Month: March 2021

‘Heroes Reborn’ will wrap up in ‘Heroes Return’ #1

The Avengers reassemble to battle the Squadron Supreme in the finale of the event.

Marvel has announced that their upcoming Heroes Reborn event will come to an end in June with Heroes Return #1, where the reassembled Avengers will battle the Squadron Supreme in “a glorious Super Hero slugfest that will shake the Marvel Universe to its core.”

The name of the one-shot is appropriate, as readers of the 1990s Heroes Reborn event may remember. In 1996, Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee took over four Marvel titles — Avengers, Captain America, Iron Man and Fantastic Four — and moved these characters to an alternate Earth/timeline. Eventually the heroes were “rescued” from this other Earth in a miniseries titled Heroes Reborn: The Return. And when each of the four titles were relaunched as part of the regular Marvel continuity, it was under the banner “Heroes Return.”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Justin Jordan on ‘Breaklands’

The writer of ‘Urban Animals,’ ‘Luther Strode’ and many other comics discusses the second season of the comiXology title, world-building, writing a digital title and more.

Justin Jordan is the writer behind comics series like The Strange Talent of Luther Strode, Dead Body Road, Reaver, Spread, Strayer and many others. He writes the Webtoon series Urban Animals, which is wrapping up its third season now. He wrote the upcoming Summoner’s War: Legacy comic launching in April.

Meanwhile the second season of his series with artist Tyasseta, Breaklands, is coming out on comiXology now, with the fifth and final issue out March 23. The first season has just been collected into a trade collection from Dark Horse Comics.

We spoke about the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction, his approach to world-building, writing for digital vs. print, and more.

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DC announces one-shot anthology to celebrate Pride Month

The one-shot will feature stories about Batwoman, Poison Ivy & Harley Quinn, Midnighter, Dreamer and more.

DC today announced DC Pride, a one-shot anthology featuring stories about LGBTQIA+ characters that will arrive during Pride Month. They also announced a series of Pride-themed variant covers for several of their titles, including the just-announced Crush & Lobo series.

The one-shot will also feature the comics debut of Dreamer, a trans woman character who appears on The CW’s Supergirl program. The story is written by Nicole Maines, who plays Dreamer on the show.

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DC announces ‘Crush & Lobo’ miniseries

Mariko Tamaki and Amancay Nahuelpan bring together Lobo and Crush for some family bonding time.

DC Comics has announced Crush & Lobo, a new eight-issue miniseries written by Mariko Tamaki with art by Amancay Nahuelpan. The series will feature the Main Man and his daughter, Crush, spinning out of her adventures in Teen Titans.

The series will debut during Pride Month, and is one of several DC titles featuring a Pride Month variant cover.

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Starks + Schweizer head to Hollywood for ‘The Six Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton’

The new ‘Whodunnit?’ series starts in June.

Six former sidekicks of a terrible TV will team to solve his murder in The Six Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton, by Kyle Starks and Chris Schweizer, who previously worked together on Mars Attacks! The new series from Image Comics/Skybound will start in June.

“I’m so excited to be working with Skybound again on another great action-comedy series,” said Starks. “This time I get to do it with my best friend, America’s best kept cartoonist secret and three-time Eisner nominee Chris Schweizer. Chris came to me and suggested the remarkable title which we crafted into the tale of six former kid TV sidekicks trying to solve the murder of their awful human TV mentor. Sort of like Knives Out meets Once Upon A Time In Hollywood? If there are two things I love to write, it’s charming dummies and action, and this book is full of both plus rising stakes, escalating nonsense and a lot of fun. Comics should be fun, so we made a fun one!”

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X-Men go ‘Planet Size’ for new team reveal

Gerry Duggan and Pepe Larraz create a new special that ties into the ‘Hellfire Gala’ storyline that will run through the X-Men titles.

Marvel has been teasing an upcoming Hellfire Gala, both in the X-Men line of comics and through their own promotional channels — it’s where we’re supposed to learn who will be on the new X-Men team that Cyclops and Jean Grey are putting together, along with the results of the fan vote for one of the members.

This gala will run through 12 of the X-titles — that’s quite a party! — and will also get a special of its own, titled Planet Size X-Men. Gerry Duggan and Pepe Larraz are working on this double-sized issue.

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‘Jupiter’s Legacy: Requiem’ expands on the upcoming Netflix series

Mark Millar and Tommy Lee Edwards team up for the third and final Jupiter’s Legacy series.

Image Comics has announced a new Jupiter’s Legacy maxi-series, titled Jupiter’s Legacy: Requiem. The series, written by series co-creator Mark Millar and drawn by Tommy Lee Edwards, will pick up on plot points from the upcoming Netflix adaptation of the comic.

The new series also follows the previous two Jupiter’s Legacy comics, which focused on the present and the past, respectively.

“We’ve done the past, we’ve done the present and Requiem takes us into the future to finish this book epic tale with a 12-issue series starting in June,” Millar told The Hollywood Reporter. “The show launched May 7, so people will be licking their lips to see what happens next.”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Tim Foley on adapting Dan Rather’s ‘What Unites Us’ into comics

The accomplished illustrator discusses working on his first graphic novel for First Second’s World Citizen Comics imprint.

Tim Foley has had a long, accomplished career as an illustrator for a wide range of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and in books like the Who Was and What Was book series for Penguin Young Readers. But this year brings his first graphic novel.

For First Second Book’s World Citizen Comics imprint, Foley adapted the book What Unites Us by Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner. The book of essays explored what Rather saw as what it means to love this country, the values that shaped it and the role of citizens. Foley is far from a beginning artist, but to make a long-form comic like this is a unique challenge, one that he makes look easy. He was kind enough to take the time to talk about What Unites Us, how he worked and wanting to make more comics.

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Can’t Wait for Comics | ‘Non-Stop Spider-Man,’ ‘The Joker’ and more

See what comics and graphic novels arrive this week in a comic shop near you.

Welcome to Can’t Wait for Comics, your guide each week to what comics are arriving in comic book stores, bookstores and on digital. This week DC continues the rollout of their Infinite Frontier publishing initiative, while two Marvel books delayed by the pandemic finally arrive in comic shops.

Check out a few highlights below, or visit ComicList for this week’s full list of new comics arriving in stores, and the comiXology new releases page for what’s available digitally.

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Matthew Dow Smith launches ‘Doctor Secret’ on Twitter

The creator launches his fourth and final free, serialized comic on social media, keeping a promise he made when the pandemic started.

Matthew Dow Smith has spent almost a full year posting his own comics to Twitter, and he’s not stopping now — this week he launches Doctor Secret, a three-parter that will wrap up a year’s worth of comics posted to social media.

Smith started posting comics the same week that Diamond Comics Distributors announced their pandemic-related shutdown. He started with the autobiographical My Life as Riley and continuing on with the serialized Johnny Chaos, Arch Nemesis and Amelia Shadows, the latter just wrapping up last week.

“I gave myself one year to see what would happen, hoping that the weekly comics would at least keep my career alive until the industry figured out a path forward, while secretly hoping it might lead to me finally breaking through as a writer as well as an artist,” Smith wrote on Twitter.

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What Are You Reading? | ‘Avengers,’ ‘Crime Syndicate,’ ‘Power Pack’ 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 checking off their “to read” list lately. Let us know what you read this week in the comments or on social media.

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Mail Call | Momoko’s ‘Demon Days’ continues in June

Plus: News from BOOM! Studios, Dark Horse and more!

Mail Call is a roundup of the announcements we’ve received from comics publishers in our mailboxes recently that we haven’t already covered. Hit the links for more information.

The first issue of Peach Momoko’s Demon Days arrived last Wednesday, and Marvel took the opportunity to announce the second issue’s title and focus: Demon Days: Mariko.

Mariko is the former fiancée of Wolverine; she was the daughter of a Yakuza boss and eventually took over his duties before dying back in the early 1990s. The issue will also introduce Nightcrawler and Black Widow into this alternate reality Momoko has created.

“The first issue of Demon Days starts off in feudal Japan with Sai (Psylocke)… but the next issue will be completely different. Different timeline, different characters (even the main character is changing), different tone to the story. But it is still a connecting story,” Momoko said.

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