Day: February 15, 2024

Spidey hunts for Morbius in ‘Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt’

Spider-Man and his fanged frenemy star in a ‘Blood Hunt’ tie-in series by Justina Ireland and Marcelo Ferreira.

Morbius the Living Vampire, Spider-Man’s sometimes enemy, sometimes ally, may be the only hope Marvel’s heroes have in saving the world from the vampiric apocalypse in Blood Hunt.

We ‘ll find out for sure in Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt, one of eight tie-in miniseries that will arrive in May. Justina Ireland and Marcelo Ferreira will send Spider-Man, Misty Knight and the Lizard on a quest to find Morbius.

“Getting to write Morbius, The Living Vampire, has been a lot of fun,” Ireland said. “He’s always been a delightful foil to Spider-Man and other heroes of the Marvel Universe, and I hope I can capture the determination to change one’s fate that I’ve always loved about the character. Well, that and the brooding.”

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Smash Pages Q&A | ‘The Omega Eleven’ creators James Aquilone + Zac Atkinson

The duo are crowdfunding their latest collaboration, a comic about history’s greatest thieves attempting to steal the Philosopher’s Stone from Merlin.

What do you do when you need to steal a powerful artifact from history’s greatest wizard? Assemble a team of history’s greatest thieves, of course. That’s the premise behind The Omega Eleven, a five-issue series by Bram Stoker Award-winning writer James Aquilone and Young Justice and Teen Titans artist Zac Atkinson.

The story follows time traveler Doctor Omega and his companion Jack Dawkins, aka The Artful Dodger, as they recruit a team to travel to Camelot to steal the Philosopher’s Stone from Merlin. 

The campaign to fund the first issue of The Omega Eleven is live on Kickstarter, where it has already met its funding goal. This isn’t Aquilone’s first crowdfunding rodeo — through his publishing company Monstrous Books, he’s funded projects like the Kolchak: The Night Stalker 50th anniversary graphic novel, the prose collection Dead Detectives Society and the first issue of the pulp/horror-themed Monstrous Magazine. A new, second issue of Monstrous is a reward in this current campaign.

Aquilone was kind enough to answer my questions, and even pulled in Atkinson on some of them as well.

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Thomas + Matthews team for the family crime drama ‘Mugshots’

The first issue of the miniseries arrives in May from Mad Cave Studios.

Writer Jordan Thomas and artist Chris Matthews will team up on Mugshots, a new miniseries coming from Mad Cave Studios in May. They’re joined by letterer by Lucas Gattoni on a crime series with a distinctly English flair.

Set in Brighton, the story starts with a kidnapping and soon devolves into “family trauma, betrayal, murder and revenge.”

“Mugshots is an incredibly personal story for me. It’s set around where I grew up, contains experiences I’ve had and features characters based on people I’ve known, and it’s a collaboration with one of my best friends whom I’ve known since we were 11-years-old,” said Thomas. “Mainstream U.S. comics are full of crime stories set in the States but not many set in England by English creators, so I’m excited to see the reaction to this series we’ve poured our hearts and souls into and so happy that Mad Cave are the publisher putting the book out as they never put any restraints on what we wanted to do. It’s a tough, violent, complex, and sometimes funny 36-page per issue 4-parter – not many publishers out there would let you do that. It’s gonna be wild.”

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Rest in peace, Paul Neary

The former editor-in-chief of Marvel UK and veteran artist passed away on Feb. 10 after a long illness.

Paul Neary, the former Marvel UK editor-in-chief and artist of Captain America, Excalibur, The Ultimates and more, has passed away at the age of 74. Neary died of a long illness on Feb. 10, as reported by his longtime colleague Alan Davis and shared by Paul Levitz.

“In a career of more than 50 years Paul earned international respect and recognition in numerous roles within the comic book industry,” Davis shared. “Paul could write, pencil, ink, colour, letter and edit. Skills he learned from studying the medium with an academic zeal.”

Neary was born in Bournemouth, England in 1949, and would attend college at Leeds University. According to Davis, Neary traveled to New York over his first summer at university to try and break into the comics industry.

“Comics were an enthusiastic hobby for Paul when he moved to Leeds University to study for a degree in Metallurgy, but in his first summer break Paul travelled to New York, bluffed his way into Jim Warren’s office, and secured his first professional work on Eerie magazine,” Davis said.

Neary’s work would regularly appear in Eerie, where he drew the “Hunter” series, which was about a half-breed warrior who fights for survival on a weird, irradiated alternate Earth.

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