Author: JK Parkin

Shazam! spins out of ‘Teen Titans Academy’ into a new miniseries

Tim Sheridan, Clayton Henry and Marcelo Maiolo present a new story about Billy Batson.

Tim Sheridan, writer of Teen Titans Academy, will team with Clayton Henry and Marcelo Maiolo for a new miniseries starring the World’s Mightiest Mortal, Shazam!

Shazam!, aka Billy Batson, is currently appearing in Teen Titans Academy as one of the students being taught by Nightwing and company. You might remember from the previous Shazam! series, by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank, (or if you saw the film) that Shazam!’s foster siblings also gained the power of Shazam! Apparently they’ve all lost their powers, though, and Billy’s powers have become unreliable — which is what led him to Titans Island in the first place.

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AfterShock will unleash ‘Clans of Belari’ in July

TV writers Rob and Peter Blackie team up with artist Daniel Maine for the new science fiction series.

Rob and Peter Blackie, the creators of the TV series Frontier, are teaming up with artist Daniel Maine for a new science fiction comic titled Clans of Belari.

Set in the Belari system, “an isolated, feudal dystopia located in the farthest reaches of the galaxy,” the comic will feature a girl named Te’a, and her adoptive father “Gummy,” as they unite the system’s clans against an alien threat.

“For a long time, we have been interested in a sci-fi story that imagines what life could be like for a human establishment on a distant planet facing similar struggles as we face on the Earth today,” Rob Blackie said. “As soon as we travelled across the galaxy, so to speak, it opens up the fantastical and what we sometimes call ‘space magic’ of the genre. That is just exciting and fertile territory for exploring character and story.”

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Bunn + Leiz team for ‘The Last Book You’ll Ever Read’

The new horror title from Vault Comics arrives in July. Read at your own risk.

Cullen Bunn and Leila Leiz have a new title coming out in July from Vault Comics, but based on the title, we’d recommend you read it at your own risk: The Last Book You’ll Ever Read.

Joining them are colorist Giada Marchisio, letterer Jim Campbell and designer Tim Daniel. It’s about a woman who writes a book that brings about the collapse of society as we know it.  

“With this story, I’m exploring some concepts and themes that really trouble and frighten me,” Bunn said. “This is a story of fantasy and supernatural horror, but the themes and concepts haunt me like a ghost in the dark. The Last Book You’ll Ever Read is about the collapse of society, about the descent or de-evolution of mankind. The book referenced in the title is the Bible of this massive shift. In ourselves. In our friends and neighbors. In our culture. In the world around us. Reality itself is becoming more fierce and wild, and it is taking us with it. Is the ‘last book’ sort of a doctrine to what is coming? Is it somehow bringing about this cataclysmic reckoning? Not even the author of the book, Olivia Kade, seems to know. She knows only that the people around her want her dead because of the words she’s written. She hires a security consultant, Connor Wilson, to protect her. In order to protect him, she asks that he never reads her work. From that moment forward, the fates of Olivia and Connor are intertwined. And they are facing a horror of unbelievable proportions. This isn’t a story about the end times. It’s about a new beginning that is violent and terrifying.”

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#Bwahaha: Blue Beetle + Booster Gold take on social media in new miniseries

‘Blue & Gold’ by Dan Jurgens and Ryan Sook will go online in July.

Get ready, internets — Blue Beetle and Booster Gold are coming for you.

DC has announced that the duo will get an eight-issue miniseries this summer from the team of Dan Jurgens and Ryan Sook.

Blue & Gold, based on the description, returns the team to their more comical roots, as Booster Gold enlists Blue Beetle’s aid in becoming a social media star.

“To be clear, this is the third, maybe even fourth time this project has been on my board, the first in ’88 or ’89,” Jurgens said on Twitter. “Nice to have it become a reality and even better to have the incredible Ryan Sook drawing it. So good!”

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The Superman family of titles expands in July

Tom Taylor, John Timms, Grant Morrison, Mikel Janin and more tell new tales of the Man of Steel, the Woman of Tomorrow and the Son of Kal-El.

DC Comics has announces several changes to its Superman titles for this July, including the launch of three new titles.

Launching in July will be:

  • Superman: Son of Kal-El by Tom Taylor and John Timms, focusing on Jon Kent. It replaces the regular Superman title.
  • Superman and the Authority, a new miniseries by Grant Morrison and Mikel Janin.
  • The previously announced Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow miniseries by Tom King and Bilquis Evely.

Here’s a rundown of the new titles + storylines from DC:

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Layman + Bradshaw’s ‘Bermuda’ starts in July

The series features a girl who lives on an island populated by dinosaurs, pirates and more.

IDW Publishing has announced that Bermuda, the new series by John Layman and Nick Bradshaw originally announced at the 2019 New York Comic Con, will kick off in July.

“Probably the single upside to the past year has been that Bermuda got some extra time, and it shows on every panel on every page. This is a gorgeous book, just staggeringly beautiful, and it’s been a thrill to see the pages roll in. It’s certainly one of the most stunning comics I’ve ever been a part of — and it’s a whole lot of fun, too,” Layman said.

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‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ ‘S.W.O.R.D.’ will cross over for ‘The Last Annihilation’

Al Ewing brings two of his titles together for an epic space war.

Two of Al Ewing’s space-based titles will cross over later this year for an event Marvel is billing as “The Last Annihilation.”

Guardians of the Galaxy, which launched a new team and new mission with last week’s issue #13, will cross over with S.W.O.R.D., the X-title featuring Magneto, Cable and other mutants tasked with protecting the Earth. You might also remember that late last year, following the Empyre event, the Empyre Aftermath: Avengers special teased a confrontation between S.W.O.R.D. and the new Kree/Skrull Alliance. With both Hulkling and Wiccan playing a major roll in Guardians now, this could be what that teaser was alluding to.

“Guardians and S.W.O.R.D. have been building their own unique gravity for a while now, and in space, when two objects have gravity, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll crash into each other – or get sucked into the orbit of something even bigger,” Ewing told Marvel.com. “Marvel Space these days is a fragile coalition of worlds that chose peace over war, a little bubble of hope in a cruel void – but there’s an enemy nobody ever suspected readying an attack that’ll either cement all those frail alliances or tear them to pieces.”

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Can’t Wait for Comics | Batman, Fortnite, Godzilla, Nightcrawler and more!

See what comics are arriving in comic shops and on digital this week from Ben Sears, Greg Rucka, Leandro Fernández, Ram V, Filipe Andrade, Bret Blevins, Graham Nolan and more.

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

Check out a few highlights below, or visit ComicList for this week’s full list of new comics arriving in stores, and the comiXology new releases page for what’s available digitally.

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Marvel celebrates 35 years of ‘Aliens’ with ‘Aliens: Aftermath’ #1

Benjamin Percy and Dave Wachter return to the scene of the crime in a new one-shot.

Marvel will celebrate the 35th anniversary of the movie Aliens with a one-shot titles Aliens: Aftermath by Benjamin Percy and Dave Wachter.

The double-sized issue features a story set in Hadley’s Hope, the terraforming and mining colony where the original film takes place.

“When I was a kid, I had a door-length poster of a xenomorph crashing through the wood, tearing off the hinges, creeping forward with a drippy fanged smile,” Percy said. “This is the image I would drift away to every night, which no doubt influenced my imaginative hard-wiring, along with the films and comics that I watched and read over and over and over. To this day, I can’t grip a knife without wanting to lay my hand on a table and tick-tick-tick the point between my splayed fingers—I can’t play a game of ping-pong or Clue without yelling, ‘Game over, man.’—I can’t scratch an orange tabby without whispering , ‘You are my lucky star….lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky.’ I’ve been in love with these stories most of my life, and it’s truly an honor and a delight to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Aliens with a script inked in acid blood.”

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‘Mouse Guard’ returns in July

‘Mouse Guard: The Owlhen Caregiver’ will collect three new stories.

Award-winning creator David Petersen will return to the fantasy world of Mouse Guard in July with Mouse Guard: The Owlhen Caregiver, which collects three different stories.

“I’m so pleased that readers get to walk back into the Mouse Territories, be accompanied by familiar Guardmice, and encounter snakes, owls, wolves, rams, otters, toads, and foxes again. Short stories are magical things. Despite their size, they are exactly the right shape to hold large messages of morality and virtue,” said Petersen. “The common themes in these stories are ones of hope and of compassion, of service and the wellbeing of others. And every world could use more of that.”

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Sunday Comics | John Allison kicks off ‘Author Unknown’

Check out other recent online comics from Matt Kindt, Frankee White and Kat Baumann, Jason Loo and Dan Schkade.

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

John Allison has created several webcomics and comics over the years, from Bad Machinery to Scary-Go-Round to Wicked Things and Steeple. Last week he kicked off a brand-new story on the Steeple site, called Author Unknown. The 44-page comic has been in the works since November of 2019 and will feature Charlotte Grote, his character from Bad Machinery.

“… it’s been through a lot of revisions to make sure it meant something even taken in isolation,” Allison said. “It needed me to make all the comics I did over the last year to give it a bit of weight. There is something for both long-term and newer readers, to the exclusion of no-one.”

You can start reading the new story by going here, or, if you don’t want to wait, you can read the entire story by becoming a supporter of Allison’s on Patreon.

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What Are You Reading? | ‘Wonder Woman,’ ‘Batman: The Detective’ and more

See what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately.

Welcome to What Are You Reading?, our weekly look at what the Smash Pages crew has been checking off their “to read” list lately.

Let us know what you read this week in the comments or on social media.

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