Category: Comic Books

Gerry Duggan + John McCrea bring ‘Dead Eyes’ back to life at Image Comics

‘Dead Eyes: The Empty Frames’ kicks off in September.

Dead Eyes, the series by Gerry Duggan and John McCrea that started life back in 2018, will return with a new miniseries this fall — Dead Eyes: The Empty Frames.

Originally titled Dead Rabbit, the series was recalled after release due to a lawsuit from a New York bar called “Dead Rabbit.” It returned under the new title, Dead Eyes, with four issues being published in total, plus a collection. It’s about a former mercenary/gun-for-hire who gets pulled back into the life after retirement.

“The unkillable Dead Eyes is back! We’ve never stopped working on Dead Eyes, and The Empty Frames has more tragical hilarious action than the first one. As always, McCrea, and colorist Mike Spicer really show off in this new volume and prove once again why they’re one of the best teams in the business,” said Duggan.

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Jeff Lemire conjures ‘Minor Arcana’ at BOOM! Studios

The new series will be written, drawn and colored by Lemire, and it launches in September.

Jeff Lemire has revealed his new project with BOOM! Studios that was teased back in April — Minor Arcana, an ongoing series that he will write, illustrate and color.

The series is about the daughter of a small-town “psychic” who returns to town to take care of her ailing mother — only to discover that unlike mom, she may have actual psychic powers.

“If Black Hammer was my love letter to the superhero comics I grew up reading then Minor Arcana is my love letter to the classic Vertigo comics of my teenaged years, but all filtered through my own style,” Lemire said in his newsletter. “I really want to get back to doing a true ongoing series that focuses on the importance of single issues again.”

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Pornsak Pichetshote assembles an all-star creator line-up for ‘The Horizon Experiment’

The project includes five one-shots by Terry and Rachel Dodson, Sabir Pirzada, Michael Walsh and more.

With all the great comics Pornsak Pichetshote has been writing over the last few years, sometimes it’s easy to forget he used to edit award-winning books at Vertigo. He’s putting both skills to work with The Horizon Experiment, a line of one-shots by various creative teams “featuring original protagonists from marginalized backgrounds set in a popular genre and inspired by pop culture icons.”

Pichetshote is working with co-editor Will Dennis on the line, which will feature contributions from Sabir Pirzada, Michael Walsh, Tananarive Due, Kelsey Ramsay, J. Holtham and more. Pichetshote is also writing the first one-shot, The Manchurian, which will feature artwork by Terry and Rachel Dodson.

“I’m fascinated with taking popular genres, like horror and noir, and seeing what they’d look like from diverse perspectives—I explored this in my Image Comics books Infidel and The Good Asian. But, I’ve been limited to my own experiences. So, for The Horizon Experiment, I decided to use the same mentality but open it up to other people, inviting some of the most talented people I know to work on it,” Pichetshote said. “Each one-shot is the equivalent of a pilot for a new creator-owned series, with the potential of continuing should there be demand for more. Each team of creators have had different approaches—all of them have knocked me out, and I couldn’t be more proud that the end result is five very unique books, all connected by the same ambitious spirit.”

Here’s a look at each of the one-shots, starting with The Manchurian:

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Corporate greed + revenge fuel the new series ‘The Body Trade’ from Mad Cave Studios

Zac Thompson, Jok and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou kick off the neo-noir series this September.

Writer Zac Thompson, artist Jok and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou are heading down to Florida for the tale of an ex-convict trying to find his son’s corpse in The Body Trade, a new series coming from Mad Cave Studios this fall.

“I’ve wanted to create this comic for years and collaborating with Jok is a dream,” Thompson said. “Through his lines and colors he’s built this incredible mood on the page that captures the gaudy excess of Florida balanced against the horrific stylings of an industry of death. Together we’ve created a story that’s both a fierce revenge yarn and an interrogation into a seedy corporate underbelly of America. The Body Trade is a raw and unflinching neo-noir where an ex-convict goes up against the intense might of corporate power and will do anything to win. But what when there’s nothing illegal about what you’re up against—how do you expose the truth?! And will anyone care when you do?”

Thompson has been quite busy lately, with Into the Unbeing, Blow Away and Cemetery Kids Don’t Die all debuting in the first half of 2024.

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Daniel Warren Johnson + Riley Rossmo team up for ‘The Moon Is Following Us’

The new series will debut from Image Comics in September.

Daniel Warren Johnson and Riley Rossmo are teaming together for a new creator-owned series coming from Image Comics this fall. The Moon Is Following Us is “about family and about parenthood, but it also has sweet snake monsters,” Johnson said, as two parents go to extreme lengths to rescue their daughter.

In his email newsletter, Johnson revealed a look at the project, which he will write and then split the art duties with Rossmo. Mike Spicer will color the series.

“Needless to say, we are both bringing everything we got with this one,” Johnson writes. “Also, while I am writing it, we’re also splitting interior art duties, with Riley taking about 85%, and me the rest. It’s a super collab, and I haven’t seen different art styles used this way in storytelling yet.”

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Donald Duck proves himself worthy this fall

‘What If Donald Duck Became Thor?’ by Steve Behling, Riccardo Secchi, Lorenzo Pastrovicchio + more brings the thunder in September.

We’ve seen everyone from Captain America to Beta Ray Bill to even Wonder Woman deemed “worthy” to hold Thor’s enchanted hammer, Mjolnir, and this fall you can add another name to the list — Donald Duck.

Following Marvel’s foray into the world of Disney’s Duckburg later this month in Uncle $crooge and the Infinity Dime #1 and July’s Donald Duck/Wolverine mash-up, What If Donald Duck Became Thor? will explore what happens when Donald Duck discovers an ancient cane that allows him to transform into Thor — much like another Donald, Donald Blake, did back in the 1960s. It sounds like you can expect the one-shot to pull from a lot of that early Thor lore.

“When we saw the designs for the Stone Ducks of Saturn and The Destroyer we literally laughed out loud,” the book’s editor, Mark Paniccia, said. “I can honestly say I never thought I’d see something like this in my career. I gotta pinch myself to make sure it’s not a dream.”

This particular mash-up comes courtesy of writers Steve Behling and Riccardo Secchi and artist Lorenzo Pastrovicchio.

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Cullen Bunn + Christopher Mitten enter ‘The Autumn Kingdom’ this fall

An author and his family discover a dark fantasy kingdom in the new miniseries coming from Oni Press.

Sept. 4 may technically still be summer, but autumn is coming early this year. Oni Press has announced The Autumn Kingdom, a new miniseries by horror masters Cullen Bunn and Christopher Mitten, will launch on that day.

The Autumn Kingdom is about an author and his family who head to an isolated cabin in Sweden so he can finish his latest dark fantasy novel, only to land in one themselves. The miniseries is colored by Francesco Segala and lettered by Taylor Esposito.

“The words ‘The Autumn Kingdom’ have been written in one of my oldest journals for decades,” Bunn said. “Over the years, I’ve returned to them again and again. I knew I wanted to tell a dark fantasy tale about the fairy realms. I just wasn’t sure what that story might be until I stumbled onto the idea of Sommer and Winter, a pair of young sisters who find themselves alone, facing the forces of a supernatural realm. Their lives—and the lives of their parents—are on the line. Thank goodness they’ve discovered a nasty, death-dealing blade that seems to hunger for the blood of elves and trolls and goblins. Sommer and Winter are thrown down a violent path from which there may be no escape. No matter what, they won’t get through this journey unscathed and unchanged.”

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Nelson Greaves + Davide Castelluccio enroll at ‘The Carlyle School for Kings’ this fall

Class is in session at Dark Horse Comics this October.

School is in session at The Carlyle School for Kings this fall, which features classes in revenge, friendship, romance and betrayal.

The story is by screenwriter Nelson Greaves, who wrote the 2014 film Unfriended, and artist Davide Castelluccio. They’re joined by colorist Francesca Vivaldi and letterer Frank Cvetkovic for the story of Emmelene Heron and her time at a school that prepares you to be king.

“Carlyle was born from the trauma I experienced as a country boy at a cut-throat Ivy League university,” said Greaves, who attended Harvard. “The culture encouraged us to win by any means necessary, and it wasn’t a Monday if you weren’t getting torn down, mocked and stabbed in the back. Unlike Emme, no one actually tried to kill me, and there wasn’t a giant living under my dining hall, but school still felt like a fight for my life, and I wanted to tell a story for anyone who’d felt that way, too.”

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Christopher Cantwell + Alex Lins combine body horror + superheroes in ‘Plastic Man No More’

The DC Black Label series begins in September.

Plastic Man isn’t the first character that comes to mind when I think “Who should star in a Black Label series?” but when you throw in the words “body horror,” suddenly it all comes together.

DC will release Plastic Man No More, a four-issue miniseries featuring a Plastic Man who suffers “catastrophic cellular damage,” loses control of his body and faces the prospect that he could die. It’s by writer Christopher Cantwell and artist Alex Lins, who work together on BOOM!’s Briar series.

“I don’t know about you, but when I think about Plastic Man, I immediately think of David Cronenberg,” Cantwell said. “There is an element of body horror to his story that I have always found fascinating. And I also found myself wondering recently—How would Plastic Man actually die? What would that look like? Is he immortal? And then I thought of the long and particularly nasty way real plastics and petroleum products break down when and if they finally do. That’s how I learned about depolymerization and the chemical process of ‘unzipping,’—from a particularly morose afternoon on the ol’ Internet, picturing what might happen to Eel if his entire cellular structure started to give way.”

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Celebrate 50 years of Deathlok with Denys Cowan, Justina Ireland, Christopher Priest + more

‘Deathlok 50th Anniversary Special’ arrives in September.

Marvel will celebrate 50 years of Deathlok this September with a special that will include contributions from Christopher Priest, Justina Ireland, Denys Cowan, Dale Eaglesham, Matthew Waite, Luke Ross and more.

“I’m always excited and humbled to write anything in the Marvel universe, but Deathlok as a character is especially important to me because as a U.S. Army veteran, his origin story really resonates in a horrifying way,” Ireland said. “So I’m excited to dig into the emotional core of what makes Deathlok so unique, while also having some fun.”

Ireland, the writer of Dread Nation, Deathless Divide, Ophie’s Ghosts and several Star Wars books, served as an Arabic linguistics expert in the U.S. Army. In addition to writing, she works as a supervisor in logistics for the Department of the Navy.

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Can’t Wait for Wednesday | Breaking the law comes with an interesting price in Greg Pak + Diego Galindo’s ‘Lawful’

Check out new comics and graphic novels arriving this week by Molly Knox Ostertag, Sara Varon, Zac Thompson, Hayden Sherman, Peter Bagge, Jed Mackay, Pepe Larraz, Andy Diggle, Leandro Fernandez, Louie Joyce and more.

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

If you’ve been following Marvel’s Blood Hunt, then this is the week for you, as it brings not only the third issue but also four crossover issues. DC meanwhile presents a new miniseries set in the world of the classic Gotham by Gaslight, while Peter Bagge returns to one of the most beloved alternative comix of all time in Hate Revisited. There’s also new graphic novels from Molly Knox Ostertag and Sara Varon, a creator-owned title by Zac Thompson and Hayden Sherman, and a skateboarding Godzilla comic. Or maybe I should say a “Godzilla-meets-skateboarding” comic, because I’m not sure if the king of all monsters actually shreds in it or not. But we’ll see.

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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There’s a demon in the White House in ‘The Exorcism at 1600 Penn’

Hannah Rose May + Vanesa Del Rey’s new IDW title arrives this October, just in time for election season.

IDW returns to its horror roots this October with The Exorcism at 1600 Penn, a four-issue miniseries by writer Hannah Rose May, artist Vanesa Del Rey, colorist Jordie Bellaire and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.

The series is about the first woman president of the United States and the demons she must contend with when she and her family move into the White House. Literal demons, just for clarification.

“As someone who has always loved horror, I wanted to tell a story that let me play with the genre’s tropes but in a setting we haven’t seen before,” Rose May said. “The White House is arguably the most famous house in the world and I thought it would be fun to use it as a location to set an exorcism. At its core, this is a story about family and faith, but it also addresses the intensity of the 24/7 news cycle, the noise of social media and the expectations put upon the First Family.”

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