Month: October 2020

2020 Prism Award winners announced

The awards recognize, promote and celebrate diversity and excellence in the field of queer comics.

The winners of the fourth annual Prism Awards were announced over the weekend as part of the virtual Queer Comics Expo hosted by the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. The awards ceremony and other content from the expo can be found on the CAM’s YouTube channel.

The awards are presented to comic works by queer authors and stories that promote the growing body of diverse, powerful, innovative, positive or challenging representations of LGBTQAI+ characters in fiction or nonfiction comics. The goal is to recognize, promote and celebrate diversity and excellence in the field of queer comics. Finalists and recipients were voted on by diverse panels of comics professionals, educators, librarians, journalists and writers, which can be found here.

Congratulations to all the winners, who are in bold below:

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What Are You Reading? | ‘Amazing Spider-Man,’ ‘The Vain’ and more

See what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately.

Welcome to What Are You Reading?, our weekly look at what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately.

Let us know what you read this week in the comments or on social media.

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Sunday Comics | ‘Amelia Shadows,’ 24-Hour Comics and more

Check out recent comics by Matthew Dow Smith, Noelle Stevenson, Melanie Gillman, Keith Knight and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

We kick off this week with a new comic from Matthew Dow Smith, who created and posted the comic Johnny Chaos on Twitter earlier this year after the pandemic hit. Alex Dueben spoke with Smith back in July about getting work done during the pandemic; like a lot of other creators, when pens went down at various publishers, Smith started working on his own comics.

This newest, Amelia Shadows, can be found on Tumblr, or, if you’d like to see it a day early, it’s on his Patreon as well (along with a lot of other cool stuff).

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Mail Call | John Ridley makes his Marvel debut in January

A round-up of news from Marvel, IDW, Top Shelf and more.

Mail Call is a roundup of the announcements we’ve received from comics publishers in our mailboxes recently. Hit the links for more information.

Academy Award winner John Ridley has several projects in the works at DC right now, but DC’s not the only publisher he’s doing work for. Marvel has announced that the writer of 12 Years A Slave will have a story in Wolverine: Black, White and Blood #3. The anthology series will feature short stories about the popular mutant, told in black and white … and red. Jorge Fornés is the artist on his story.

“I can think of no better way to kick off my writing relationship with Marvel Comics than by contributing to a truly fantastic anthology series centered around Wolverine,” Ridley told Marvel.com. “Equally exciting is having the story illustrated by Jorge Fornés. I look forward to writing more stories set in the Marvel Universe, and with their roster of iconic characters.”

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Clowns take the center ring in Prince’s ‘Haha’

The new anthology series from W. Maxwell Prince and Image Comics begins in January.

Image Comics has announced a new anthology title called Haha, written by W. Maxwell Prince and drawn by a variety of different artists. Each issue will include a done-in-one story about a professional clown, the only thing in the universe scarier than the main character in Prince’s Ice Cream Man series.

“I don’t like clowns, so I thought it’d be a good idea to write about them,” Prince said. “What a gas, to get to partner with some of comics’ best to tell these ditties about a bunch of real jokers.”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Ryan North and Albert Monteys

North and Monteys discuss how they approached adapting Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ into a graphic novel.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is one of the seminal novels of postwar America. Part science fiction tale, part story of World War II and the firebombing of Dresden from the point of view of American POWs, the story of Billy Pilgrim was an immensely important novel and for many their introduction to the late, great novelist Kurt Vonnegut. It is also not an easy book to adapt and defies adaptation in a number of ways, which makes the success of the new graphic novel all the more impressive.

Ryan North is the person behind the weekly Dinosaur Comics, the writer of Marvel’s The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and the writer of How To Invent Everything. This isn’t his first time tackling literary legends after writing Romeo and/or Juliet and To Be Or Not To Be (both with the help of William Shakespeare). Albert Monteys is an artist and illustrator know for his work on the weekly magazine El Jueves, the series Carlitos Fax and the monthly publication Orgullo y Satisfacción, which he co-founded. His comic Universe! was published online by Panel Syndicate and nominated for an Eisner in 2017. 

As someone who has read almost everything Vonnegut ever wrote and has always held the book in great regard, the graphic novel manages to capture and reinvent the spirit and the substance of the book in ways that are shocking, making the story a new experience, even though I knew the text so well. I had to ask the duo a few questions about how they worked and their own relationship to the material.

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‘Future State’ takes over DC’s line-up in January

DC will kick off 2021 by exploring the future of their universe for two months, with regular titles resuming in March.

Following the events of Dark Nights: Death Metal, which wraps up Jan. 5, DC will hit pause on their regular monthly titles for two months. In January and February, they’ll release a bunch of titles under the “DC Future State” banner, giving readers a glimpse at the future of the DC Universe.

“In DC Future State, the Multiverse has been saved from the brink of destruction, but the triumph of DC’s heroes has shaken loose the very fabric of time and space,” reads their press release. “The final chapter of Dark Nights: Death Metal brings new life to DC’s Multiverse, kicking off this glimpse into the unwritten worlds of DC’s future.”

They plan to resume with their regular titles in March.

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‘King in Black’ expands its kingdom

Marvel announces several tie-in titles for the upcoming Venom-centric crossover.

Symbiotes are back in fashion this winter, as Marvel’s King in Black event stretches its gooey black tentacles out to characters from Daredevil to Spider-Gwen to Valkyrie.

In case you need a refresher, Knull is the god of the symbiotes, and in King in Black, he’ll be taking on not just Venom, but the Avengers, the X-Men, the Hulk and more, as he heads for Earth. Now Marvel has revealed details on what existing and new titles will help support the event.

Here’s a rundown of what to expect:

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Smash Pages Q&A: Pia Guerra

Comic artist turned political cartoonist Pia Guerra discusses how her work has changed, the current political climate and more.

Pia Guerra is best known among comic book readers as the artist and co-creator of Y: The Last Man, but in recent years she’s spent much of her time and energy writing and drawing gag cartoons and political cartoons for The New Yorker, The Nib and other publications. In 2018 a collection of her political comics titled Me the People was published by Image Comics.

Guerra is living in Vancouver and I reached out to ask about how her work has changed, inking and what she’s working on now.

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Can’t Wait for Comics | Rorschach gets his fingerprints all over this week’s comics

New comics arrive this week from Tom King, Jorge Fornes, Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Gerard Way, Kieron Gillen, Steve Orlando, Ben Sears and more.

We are back with a look at what’s arriving in comic shops, bookstores and on digital this week.

If you’re wondering what to get this week, check out a few recommendations below. ComicList has this week’s list of new comics arriving in stores, and the comiXology new releases page for what’s available digitally.

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What Are You Reading? | ‘Batman,’ ‘X of Swords,’ ‘Skin Horse’ and more

See what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately.

Welcome to What Are You Reading?, our weekly look at what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately — including two recent big events from the big two, and some fun webcomics.

Let us know what you read this week in the comments or on social media.

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Sunday Comics | ‘Thomas River,’ World Mental Health Day and Batman

Check out recent comics from Jacob Edgar, Doug Wagner and Brian Stelfreeze, Elise Schuenke and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

Thomas River is a new comic by artist Brian Stelfreeze and writer Doug Wagner, which is currently up on Kickstarter courtesy of 12-Gauge Comics. If you are curious for a taste of what to expect from the project, 12-Gauge has been releasing a daily comic strip by the creative team on social media during the campaign. You can find them in the 12-Gauage Twitter feed.

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