Month: February 2024

Can’t Wait for Comics | Spawn reaches its 350th issue

Check out new comics and graphic novels arriving this week by Todd McFarlane, Carlo Barberi, Brett Booth, Jonathan Hickman, Marco Checchetto, Mirka Andolfo, Dan Mora, Mark Waid, Sarah Mai, Zac Thompson and more.

Welcome to Can’t Wait for Comics, your guide to what comics are arriving in comic book stores, bookstores and on digital.

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:

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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Casey + Fry’s ‘Blood Squad Seven’ kicks off in May

The new series will “explore ’90s superteam dynamics through a contemporary lens.”

Joe Casey and Paul Fry will dig through the bones of 1990s comics nostalgia in Blood Squad Seven, a new series that spins out of Casey’s recent work on Dutch.

“This might be the biggest thing I’ve ever done in my 20-plus years working with Image Comics,” Casey said. “To play in this sandbox is the most fun I’ve ever had writing in a shared universe. This series is much more than a modern deconstruction of what it meant to be a superhero in the ’90s. Paul and I are building on that past to find our way into the future.”

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Sunday Comics | ‘Scoob and Shag’ returns from hiatus

Check out webcomics by Diego Casasola, Jes and Cin Wibowo, Simon Roy, Bev Johnson and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best and most interesting comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

The crew behind the webcomic Scoob and Shag are back in action after taking a bit of a hiatus that encompassed most of last year. A lengthy new episode appeared on the last day of Dec. 31, with another new popping up earlier this month.

The strip started as a joke on Tumblr back in 2014, and has since grown into somewhat of an internet phenomenon. Created by Diego Casasola, aka Dingo, and the Misterie Krew, the story is … wow, how to describe it? It’s definitely a parody of Scooby Doo, or at least it started that way, but since then it has grown to encompass an endless cast of your favorite cartoons who are participating in an epic story that’s filled with action, intrigue, horror, comedy and some great character moments. Imagine if all the cartoons you watched as a kid were actually broadcasts from another planet …

It’s kinda insane, and is worth experiencing for yourself.

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‘Blood Hunt’ tie-ins bring a new team of Avengers, vampire Doctor Strange and more

The vampire apocalypse will rage through many Marvel titles this summer.

Marvel’s Blood Hunt event continues to spread in scope; in addition to the eight tie-in miniseries they announced last week, they’ve also announced the seven regular titles that will take part in Marvel’s big vampire apocalypse.

Given that the main Blood Hunt book is written by Jed MacKay, it’s not surprising to see Doctor Strange, Avengers and Vengeance of the Moon Knight will tie into the bigger story. There’s also three Spider-Family titles on the list, which is rounded out by the Fantastic Four.

Here are a few things you can expect from the tie-ins:

  • With the current Avengers roster involved in the main Blood Hunt title, the Avengers ongoing will instead focus on a ragtag team put together by the guy who invented ragtag teams of Avengers, Steve Rogers. This 2024 version of Cap’s kooky quartet is actually a quintet, as it’ll feature Quicksilver, Hawkeye, Hercules and Hazmat.
  • Blade will show up in a number of places during the crossover, including in Miles Morales: Spider-Man.
  • The Venom issues will see the resurrection of a former host of the symbiote Venom — Lee Price, who became Venom in 2016 but was killed off in 2019 after Eddie Brock took the suit back.
  • Black Panther isn’t the only hero to become a vampire, as Doctor Strange will also be infected.
  • But don’t worry, T’Challa and Stephen — Mr. Fantastic is on the case, as he searches for a cure for vampirism in Fantastic Four.

Six of the ongoing series tie-ins will run for multiple issues, with the only exception being Amazing Spider-Man, which just gets a single issue before spinning its story off into the Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt miniseries. You can find covers for the May issues, along with descriptions and creative teams, below.

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Image announces a sequel to Zdarsky, Anka + Wilson’s ‘The White Trees’

The trio of creators returns to the fantasy world they created with ‘The Whisper Queen,’ which begins in May.

Back in 2019, Chip Zdarsky, Kris Anka and Matt Wilson introduced the fantasy world of Blacksand in the two-issue Image Comics miniseries The White Trees. They’ll return to that world in The Whisper Queen, a three-issue miniseries that begins in May.

“The White Trees is the best project I’ve ever been involved in, thanks to the gorgeous work by Kris and Matt,” Zdarsky said. “We always knew there were more stories to tell in the world of Blacksand, so getting the gang back together for another wild, action-filled adventure was a no-brainer. It’s years in the making, and I hope everyone is ready to find out what happened next in The Whisper Queen!”

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Deadpool and Wolverine team up in ‘WWIII’ this May

Joe Kelly and Adam Kubert return to two characters they know very well in this three-issue miniseries.

Joe Kelly, one of the creators who helped define the character of Deadpool, and Adam Kubert, who has drawn more than his fair share of panels featuring Wolverine, will bring the two characters together in Deadpool & Wolverine: WWIII this May.

The announcement landing this week is perfectly timed, in a “Why didn’t he propose to her after the game?” kind of way, what with the new trailer that was released last Sunday.

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Taylor + Redondo’s final Nightwing arc begins in May

‘We wanted to show how high this flying Grayson could soar. Now, it’s time for him to fall.’

It’s been almost three years now since Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo took over Nightwing, taking an approach that wasn’t “Not Batman,” as my colleague Tom Bondurant put it when reviewing their first issue, but instead, was “Fun Batman.” I think the title has stuck to that ideal pretty well, and now we’ll see if they can stick the landing.

DC has announced that Nightwing #114 is the first of a five-part arc that will wrap up their run on the title. And thanks to the villain Heartless, it could be the end of Nightwing’s career as a superhero.

“When Bruno Redondo and I first took on this series, we felt it was the perfect time for a big Nightwing story,” Taylor said. “We wanted to show the world why Dick Grayson was an A-lister in our eyes. It was the right time for a charming, entertaining, positive force for good pushing back against corruption and greed. It was also time for Dick and Babs to get a puppy.”

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Juni Ba’s ‘Boy Wonder’ series will launch in May

The DC Black Label series will feature Damian Wayne teaming up with the other Robins.

Juni Ba, creator of the wonderful Djeliya from TKO Studios and Monkey Meat for Image Comics, will take Robin in a fun direction this May in Boy Wonder, a Black Label series from DC that kicks off in May.

Ba is joined by colorist Chris O’Halloran and letterer Aditya Bidikar on the five-issue series.

“There‘s a real drive here to capture some adventurous fun as well as heartfelt humanity,” Ba said on social media. “The story of a kid who was hurt a lot, raised wrong, and who has to learn to navigate conflicting sets of expectations from both his families, with fear of not being good enough for either.”

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It’s open season on dragons in Orlando + Huang’s ‘The Scale Trade’

Steve Orlando and Megan Huang hunt the dragon hunters in the new title coming from Magma Comix in May.

Now that we’re a couple weeks into the Year of the Dragon, Magma Comix has officially announced The Scale Trade, the new modern fantasy series by Steve Orlando and Megan Huang. Magma mentioned it last month when the publisher started unveiling their 2024 slate.

In any event, the new series sounds great — set in a modern world where dragons still exist but are high on the endangered species list, one man takes a stand against the poachers and corrupt governments that want their scales.

“The Scale Trade was absolutely influenced by the depravity of the illegal exotic meat trade, poaching, and specifically the street-level vigilance against the abuse of horses and sale of horse meat in a variety of parts of the country,” said Orlando. “We wanted to talk about these things, but also thrill and excite on an elevated scale (no pun intended). So we built a world where dragons were part of the animal kingdom, where THEY, these creatures that awe us, were also some of the most valuable commodities in the world. It’s a modern fantasy—not high fantasy or low sword and sorcery. At the end of the day it’s about the way we as a species interact with nature—concepts bigger and older than us—and how we tend to commodify life on this planet. At the core, The Scale Trade is about heroic animal rescue. A man and his dog… if his dog was a majestic flying lizard.”

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Tom Waltz makes his Marvel debut on ‘Wolverine: Blood Hunt’

The ‘Last Ronin’ writer joins artist Juan José Ryp on a tie-in miniseries for this summer’s ‘Blood Hunt’ event.

Wolverine’s recent troubles with the vampire nation will only get worse, as Tom Waltz and Juan José Ryp send him head first into Marvel’s Blood Hunt event this summer.

Wolverine: Blood Hunt will “conclude Logan’s private war against the vampire nation,” which has been a running plot thread in Benjamin Percy’s work on the ongoing Wolverine title.

The miniseries marks the Marvel debut for Waltz, the co-writer of the white-hot Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin.

“I’ve spent much of my career writing about iconic mutants, so having my Marvel debut be a chance to put ‘the best there is’ through a vampiric bloodstorm in Wolverine: Blood Hunt is an absolute thrill of a lifetime,” Waltz said. “It’s made even better by getting to do it alongside the amazingly talented Juan José Ryp, top-notch colorist GURU-eFX, and stellar editors Mark Basso and Drew Baumgartner! Blood, bullets, claws, and fangs—nothing gets held back in our four-issue gauntlet of gore!”

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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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