Day: April 13, 2026

Tom Taylor + Otto Schmidt get medieval again with ‘Dark Knights of Steel II’

The sequel to the DC Elseworlds fantasy saga brings a new war, a hidden traitor and a threat rising from beneath the waves.

DC has released details on Dark Knights of Steel II, a sequel to Tom Taylor and Otto Schmidt’s high-fantasy reimagining of the DC Universe. The 12-issue series will kick off on July 15.

The series features colors by Arif Prianto and letters by Wes Abbott, with a main cover by Yasmine Putri. The first issue will be followed on July 22 by Dark Knights of Steel II Special: Heir to the Sea #1, a 48-page one-shot collecting the Aquaman origin story first serialized in Dark Knights of Steel: Allwinter.

“I was raised on comic books and fantasy novels,” Taylor said. “From as early as I can remember, my mind has been filled with universes of great heroes standing against corrupting evil and injustice. From the Discworld to the DCU, I have been thrilled by the epics and heroism of J.R.R. Tolkien and Mark Waid, by the humor and heart of Gail Simone, Joe Kelly and Terry Pratchett, by the jaw-dropping character arcs of Garth Ennis and Robin Hobb.”

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The X-Men + Fantastic Four team up to save mankind from becoming mutants in ‘DNX’

Marvel’s next big X-Men event by Jed MacKay and Federico Vicentini begins in September.

Marvel has announced their next big mutant event, following the poorly received Age of Revelation event late last year. DNX, which will kick off in September, will spring from the pages of Revelation as Cyclops tries to prevent the Age of Revelation from happening, while the Chairman (aka an evil version of the Beast) wants to make it all come true. Their respective factions will clash, and the X-Men will reach out to the Fantastic Four for help.

Current X-Men scribe Jed MacKay will work with artist Federico Vicentini to bring DNX to life.

“DNX is the next big milestone event of our X-Men run,” MacKay said. “Age of Revelation showed the future, and DNX shows that future’s impact on the present! The X-Men and 3K are on a collision course that has been set since issue one—and only one will survive. And with the Fantastic Four joining the fray, this is going to be an event that will transform the X-Men dramatically.”

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Smash Pages Q&A | Jay Eaton on ‘Runaway to the Stars’

With a Kickstarter launching this week, we talk to Eaton about biology degrees, base-8 numeral systems and why a wall clock can take hours to draw.

Jay Eaton describes their path to comics less as a choice than as an inescapable gravitational pull, one they spent years trying to resist before giving in entirely.

After pursuing biology in college and working in horticulture, Eaton eventually committed full-time to the project they’d been building on the side all along: Runaway to the Stars, a hard sci-fi slice-of-life graphic novel about a centaur aerospace engineer, a shipwrecked AI pirate and the unlikely friendship that upends both their lives.

Eaton has been building this story on the web for years, and now it’s coming to print via Kickstarter through Iron Circus Comics. We talked about world-building as narrative, designing for bodies that aren’t human and what a biology degree is actually good for when you’re a cartoonist.

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