Sunday Comics | Happy Halloween!

Check out spooky webcomics by Janie Lee, Grant Snider, Sarah Hopkins 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.

It’s my last legal day of the year to share spooky things with the universe, so I thought I’d dedicate this edition of Sunday Comics to all things Halloween. Or, to be more specific, to Halloween-themed webcomics, whether they provide tricks, treats or just plain old creeps.

Let’s start with Camp Counselor Jason, a series of comics by Junkmix, aka Janie Lee, that features a different take on Jason Voorhees and other horror icons. In Jason’s case, the Cap Creek Lake murder machine from the Friday the 13th movies isn’t the maniac you find in the movies — instead, he “becomes a camp counselor to make sure no kids ever drown on his watch.”

He’s still got his machete and hockey mask, though.

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A new Iron Fist will debut in February

A new character will inherit the mantle from a powerless Danny Rand.

Marvel has announced that Danny Rand, who lost his powers in the excellent Heart of the Dragon miniseries, will pass on the mantle of Iron Fist to a new hero next year.

Iron Fist by Alyssa Wong and Michael YG will debut in February, and the five-issue miniseries will show the “hero’s journey” of the new Iron Fist, whose idnetity Marvel is keeping under wraps.

“It’s an incredible honor to introduce a new Iron Fist to the Marvel Universe. I’m excited to delve into the comic’s rich mythos and build on it. What does it mean for someone to take up the mantle of the Iron Fist right now, today? As a newcomer, how does one interact with legacy, and how does one honor it while forging a new path?” Wong told Marvel.com.

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Twitter schools San Francisco MOMA on Roy Lichtenstein

Happy birthday to the artist/swiper who copied comics panels by Russ Heath, Jack Kirby and many others.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SF MOMA, took to Twitter earlier this week to wish a happy birthday to Roy Lichtenstein, the pop artist who came to fame in the 1960s and passed away in 1997.

Lichtenstein is notorious in comics circles, and not in a good way. Many of his paintings were copies of comic book panels by artists like Jack Kirby, Russ Heath and Irv Novick, and rarely did he credit the original artists, nor were they compensated. As such, many comic artists and fans have called him a copycat at best and a plagiarist at worst. (Well, maybe not “at worst;” I’m sure much has probably been said about him that’s worse than that).

SF MOMA, however, seems to have a different opinion. In their description on social media, they said: “Lichtenstein transferred the clichéd comic-book compositions to the canvas with a projector and simplified them; the resulting paintings mimic the appearance of four-color printing, despite being meticulously handmade.”

“Clichéd comic-book compositions.” Yep, they really tweeted that out.

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Fund Me Thursday | Headless Shakespeare Press kickstarts their 2022 projects

Craig Hurd-McKenney, Rick Geary and more contribute to the 2022 titles.

Headless Shakespeare Press, the imprint run by Craig Hurd-McKenney, is currently crowdsourcing funds to publish their 2022 line-up. You can visit Kickstarter to back them.

With this Kickstarter, Hurd-McKenney is hoping to fund the publication of four different projects — three he’s written, along with one written and drawn by Rick Geary (A Treasury of Victorian Murder).

Smash Pages’ Alex Dueben spoke with Hurd-McKenney about his return to publishing a few years back. Since then, he’s published several chapters of Some Strange Disturbances, a supernatural Victorian story by Hurd-McKenney, Gervasio and Carlos Aon, as well as the final chapter of the Xeric Grant-funded The Brontes: Infernal Angria drawn by Geary.

Here’s a look at the four projects:

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Percy + Smith are planning a new road trip for ‘Ghost Rider’

The new series launches in February.

Marvel has announced that Johnny Blaze will ride again as Ghost Rider in a new series by Benjamin Percy and Cory Smith.

“I’m a horror head. I grew up reading Stephen King, watching John Carpenter and listening to Black Sabbath, and when it came to comics, I always reached first for the dark and weird which means I read a hell of a lot of Ghost Rider. That flaming skull. That spiked leather jacket. That monstrous bike coughing out clouds of sulfurous exhaust. To this day, the sight of the character blazing along a midnight highway makes my heart rev like a four-stroke engine,” Percy told Marvel.com.

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Can’t Wait for Comics | Zdarsky + Loo pull an ‘All-Nighter’

Check out new comics arriving this week from Chip Zdarsky, Jason Loo, Patrick Sparrow, Scott Snyder, Christos Gage, Barndon Thomas and more.

Welcome to our second Can’t Wait for Comics for this week, your guide to what comics are arriving in comic book stores, bookstores and on digital. Halloween week brings an extra-large helping of horror and Halloween-themed comics and graphic novels, so I broke them out into their own separate post yesterday. This post will spotlight some of their not-so-scary brethren that can also be found on shelves this week.

You can visit Diamond’s website for this week’s almost complete list of new comics arriving in stores. The Lunar Distribution home page has DC’s releases and the comiXology new releases page for what’s available digitally.

I should also add that the list of what is actually arriving at your local shop can vary from what’s on anyone’s official website for a myriad of reasons — so always check with your comics retailer for the final word on availability.

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Spider-Man goes from ‘Non-Stop’ to ‘Savage’ in a new miniseries

Joe Kelly and Gerardo Sandoval present a monstrous look at Spider-Man next year.

Joe Kelly and Chris Bachalo’s adrenaline-fueled Non-Stop Spider-Man ended up being, um, not so non-stop, as it ended on a bit of a cliffhanger. But now Marvel has revealed where you can read the next chapter — in the pages of Savage Spider-Man, a miniseries kicking off in February.

The series finds Peter Parker once again mutating into something more monstrous, in a story told by Kelly and artist Gerardo Sandoval.

“You may think you’ve seen a monstrous or vicious Spider-Man before, but never like this,” Spider-Man Editor Nick Lowe told Marvel.com. “This book is so intense that you’re going to need to put it down between pages to get your breath back.”

You’ve been warned! Make sure you’re hydrated as well before you start reading it as well, just in case..

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Allred + Milligan’s ‘X-Cellent’ debuts in February

The X-Statix team returns to the Marvel universe to confront a new team of mutants taking their spotlight.

The creative team behind one of Marvel’s most creative and fun comics from the early 2000s will reunite in February for The X-Cellent.

Writer Peter Milligan and artists Michael and Laura Allred, whose run on X-Force and X-Statix introduced us to Doop, Anarchist, Mister Sensitive, Vivisector, U-Go Girl, Dead Girl and many others (most of whom ended up dead), will return to Marvel for the new series.

“I’m thoroughly X-Statix to be working with Mike and Laura Allred again,” Milligan told Marvel.com. “And it’s been truly X-CELLENT to discover that we’ve lost none of our alchemical fizz in conjuring up this new comic, this new title, this new beginning: The X-Cellent!”

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Can’t Wait for Comics | Prepare for Halloween with a look at this week’s spooky comics

Check out new comics and graphic novels coming out this week by James Tynion IV, Matthew Rosenberg, Eddy Barrows, Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale, Mike Mignola and more.

Welcome to Can’t Wait for Comics, your guide to what comics are arriving in comic book stores, bookstores and on digital this week. And this week things get spookier than normal — so spooky, in fact, with so many horror-themed comics, that I’m doing two editions of Can’t Wait for Wednesday — this super scary one and a regular, not-so-scary one coming tomorrow.

Check out the spin-tingling highlights below, or visit Diamond’s website for this week’s almost complete list of new comics arriving in stores. You can visit Lunar Distribution’s home page to see DC’s releases and the comiXology new releases page for what’s available digitally.

I should also add that the list of what is actually arriving at your local shop can vary from what’s on anyone’s official website for a myriad of reasons — so always check with your comics retailer for the final word on availability.

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Image will publish Juni Ba’s ‘Monkey Meat’

The five-issue miniseries begins in January.

Juni Ba, creator of the wonderful Djeliya from TKO Studios, will return to shelves in January with Monkey Meat, a five-issue-miniseries coming from Image Comics.

The five issues will feature “connected one-shot stories” set in a new fantasy setting — an island run by the Monkey Meat Company.

Monkey Meat is a passion project born of wanting for us all to poke fun at how dystopian the world is,” said Ba. “It’s fun and colorful but most of all aims to be cathartic, and bring you great cartooning!”

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New graphic novel will cover NY State Senator Julia Salazar’s first year in office

The 27-year-old democratic socialist was the youngest woman ever elected to New York’s state senate.

Following in the (large) footprints left by March and They Called Us Enemy, Top Shelf will publish Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator by Sofia Warren next year.

The graphic novel will chronicle Warren’s time with Julia Salazar, the 27-year-old democratic socialist who became the youngest woman to ever be elected to New York’s state senate in 2018. Warren was embedded with Salazar’s staff during her first year in office.

“So much of this experience was a surprise to me,” said Warren, “that for their entire first legislative session, Julia and her staff let me be in the room; that ‘the room’ was just as often a food court, or a senior center, or a march in the middle of a blizzard; that they were as open with me about their frustrations as they were about their victories; and that I — an introverted, cynical millennial living through the Trump presidency — could leave the experience so motivated and inspired. I hope that readers leave this book feeling the same.”

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Mad Cave announces their 2021 talent search winners

Eight new creators have been chosen by the publisher in their fourth annual competition.

Mad Cave Studios has announced the winners of their annual talent search competition, which is going on four years now. The winners were announced on Friday during Mad Cave Studios Showcase 4.0, which was broadcast on Twitch.

“We received a wealth of submissions from many talented creators and regrettably could only select a few to help usher in the next phase of Mad Cave,” Mad Cave said in the their statement announcing the winners. “The Mad Cave Studios Talent Search has created a supportive community of dedicated comic book lovers that leaves us feeling excited for the future of the medium, and we want to thank each creator who put everything they have into their respective submission.”

Previous winners of the competition include Shane Connery Volk and David Hazan, who went on to create the Mad Cave title Nottingham. A sequel has been announced for next year. The winners of the 2020 competition helped create the upcoming Grimm Tales From the Cave, a horror anthology that arrives in stores next week.

Here are the eight creators who won, who I’m sure you’ll be hearing about more in the future:

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