ECCC: Two new Jinxworld titles coming from Bendis, Gaydos, Mack

‘Pearl’ and ‘Cover” due out later this year from the imprint, which now resides at DC Comics.

At Emerald City Comic Con today, writer Brian Michael Bendis announced two new creator-owned titles coming soon from his Jinxworld imprint, which recently moved to DC Comics.

“I’m BEYOND excited to announce these new titles at Emerald City Comic Con,” said Bendis in a press release. “The show has always stayed true to its comics roots and that makes it a perfect place to talk anything Jinxworld, especially new titles I’m working on with creators like Michael and David whom I value and respect so highly.”

Bendis will join with two artists he’s very familiar with on the new comics, titled Pearl and Cover.

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Gaiman to curate ‘The Sandman Universe’ line for Vertigo

Nalo Hopkinson, Kat Howard, Si Spurrier and Dan Watters join Gaiman for four new titles in the new line.

Neil Gaiman will return to the world of The Sandman in a new curated line for DC’s Vertigo imprint, called, appropriately, The Sandman Universe. The line will kick off with a one-shot that’ll set up the return of three former Vertigo titles and one new one.

“… it’s a huge sandbox with so many wonderful toys that nobody’s getting to play with right now,” Gaiman told Entertainment Weekly about why he decided to return to these characters. “I started feeling guilty. I liked the idea of getting the toys played with again, reminding people how much fun this is, and also getting the opportunity to work with some fantastic writers. Down the line, there will be fantastic artists as well.”

The project kicks off this August with The Sandman Universe one-shot special, which catches readers up on what’s been happening in The Dreaming, the realm where the Daniel, the current Sandman, rules. But Daniel’s gone missing, leaving chaos in his wake. The one-shot will also catch up with two other Gaiman creations who enjoyed their own success at Vertigo — Books of Magic star Tim Hunter and Lucifer, whose ongoing series ran for 75 issues and later inspired the FOX TV series of the same name.

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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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Fantagraphics’ ‘Disney Masters’ line begins in May

New line of hardcovers includes work by Romano Scarpa, Luciano Bottaro, Paul Murry, Freddy Milton and Daan Jippes.

Beginning in May, Fantagraphics will publish a new line called “Disney Masters,” building on their already impressive line of classic Disney comics collections. The new line is devoted to “Disney’s greatest cartoonists,” and will include the works of Romano Scarpa, Luciano Bottaro, Paul Murry, Freddy Milton and Daan Jippes.

These will be full-color hardcovers, running about 200 pages each. Many of these stories originated overseas, and this will be their first American appearance.

Here’s the rundown of what you can expect from the first four volumes, which come out later this year:

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