Month: June 2019

Powell + Jensen team for ‘Two Dead’ this fall

New graphic novel from Gallery 13 explores crime and racism in the Deep South after World War II.

Van Jensen and Nate Powell will team up on a new graphic novel this fall for Simon & Shuster’s Gallery 13 imprint. Two Dead, according to Paste, is about “crime, conspiracy, racism and insanity in the post-World War II Deep South.”

“Van and I started collaborating on Two Dead before I began drawing the March trilogy, believe it or not, shifting focus over the years and evolving past its genre parameters,” Powell told Paste. “Finding the right approach for this story was in part thanks to those years re-imagining its format, scope, historical relationships, and how it speaks to the world of 2019. Along the way, each book I drew concurrently with Two Dead helped pave the way for its final form—Come Again allowed me to embrace the power of genre, just as March better equipped me to finding the personal focus within a larger historical context. I’m always eager to bring my home state to life through comics, and each book doubles as a love letter to Arkansas in all its contradictory beauty.”

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Sevy’s ‘biggest, boldest, craziest story’ ‘Triage’ coming in September

New series from Dark Horse features a nurse fighting for survival on a strange world.

Phillip Sevy of Tomb Raider and The House fame is set to debut his first creator-owned series from Dark Horse, Triage, later this year. The series features a nurse who wakes up on another world and has to work with two strangers to survive being hunted.

“For my first creator-owned book, I wanted to try and the deliver the biggest, boldest, and craziest story I could through the lens of one singular vision,” said Sevy in the press release. “In Triage, I wanted to go as big and as personal as possible. From writing to penciling to inking to coloring (with amazing letters by Frank Cvetkovic), I’ve been killing myself to deliver a story that is exciting, fun, audacious, and human. Evie has become one of my favorite characters I’ve got to work with. At its core, Triage is about discovering your identity amidst the chaos and enormities of the world around you.”

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Comics Lowdown: Stan Lee’s former manager’s legal troubles grow

Plus: Stolen comics, cease and desist letters, Ted Talks, Jesus and more.

Legal woes for Stan Lee’s former caretaker and manager, Keya Morgan, continue to grow. He has been arrested and appeared in court in Arizona to face the charge of being a fugitive of justice. And he is also being sued by Joan Celia Lee, Stan Lee’s daughter.

In May, Morgan was charged with felony counts of false imprisonment of an elder adult, theft, embezzlement, and forgery or fraud against an elder adult, according to the Los Angeles Superior Court. The LAPD has revealed some of the details on why they brought charges against him.

“Morgan removed Lee from his Hollywood Hills residence to a secured Beverly Hills condominium during the late night hours of June 8, 2018,” the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement. “Morgan was using this tactic to further deceive Lee into believing he was in danger and needed to be moved from his home to a more secured condominium where Morgan had more control over Lee.”

The LAPD will eventually extradite Morgan to L.A. to face the charges.

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‘High Comedic Value’: A bit of truth in every drawing

In the brand-new ‘Alley Cats’ feature, Suzette Chan spotlights webcomics artist Husein.

Welcome to Alley Cats, a new feature by Suzette Chan that focuses on one of our favorite parts of any convention — Artists Alley. Chan spoke to some of the many talented craftspeople and artists at the the 2019 Calgary Expo in late April. This is one in a series of six.

Husein has been drawing a comic per week for the last five years, and has been doing comic conventions for almost as long. This year, he added a new element to his booth: the craft of drawing people as pop culture icons–badly!

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2019 Russ Manning Award nominees announced

Annual award for the ‘Most Promising Newcomer’ comic artist will be presented during the Eisner Awards in July at Comic-Con International.

The nominees have been announced for the 2019 Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award, named for the creator of Magnus, Robot Fighter and illustrator of the Tarzan and Star Wars comic strips.

Presented annually since 1982, the award recognizes an artist who, early in his or her career, “shows a superior knowledge and ability in the art of creating comics.” Previous winners include Dave Stevens, Eleanor Davis, Jeff Smith, Marion Churchland, David Petersen, Tyler Crook, Dan Mora and Anne Szabla.

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Role play as a role player in the ‘Die’ RPG

Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans’ comic about role-playing games naturally gets its own RPG.

If you’ve been Die-ing (sorry) to play the role-playing game at the center of Kieron Gillen and the amazing Stephanie Hans‘ Die comic book, you are now in luck — a beta version of the Die RPG is now available on the Die website.

The materials include a manual, character sheets and additional gamemaster materials, with something called the “Arcana” — “weird stuff and supplementary material” — coming with the next arc of the comic.

“It’s a somewhat meta RPG which is designed to let a group of players make their own version of the first arc of Die,” Gillen said in his email newsletter. “It’s about Die the situation rather than the specifics of Die. As in, you generate a group of real world people, who then sit down to play a role-playing game, before getting dragged into a fantasy world. Yes, it’s a little Meta. One of the playtesters described it as a manual of how to make your own Kieron Gillen-esque story, which I quite like. There’s a lot of me trying to explain how stories work, and how DIE works specifically. That means I suspect some of it will be interesting to folks who have no interest in RPGs at all. There are also at least three funny jokes.”

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Waid, Osajyefo + Briones ignite the H1 universe [Preview]

Check out a preview of ‘Ignited #1,’ which debuts June 5.

It’s a ballsy thing to do, kicking off your new superhero universe with a first issue that barely features any costumed superheroes. That’s one of the things I admired about Ignited #1.

Last October French comics publisher Humanoids, which has brought comics like Metabarons, Technopriests and The Incal, among many others, to America over the past 20 years announced their intention to launch a shared universe that would kick off with three monthly titles — Ignited being the flagship. They announced an impressive amount of talent behind this new universe, including Waid and Osajyefo, as well as John Cassaday, Yanick Paquette and Carla Speed McNeil.

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Tommi Parrish, Blue Delliquanti + Kazimir Lee win Lambda Literary Awards

‘The Lie and How We Told It,’ ‘Miles & Honesty in SCFSX!’ were both recognized in New York last night.

The 31st annual Lambda Literary Awards, which honor LGBTQ writing across 24 categories, were presented last night in New York City.

The Lie and How We Told It by Tommi Parrish took home the award in the LGBTQ Graphic Novel category. Published by Fantagraphics, the graphic novel is about two formerly close friends trying “to salvage whatever is left of their decaying relationship.”

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Celebrate International (Interstellar?) Dinosaur Month with ‘Alien Bones’

Chris “Doc” Wyatt and Chris Grine team up for a new graphic novel from 1First Comics.

Did other planets have dinosaurs? Chris “Doc” Wyatt and Chris Grine will explore that question in October in Alien Bones, a new graphic novel coming from 1First Comics.

Coinciding with International Dinosaur Month, Alien Bones features a boy and his paleontologist father exploring the galaxy and looking for the fossils of extinct alien dinosaurs. But when his dad disappears inside the ruins of an alien city, 10-year-old Liam teams up with his pet dinosaur and a robot to save him.

“The idea of Alien Bones came from wanting to thrill my son with an adventure out in the universe,” Wyatt said. “I can admit that astronomy can sometimes seem dry and boring in the classroom, so I wanted to find a way to encourage my kid to think about the cosmos as an exciting place to explore and discover. He was interested, at the time, in dinosaurs—a lot of kids go through a dinosaur phase, and my son was no different. So, I thought: ‘What about kids having adventures with dinosaurs in space?'”

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‘The Pride’ returns this week from comiXology Originals

Second season of the LGBTQ+ super hero series debuts June 5.

“There’s still so much left to say with The Pride too, so don’t worry. The Pride is far from over,” Writer Joe Glass told Alex Dueben last year. And just in time for Pride Month, we now know the details on when they’ll return.

The LGBTQ+ super hero series makes its triumphant return from comiXology this Wednesday as part of their Originals line. The Pride Season Two is a new six-issue series written by Glass and illustrated by Cem Iroz, with colors by Mark Dale and letters by Mike Stock.

“I began The Pride because I want to tell stories where queer characters and stories are not only told through metaphor, analogy and subtext, but are open, accessible and show a diversity of life not usually seen in the medium,” Glass said in a press release.

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Ellis + Howard’s ‘Trees’ returns in September

‘Trees: Three Fates” heads to Russia for a murder mystery set in the shadows of the title’s mysterious giant alien presence.

Warren Ellis and Jason Howard’s high-concept, human-focused science fiction series, Trees, will return in September, the writer announced in his weekly Orbital Operations email newsletter.

Trees kicked off in 2014 and features an Earth where massive aliens landed and stood silently for a decade in different parts of the world. The comic tells the story of various people around the world and their reactions to living in the very large shadows of these mysterious “Trees.”

So far 14 issues have been released, but the numbering will chnage with the new volume. Trees: Three Fates will run as a five-issue miniseries, according to the solicitation Ellis shared. “It was originally just going to be TREES issues 15-19, but Image thought it would work better as a branded serial,” Ellis said. The story will focus on a murder mystery in Russia near the site of one of the alien Trees that inspires as the series’ title.

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DC announces Black Label Joker/Harley mini by Garcia, Mayhew, Suayan

The nine-issue series debuts in October.

Yesterday’s DC Ink news about Beast Boy wasn’t the only Kami Garcia news that DC had to share at BookCon — although this second project sounds like it might skew just a little bit older than the YA OGN DC Ink announced.

The best-selling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures series of novels is also working on a new Black Label title for the publisher, Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity, with artists Mike Mayhew and Mico Suayan. The nine-issue miniseries “follows Harley Quinn, the young and brilliant forensic psychiatrist and profiler consulting for the Gotham City Police Department (GCPD), as she pursues a vicious killer terrorizing the city.” With that killer being, of course, the Joker.

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