Author: JK Parkin

Fantagraphics to publish four Ungerer books starting this fall

“The Underground Sketchbook” gets a new printing this October.

Fantagraphics has announced plans to release four out-of-print Tomi Ungerer books — The Underground Sketchbook, The Party, Babylon and Adam and Eve.

While probably best known for his work on children’s books like The Three Robbers and Flat Stanley, the illustrator and author’s career also included advertising, protest art, erotica and “books for adults” before he passed away a week ago at the age of 87. The four books Fantagraphics will reprint fall into that latter category.

“While preparing for my career-spanning interview with Tomi Ungerer that appears in the new print edition of The Comics Journal, I was astonished to discover that many of his best satirical works were only available as used books at exorbitant prices,” said Fantagraphics Publisher Gary Groth in a press release. “In an attempt to right this wrong, I chose four of his books to reprint, all trenchant commentaries on the folly of our relationships and the absurdity of our social order.”

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‘Love and Capes’ returns this summer

Thom Zahler’s rom-com comic returns for a fifth volume.

Thom Zahler produced four volumes of his charming Love and Capes series before seemingly sending Mark and Abby off for their happy ending. But now the creator has said on Twitter that he’s planning a fifth volume of the popular series, set to be released this summer.

Although there aren’t a lot of details just yet, he did share two pages of art and some promo art that revealed the subtitle of the new volume — Love and Capes: The Family Way.

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‘Avengers Dismember’: Wolverine, Conan join the ‘Savage Avengers’

Gerry Duggan and Mike Deodato Jr. bring together Marvel’s ‘badasses’ this May.

A new “unsanctioned” group of Avengers will slice and dice their way into comics in May, as Marvel has announced Savage Avengers by the creative team of Gerry Duggan and Mike Deodato Jr.

The Savage Avengers’ members will include Conan, Wolverine, Venom, Elektra, Brother Voodoo and Punisher.

“It has to be something that visually makes sense to you, and I think it does,” Duggan, who is also writing Savage Sword of Conan for Marvel, told Entertainment Weekly. “Mike Deodato Jr. is illustrating this book in both worlds. We envisioned a threat, a magical green zone where the evil wizards of Conan’s world are trading spells with the Hand in Japan. Conan is on a very Conan-like mission; he’s heard a tale of an amulet so he’s chasing it, and the evil magic sorcerers are doing something that would be a Marvel Avengers problem. It feels like we have found some very fertile ground that is a Venn diagram between those two worlds.”

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DC announces ‘Year of the Villain’ 25-cent comic

The almost-free comic arrives a few days before this year’s Free Comic Book Day.

Just prior to Free Comic Book Day, DC Comics will release a 25-cent DC Year of the Villain comic that spotlights several villains and sets the stage for future stories.

The book will include stories by Scott Snyder, Brian Michael Bendis, James Tynion IV, Jim Cheung, Francis Manapul and Alex Maleev, with a cover by Greg Capullo. Variant cover artists include Maleev and Cheung, as well as Stanley “Artgerm” Lau.

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Ferrier, Malhotra smuggle ‘Narcos’ into comics

IDW Publishing will publish a four-issue miniseries set in the Netflix show’s first season.

Netflix’s Narcos will make the jump from the streaming giant to comics this April, as IDW Publishing as announced plans to make a comic book based on the popular TV show.

Ryan Ferrier and Vic Malhotra have been enlisted to create a four-issue miniseries that “introduces new dangers for DEA agents Steve Murphy and Javier Peña to face, while at the same time, El Patrón must contend with a dangerous threat to his drug empire.”

“I’m thrilled to take fans new and old into a deeper, unseen story from the volatile, teeth-gritting world of Narcos,” Ferrier said in a press release. “I’m even more excited to bring this to life alongside Vic Malhotra, whose immense talent and style will show us a new side of Narcos — one with dangerously high stakes and a new, chaotic presence that will affect the DEA, the Cartels, Don Pablo himself, and all of Colombia.”

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‘Beasts of Burden’ returns in May

A two-part series by Evan Dorkin, Jill Thompson and Benjamin Dewey will complete the second Burden Hill collection.

Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson will return to Burden Hill for another round of Beasts of Burden, their award-winning series about guardian dogs and cats facing supernatural menaces.

Beasts of Burden: The Presence of Others Part One will arrive in May, featuring artwork by Thompson, who co-created the series with Dorkin. Part Two will feature artwork by Benjamin Dewey, who drew the most recent Beasts of Burden series, Beasts of Burden: Wise Dogs and Eldritch Men. It will “complete the second Burden Hill collection begun with the Hellboy crossover published in 2010,” Dorkin revealed.

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‘All Time Comics’ moves to Floating World Comics

The shared universe by Josh Bayer and friends returns in June from a new publisher.

Josh Bayer’s All Time Comics will return for a new five-part series from a new publisher this year. Floating World Comics, the Portland, Oregon comic shop-turned-publisher, will pick up where Fantagraphics left off with Zerosis Deathscape, an “epic event” co-written by Bayer and Josh Simmons, with art by Trevor Von Eeden.

“It’s about space and time meeting anti-time and alternate-space,” Bayer said about the new series. “It’s a chance to combine Bronze Age adventure genre comics with traces of every type of comics we love, from E.C. Segar to indie DIY comics.”

The All Time Comics shared universe launched in 2017 at Fantagraphics with four one-shots that featured the work of contemporary indie creators like Ben Marra and Noah Van Sciver with classic superhero artists like Al Milgrom and Herb Trimpe. Joining Von Eeden on art this time around will be Gabrielle Bell, Julia Gfrörer, Benjamin Marra and Tom Toye, and colorist Daniel Lee.

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‘Marvel Team-Up’ returns in April

The first arc by Eve Ewing and Joey Vazquez will feature Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man.

One of the staples of Marvel’s 1970s/1980s comic line will return in April, as the publisher has announced plans to reboot Marvel Team-Up.

Written by Eve Ewing with art by Joey Vazquez, the first arc of the new ongoing series will feature a team-up between Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man. Ewing and Vazquez are also working together on a Ms. Marvel story that will be included in Ms. Marvel #38.

“I don’t want to reveal too much, but my goal with the story is to have maximum fun with two characters that are both really sweet and really cool people who are fan favorites (and faves of mine), and to put them both in some delightful awkward and uncomfortable situations where they have to stretch to the limits of their abilities,” Ewing told The Chicago Tribune.

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Hannah Templer’s ‘Cosmoknights’ lead the rebellion at Top Shelf

Templer’s first solo graphic novel will debut as a webcomic in March.

Hannah Templer of Jem and the Holograms fame is creating her first graphic novel, Cosmoknights, which will be released first as a webcomic and then as a graphic novel by Top Shelf.

Top Shelf decribes it as “a thrilling galactic adventure set in a world where mech-suited warriors duel over the daughters of the aristocracy, and a fledgling resistance of lady knights aim to bring down the system from within.”

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Primal Age invades Target with exclusive comic

DC and Funko’s action figure line hits Target with a 100-page comic.

DC Comics and Target have teamed up to bring DC’s new action figure line, Primal Age, to comics. DC announced that the DC Primal Age 100-Page Giant is now available at Target, and can be found on end caps with the toys.

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Liefeld, Portacio return to the X-Men with ‘Major X’

The mysterious character from another reality will make his debut in April.

Before moving on to help found Image Comics, Rob Liefeld and Whilce Portacio left their mark on Marvel’s X-Men titles in the early 1990s. They worked on X-Force and Uncanny X-Men, respectively, and between them created or co-created iconic characters like Deadpool, Cable, Bishop and more.

Now the two creators are returning to the X-corner of the Marvel Universe with the introduction of Major X, a mysterious new character who is getting his own six-issue miniseries. The series will run bi-weekly from April through June. It’s written by Liefeld, who will share art duties with Portacio and Brent Peeples (Titans, New Super-Man).

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2019 Eisner Hall of Fame nominees announced

Jim Aparo, Dave Stevens, June Tarpé Mills and Morrie Turner will be automatically inducted, while voters will choose four more from a field of 14.

Comic-Con International has announced this year’s nominees for the Eisner Hall of Fame. They include the four judges’ choices — who will be automatically inducted — and 14 other nominees, four of whom will be inducted based on voters’ choices.

The judges’ choices are Jim Aparo, who is probably best known for his work on various Batman titles, including Batman and the Outsiders; Dave Stevens, creator of the Rocketeer; June Tarpé Mills, the Golden Age creator of Miss Fury; and Morrie Turner, creator of the Wee Pals newspaper strip in the 1960s.

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