Month: December 2021

Can’t Wait for Comics | A cold winter’s comics list

New comics arrive this week from Peach Momoko, Becky Cloonan, Michael Conrad, Jorge Corona, Stephen DeKnight 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. It feels like a lighter week than usual, unless you’re a Tom King fan — then DC has you covered.

I’ve pulled out some of the highlights below, but for the complete list of everything you might find at your local comic shop and on digital this week, you’ll want to check out one or more of the following:

Also, as a reminder, things can change and what you find on the above lists may differ from what’s actually arriving in your local shop. So always check with your comics retailer for the final word on availability.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Matt Madden talks ‘Ex Libris’

The writer, artist, editor and teacher shares more about his latest, postmodern graphic novel from Uncivilized Books.

Matt Madden has been an acclaimed artist, not to mention editor, translator and teacher, for years. His 2005 book 99 Ways to Tell a Story is not just a great book about comics, but a great book about storytelling and art. In the years since, Madden co-wrote two textbooks with his wife Jessica Abel, Drawing Words and Writing Pictures and Mastering Comics, in addition to many other projects.

His new graphic novel Ex Libris is his best work to date. As visually stunning as it is intellectually dynamic, the book tells the story of a character who walks into a room and proceeds to open the books on a shelf, all of which are comics, each of which is a very different kind of story drawn in a different style. Madden is very consciously responding to work like Italo Calvino and Julio Cortázar, but doing so in a way that its uniquely comics and doing so in a way that is uniquely his own.

Other cartoonists might be able to work in as many styles and approaches as Madden is able to do here, but he’s not interested in simply drawing differently, but in crafting a narrative and in finding ways to use that style in the service of a larger more complicated story. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give Ex Libris is that I reread the book shortly after finishing it for the sheer pleasure of enjoying how every element came together.

Madden was kind enough to talk recently about the importance of play, the influences on his work, and how the four years he spent in Angoulême were pivotal to his career and finding his place in comics.

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Mail Call | Marvel announces FCBD titles, partnership with TASCHEN

Today’s round-up includes news from Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse and more.

Marvel will publish three Free Comic Book Day titles in 2022, the publisher announced last week.

The titles include Avengers/X-Men, which will “lay the groundwork for an event that will erupt across the Marvel Universe in 2022,” as well as a Spider-Man/Venom title for the second year in row and Marvel’s Voices, the anthology that features diverse creators and characters. It will include both new and previously released material.

Free Comic Book Day is scheduled for May 7, 2022.

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Deathstroke goes to war with Talia al Ghul in ‘Shadow War’

The crossover series will run through the Joshua Williamson-written titles ‘Deathstroke Inc.,’ ‘Robin’ and ‘Batman.’

Several of the plots hatched by Joshua Williamson over the last year will come to a head next March in Shadow War, a DC Comics event that will run through issues of Batman, Deathstroke Inc. and Robin.

The crossover will begin in Shadow War Alpha #1, by Williamson and Viktor Bogdanovic. The 48-page issue will set up the story, which finds Deathstroke committing “an unthinkable act” that angers Talia al Ghul and the League of Shadows. As Deathstroke, Inc. and the League of Shadows go to war, Batman and Robin seek to bring Deathstroke to justice.

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Captain Carter leaps off of Disney+ and into a comic

Jamie McKelvie and Marika Cresta bring the hero from the screen to the comic page — and from WWII to the present day.

Marvel has recruited an impressive creative team to transition a popular character from the Disney+ What If? TV series into comics.

Jamie McKelvie, who we know primarily as the artist of comics like Young Avengers, The Wicked + The Divine and Phonogram, will exercise his equally impressive writing chops (as readers of his underrated Suburban Glamour series can attest) on Captain Carter. He’ll be joined by the talented Marika Cresta, whose work you might know from Doctor Aphra, Power Pack and the wonderful Forgotten Home from comiXology Originals.

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Cornell + Yeowell combine fantasy with rom com in ‘Three Little Wishes’

Legendary Comics announces a new project about fairies, wishes and winning back your ex.

Legendary Comics revealed a new graphic novel during a panel at C2E2 today — Three Little Wishes, by writer Paul Cornell (who also revealed the news on his blog) and artist Steven Yeowell. They’ll be joined by Pippa Bowland on colors and Simon Bowland on letters.

According to the description, the fantasy rom com original graphic novel, scheduled to arrive next summer, “follows a contract lawyer, who upon discovering a fairy that grants three wishes, attempts to fix the world.”

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‘Naomi’ returns for a second miniseries from DC Comics

Brian Michael Bendis, David F. Walker and Jamal Campbell reunite for ‘Naomi: Season 2.’

Brian Michael Bendis, David F. Walker and Jamal Campbell will continue to explore the mysteries behind their creation Naomi as the Justice League member leaps into her second solo series next year.

Naomi: Season 2 will run for six issues starting in March and will feature some of Naomi’s new friends since she joined the League — including Black Adam and Superman. DC also promises the return of the villainous Zumbado from her first series.

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Orlando + Carlini will relaunch ‘Marauders’ in March

Following his debut on Marauders Annual in January, Steve Orlando will write his first ongoing series for Marvel.

Steve Orlando and Eleonora Carlini will take the helm of Marauders in March, as Marvel relaunches the title with a new first issue, a new creative team and a new cast.

Orlando’s turn as captain of this particular ship will actually start in January, with Marauders Annual #1, which introduces the new team. The relaunch is part of Marvel’s bigger Destiny of X initiative, as the Krakoan age of the X-Men continues without its primary architect, Jonathan Hickman.

“Taking the helm of Marauders is easily the most exciting moment of my career, especially when it’s my first-ever ongoing not just on Krakoa, but at Marvel in general,” Orlando told Marvel.com. “Exploding out of the team’s already-amazing adventures as part of Hellfire Trading, Captain Pryde’s new crew of Marauders will stop at nothing to bring endangered mutants to safety—to always go where they’re needed, not where they’re wanted. To mutant rescue, wherever it calls them!”

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Fábio Moon + Gabriel Bá create an ‘I Hate Fairyland’ comic for Skottie Young

Young released the unannounced comic on Substack today.

When Skottie Young announced he would release new I Hate Fairyland comics via his Substack newsletter earlier this year, he mentioned several creators he was working with on the stories — but he didn’t mention Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá.

But today Young posted a story by the creative team behind Daytripper and Two Brothers, featuring Gert and the gang, as part of his The Unbelievable, Unfortunately Mostly Unreadable and Nearly Unpublishable Untold Tales of I Hate Fairyland series of stories by different creators.

“After a few years away from Gert and the gang, I was starting to miss the energy of I Hate Fairyland and the stories I could tell only in that universe,” Young said in a press release. “I thought it was time to bring it back, but not only continue Gert’s ongoing saga, but also introduce short stories that fill in the many gaps in all the years she’s been in Fairyland. So I decided to reach out to some of my awesome cartoonist pals and invite them to join in on the fun.” 

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Ahoy expands the ‘Wrong Earth’ multiverse with one-shots by Simone, Waid + more

‘The Wrong Earth: Trapped On Teen Planet’ will kick off the series of one-shots next March.

Mark Russell, Gail Simone, Mark Waid and more will help expand the multiverse introduced in The Wrong Earth, the humorous superhero comic created by Tom Peyer and Jamal Igle. Publisher Ahoy Comics has announced five one-shots by five different creative teams that will arrive next year.

If you aren’t familiar with The Wrong Earth, imagine Adam West Batman and the Batman in The Dark Knight Returns switching worlds. Ahoy’s title featured the campy Dragonflyman of Earth Alpha switching places with the gritty Dragonfly of Earth Omega, resulting in chaos, a pretty clever comics miniseries and subsequent sequels.

And now imagine that multiverse getting bigger.

“Words will be written, words will be deleted, and nothing will ever be the same,” Peyer said. “This is Crisis on Infinite Earths, minus the line-wide consequences that made it interesting. This is Secret Wars without toys. This is the kind of epic, superheroic storytelling that publishers and CFOs love, where the tail of wealth-enhancing variant covers wags the dog of art.” 

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Smash Pages Q&A | David Hajdu talks ‘A Revolution in Three Acts’

The music critic and writer discusses his new graphic novel that explores the lives and work of three of vaudeville’s biggest stars.

David Hajdu is an an acclaimed critic who’s best known as a music writer in magazines like Rolling Stone and The New Republic, Entertainment Weekly and The New York Review of Books, and in books like Lush Life and Positively 4th Street. Hajdu is also one of the great writers about comics.

His 2008 book The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America is simply one of the best books written about comics. In his book Heroes and Villains, in between articles and essays about Billy Eckstein and Dinah Washington, Mos Def and Joni Mitchell, were essays about Joe Sacco and Dan Clowes, Jules Feiffer and Marjane Satrapi.

Hajdu is currently the music editor at The Nation magazine and in the past two years he’s written two books very different from his previous work. 2020’s Adrienne Geffel was a novel written in the form of an oral history about an avant garde musician in 1980’s New York City. His new book is a graphic novel that Hajdu made in collaboration with his friend the artist John Carey. A Revolution in Three Acts: The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, Julian Eltinge looks at three of vaudeville’s biggest stars and the ways that their work was not what we typically think of vaudeville. Instead they were pushing boundaries and defying genres and expectations in ways that make them very modern. We recently spoke about the book and his work and trying to focus on creative work.

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AfterShock officially announces ‘We Live’ sequel ‘Age of the Palladions’

The new series launches next March with two different first issues.

Brothers Inaki and Roy Miranda will return to the universe they created in the hit miniseries We Live next year, as the Age of the Palladions picks up six years after the original series.

AfterShock will actually release two version of the first issue, a “Black” version and a “White” version, with their own distinct previews and slightly different synopses.

“The story begins six years after the appearance of the Palladions in Megalopolis 9,” Co-writer Roy Miranda said. “After an ephemeral time of prosperity, the city faces a new critical situation.We are in the middle of a very delicate moment where a decision will have to be made for the survival of the population. It’s a story that deepens in the concept of heroism; a kind of heroism that few can assume when it needs to be built from a place of defeat.The readers that have followed us since the first arc will see how the universe of We Live has grown along with the characters. Especially our main characters, who have grown physically, but mostly psychologically.” 

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