Slugfest | Martinbrough + Greene take Red Hood back to ‘The Hill’

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you. Hit the links for more information.

Shawn Martinbrough will return to write Jason Todd again next year with Red Hood: The Hill, a miniseries that follows his work on the character’s previous series. Sanford Greene will draw the six-issue series.

Here’s how DC describes the series:

In Gotham City’s early days, The Hill was one of Gotham City’s most dangerous neighborhoods, one that required the residents to band together to keep themselves safe when the police – and sometimes even Batman – wouldn’t.

Now, as the Hill finds itself gentrifying, old habits die hard as the vigilante known only as Strike works with her team to keep the town safe—but she’s not alone. Jason Todd, one of the Hill’s newest residents, is more than happy to don the visage of Red Hood to help Strike keep his new home safe. But a new villain is emerging from the shadows. Will Red Hood, Strike and the Hill’s small militia of vigilantes be able to keep their home safe? This series features a main cover by series artist Greene, with a variant cover by Tirso Cons.

Before the miniseries kicks off, DC will collect Red Hood #51 and Red Hood #52, also written by Martinbrough, with art by Tony Akins and Moritat. “As The Joker War ravages Gotham City, a new vigilante group has formed to protect their turf, and Red Hoof finds himself caught in the crossfire!” The zero issue features a new cover by Sanford Greene.

Red Hood: The Hill #0 will arrive in stores Feb. 6, followed by Red Hood: The Hill #1 on Feb. 13.

Dark Horse will bring Boscarato award winner Loud: Stories to Make Your Voice Heard to the U.S. next year. The anthology broaches the topic of gender-based violence and features work by the Italian artist collective “Moleste,” with a cover by Grazia La Padula.

Much like they’re doing with Rom and Micronauts, Marvel has announced a collection of their 1970s Godzilla title — Godzilla: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus. The 24-issue series featured the king of monsters taking on the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the Champions, Nick Fury and SHIELD, Devil Dinosaur and Red Ronin, among others, in stories by Doug Moench and Herb Trimpe.

The omnibus will feature a new cover by Junggeun Yoon, with variants featuring art from the original series by Trimpe. It comes out in October of next year.

Fantagraphics has revealed their 2024 summer catalog, which includes new books from Ari Richter, Seymour Chwast, Charles Burns, Benjamin Marra, Sole Otero and more. They’ve also announced new volumes collecting material from Carl Barks, Don Rosa, the EC library, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and the Atlas Comics Library.

Dark Horse Comics has announced John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando: Rise of the Sludge God, a prequel miniseries to the upcoming video game of the same name. Written by Michael Moreci with artwork by Alberto J. Albuquerque and letterer Nate Piekos, Rise of the Sludge God is set to begin in March 2024.

The Super Sons — Damian Wayne and Jonathan Kent, before DC went and aged them up — get some super villain counterparts in Sinister Sons by Super Sons writer Peter J. Tomasi and artist David Lafuente.

When the Lor-Zod, the son of General Zod, was cast off his adopted homeworld of New Kandor, he runs afoul of a kid on a mission, the son of Sinestro! Sinson is out to prove he’s got what it takes to live up to the family name of Sinestro, but all is not as it seems, and the sons’ journeys will take them into the heart of darkness in this sensational first issue! Tomasi and LaFuente are poised to deliver one of the most dynamic debuts of a duo in the history of the DC Universe!

The first issue features covers by Brad Walker and Andrew Hennessy, and variant covers by Dan Mora, Jamal Campbell, V. Ken Marion and Danny Miki, Ramon Perez, all shown above, plus a special acetate variant cover by Pete Woods:

The first issue arrives in stores in February.

In January, BOOM! Studios will kick off Pine and Merrimac, a new series by Kyle Starks and Fran Galán. It’s about a detective couple who open an agency in a quiet little town.

“Pine and Merrimac is about a happily married detective couple who find themselves in a case that gets worse and worse and then worse than you could imagine. I think fans of my Eisner and GLAAD nominated book I Hate This Place will fall in love with these characters the same way they did the character in that book. And getting to work with Fran Galán on it has been amazing. I firmly believe he’s about to be a huge name in this industry with his unbelievable work – if you aren’t familiar with him, his incredible art is worth the price of admission alone,” said Starks.   

Look for the first issue on Jan. 3.

Marvel’s new Ultimate line is sounding more interesting by the day, particularly the Spider-Man and X-Men titles. Marvel has revealed the cover to Ultimate Spider-Man #2 by series artist Marco Checchetto, and it features a look at the Ultimate Green Goblin. He’s definitely got a Sam Raimi/Toby Maguire/Spider-Man vibe going.

In January, Marvel will release Nao Fuji’s Marvel Unlimited title, Marvel Meow, in print. It features the cats of the Marvel Universe having all sorts of adventures. Yes, superheroes and cats! What could be better? It’ll come with three different covers, by Fuji, Doaly and Chrissie Zullo.

Variants!

As always, we’ll end with a look at some of the variant covers revealed in recent weeks. First, I laughed at Marvel’s “Ski Chalet” variants that will hit the slopes or whatever in December, but DC ups the ante with their “sweater weather” variants, which will arrive in February:

Marvel’s Disney100 variant covers were apparently enough of a hit that the publisher has announced more Marvel/Disney mash-up covers for next year, this time celebrating the 60th anniversary of both the X-Men and the Avengers. And they’ll run on various issue sof Amazing Spider-Man all throughout 2024, which .. doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Anyway, here are the first three that were announced; the first two feature artwork by Lorenzo Pastrovicchio, and the third is by Vitale Mangiatordi:

Marvel has also started rolling out more information on the previous announced Giant-Size comics line, including a look at these variant covers for each by Dave Bardin. They feature the rogues galleries of Spider-Man, Hulk the X-Men and Daredevil:

In addition to the DC Power anthology that they announced a few weeks back, DC will also celebrate Black History Month with a line of variant covers in February, all by Nikolas Draper-Ivey:

Marvel will also celebrate BHM with some variant covers by Ken Lashley in February, on their Star Wars titles:

Wolverine, who celebrates his 50th anniversary next year, will “claw his way” through Marvel history in a series of variant covers in January:

Marvel has been teasing about Rom, the spaceknight who once soared through the Marvel cosmos fighting dire wraiths and Galactus and such. They announced an omnibus of his Marvel adventures earlier this year, and now they’ve revealed a line of variant covers featuring Rom and some of his Marvel friends that’ll appear on various covers in January. So is he getting a new series or what, Marvel?

Skybound’s Energon Universe — made up of Transformers, Void Rivals and some upcoming G.I. Joe titles — has proven popular enough to get several printings for various issues. Here’s a look at the covers for many of them, which all land in stores Dec. 13:

Once upon a time, comic companies were big into trading cards; they were kind of like the variant covers of the 1990s. Wait, that didn’t come out right … anyway, Marvel pays tribute to Greg and Tim Hildebrandt, who created several lines of Marvel Masterpiece trading card sets, with a line of variant covers in January:

Speaking of the 1990s, Marvel celebrates the upcoming release of the X-Men ’97 animated program on Disney+ with a line of Marvel ’97 variant covers, which for the most part are a bit simpler and cartoony in their design:

Oni Press will release the first issue of the Cullen Bunn-written body horror comic Invasive next month, and it’ll feature covers by series artist Jesús Hervás, as well as Luana Vecchio, Jae Lee and Brian Level:

Marvel’s Stormbreakers variant cover programs continue into December and January; here’s a look at the December, which feature various Marvel characters ringing in 2024:

And here’s a look at the January covers, which celebrate 20 years of the Stormbreakers program:

Let’s jump into the lightning round with some more Marvel covers …

Here’s Jeehyung Lee’s Giant-Size Spider-Man #1 variant cover:

Greg Capullo draws a variant for Incredible Hulk #9:

Artgerm’s variant cover for January’s Fall of the House of X #1:

December’s G.O.D.S. #3 by Ron Lim:

Timeless #1 by InHyuk Lee:

and Derrick Chew’s Thunderbolts #1 featuring symbiote Black Widow: