature “the hottest names in comics and offers a unique experience for fans to have unprecedented access to the writers and artists behind their favorite comic books at exclusive autograph sessions and comic-focused programming.” Based on previous years, expect some surprises to walk out on stage during the keynote.
Writer Mark Millar teases something new involving Hit-Girl as well.
To help celebrate the 10th anniversary of Kick-Ass, Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s Kick-Ass will return next year with a new character under the mask — Patience Lee, a black, female military veteran with kids. While previous volumes were published by Marvel’s Icon line, this one will find a home at Image Comics, according to Entertainment Weekly.
“When we sold Millarworld to Netflix, two properties weren’t part of the deal. Kingsman and Kick-Ass both had unique arrangements with Matthew Vaughn and it made sense for these to continue, so in the year or so where we were preparing the sale I came up with this great idea for a whole new take on Kick-Ass,” Millar told EW. “The entire story was all completely written in that year and it’s a monthly book, launching in February for the title’s 10th anniversary. It’s crazy to think that in the 10 years since it was created, Kick-Ass has spawned two Hollywood movies, video games, toys, key rings, PEZ dispensers and even an upcoming board game. So the idea of it lying dormant was just insane and to be honest it’s the most fun I’ve ever had writing anything. I really love that world.”
Continue reading “‘Kick-Ass’ returns with new hero, new publisher”
Batman and Wonder Woman will team up to solve the mystery of a dead Irish god in a six-issue miniseries.
DC Comics will resurrect The Brave and the Bold next year starring Batman and Wonder Woman, in a six-issue series by Liam Sharp. The duo will team up to solve the mystery of who killed an Irish god.
“The fact that they’ve pegged it to ‘The Brave and the Bold’ makes so much sense. It’s thrilling,” Sharp told The Washington Post’s Comic Riffs. “It kind of gave it even more gravitas and gave it a real reason for being. It just seemed like perfect timing. There’s an element of classicness to the whole concept as well. It just gives it more weight.”
Continue reading “‘The Brave and the Bold’ returns next year from Liam Sharp”
Archie’s superheroes return in a new series by Ian Flynn and Kelsey Shannon, debuting next month.
Archie Comics has provided a preview of Mighty Crusaders #1, which brings back their classic superhero characters in a new series by Ian Flynn and Kelsey Shannon.
Announced in August, the series unites The Shield, The Comet, The Web, Jaguar, Darkling, Firefly and Steel Sterling.
Check out a preview of the first issue and the solicitation text below.
Continue reading “The Mighty Crusaders rise again in December [Preview]”
‘It’s a weird amalgam of other stories I’ve done.’
In recent years Anders Nilsen has published a number of books that have been hard to categorize. From Rage of Poseidon to Poetry is Useless to the reissue of his earlier Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow, Nilsen has shown himself to be not just a talented artist and storyteller but a gifted designer whose books are carefully considered objects in their own right.
As brilliant as each of those books are, like a lot of comics readers I’ve been waiting for Nilsen to announce his next big project. Big Questions, which was published in a single volume in 2011, was an epic story in a way that goes far beyond the book’s length. Nilsen has just published Tongues #1, the first part of a much longer story, and he was kind enough to take time to talk about the comic, his plans and the book’s landscape.
Continue reading “Smash Pages Q&A: Anders Nilsen on ‘Tongues’”
Christopher Sebela, Gavin Guidry, Marissa Louise and Micah Meyers seek to crowdfund a new historical occult adventure miniseries
Christopher Sebela (High Crimes, Evolution, Short Order Crooks) returns to Kickstarter for a very timely miniseries — one set in the 1920s — that pits Harry Houdini against Arthur Conan Doyle in a “battle of wills, words, faith, science, fisticuffs, handguns and magic.” And he’s joined by artist Gavin Guidry, colorist Marissa Louise and letterer Micah Meyers on The Death Defying, which is now up on Kickstarter.
Continue reading “Houdini and Doyle collide in ‘The Death Defying’”
Noting a commitment to ‘eradicating harassment,’ DC fires Berganza five years after the last publicly reported harassment incident.
Multiple outlets, including Buzzfeed, are reporting that DC Entertainment has fired Eddie Berganza, the longtime editor whose history of alleged sexual harassment was brought back into the limelight by the outlet on Friday.
The official statement from DC Entertainment reads:
Warner Bros and DC Entertainment have terminated the employment of DC Comics Group Editor Eddie Berganza. We are committed to eradicating harassment and ensuring that all employees, as well as our freelance community, are aware of our policies, are comfortable reporting any concerns and feel supported by our Company.
The founder of October’s ‘Inktober’ event discusses this year’s event, his latest chidlren’s books and his forthcoming graphic novel ‘SkyHeart.’
For some people, Jake Parker is the talented children’s book illustrator behind books like The Girl Who Wouldn’t Brush Her Hair, The Little Snowplow, and the just-released The 12 Sleighs of Christmas, written by Sherri Duskey Rinker. Some of us though remember Parker as one of the artists who first made a splash in the Flight anthologies and went onto write and draw the Missile Mouse series of graphic novels and The Antler Boy and Other Stories, which collected his short comics work.
He is also the man who started Inktober, which went from a personal challenge to himself that he posted online to something much bigger. This year Inktober was bigger than it’s ever been. In 2015, just under 330,000 posts on Instagram were tagged #inktober2015, and this year more than 3.2 million were tagged #inktober2017. This doesn’t mean that everything was without controversy. Parker responded to the question of whether it’s possible to participate in Inktober if one works digitally and Parker’s statement, which read in part “The spirit of Inktober is self improvement, and there’s no better way to master your craft than to draw without a safety net” was not liked by some people and so I asked him about Inktober and his new book.
Continue reading “Smash Pages Q&A: Jake Parker on Inktober and more”
DC brass protected Berganza at the expense of the women who worked there.
Right now, DC group editor Eddie Berganza is the comics industry’s poster child for sexual harassment, our own private Harvey Weinstein, thanks to a Buzzfeed article that brought the story of his misdeeds, and DC’s handling of them, to a wider audience.
People are calling for Berganza’s head on a platter, but they probably won’t get it. DC did in fact sanction him at the time: After he “forcibly kissed” a creator at a party during WonderCon in 2012, DC demoted him and banned him from conventions. When the incident hit the comics news, he sent an e-mail to his superiors apologizing and vowing it wouldn’t happen again. It’s conceivable that he actually did have some sort of epiphany and change his ways. He doesn’t seem to have repeated this behavior since, and it would certainly be difficult for DC to fire him now for something that was acknowledged and dealt with, however inadequately, seven years ago.
That doesn’t mean no one should be fired, though. What I find most alarming about this story is not Berganza’s antics per se but the way that the DC brass protected him at the expense of the women who worked there.
Continue reading “Missing the point: The Eddie Berganza story”
Awards, best of the year, comics journalism comics, and how the shift in retail channels is changing the industry.
The Best of the Year lists are starting to roll out. Katie Green’s Lighter Than My Shadow tops Amazon’s list, which also includes Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston’s Black Hammer and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. That book shows up on Publisher’s Weekly’s list as well, but the similarities end there.
Continue reading “Comics Lowdown: My Favorite Thing Is Comics”
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