Jeffrey Brown returns for a second ‘Batman and Robin and Howard’ graphic novel at DC

‘Summer Breakdown’ continues the story of Damian Wayne’s middle school years with his rival-turned-friend Howard.

Jeffrey Brown’s 2021 graphic novel Batman and Robin and Howard was a delight, so I’m happy to see that DC has announced a sequel to the story that featured Damian, his middle-school rival Howard and a dad joke-spouting Batman.

“Having the opportunity to make a second DC middle grade book, I first thought I’d come up with all new characters and a new story with a different superhero,” Brown said. “But as I started writing, I kept thinking about Robin and Howard (and Batman, of course), and eventually realized what I really wanted to do was continue their story. The sequel gives a different look at family life for Damian when he isn’t Robin, and more action when he is – but hopefully readers will still find all the same humor and heart that I tried to put into the first book.”

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Top Shelf will release Alan Moore’s ‘The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic’ in October

The grimoire promises ‘endless necromantic fun for all the family.’

The long-delayed The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic by writer and author Alan Moore and his magical mentor Steve Moore will finally materialize in October from Top Shelf Comix and UK publisher Knockabout Ltd.

This “celebration of magic and the occult” will feature prose, illustration and sequential art, with contributions by several of Alan Moore’s previous colleagues, including John Coulthart, Steve Parkhouse, Rick Veitch, Ben Wickey and the late Kevin O’Neill.

“One of the great honors of my publishing career has been to work with Alan Moore on so many monumental projects, like From Hell and Lost Girls,” said Chris Staros, editor-in-chief of Top Shelf Productions. “The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic represents an amazing capstone, created by Alan and Steve, and brilliantly brought to life by five unforgettable artists. It’s been a privilege to watch those magical minds spend years building this grimoire, and I’m proud to join Knockabout in finally sharing it with the world.”

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Visit a town cast in eternal darkness in Lambert + Sharpe’s ‘The Night Mother’

Jeremy Lambert and Alexa Sharpe’s new graphic novel will arrive in October from Oni Press.

Oni Press will cozy up to The Night Mother, a new graphic novel by Jeremy Lambert, writer of Doom Patrol, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Goosebumps and more, and artist Alexa Sharpe, who has worked on Lumberjanes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and more. They’re joined by letterer Becca Carey for the dark fantasy.

The story is set in a seaside town cast into perpetual night when the sun disappears, where Madeline Tock lives in the local graveyard and talks to the dead — and prepares to battle the Night Mother for the soul of her town.

The Night Mother is a supernatural snow globe world of the unknown where a frightened Madeline Tock must learn to trust herself in a place of warped expectations. A place where the dead can whisper and the woman from the moon gathers their souls in her lantern,” Lambert said. “We all have our own crucible when we are younger… a pressure cooker of fears, loves and discoveries… when we learn about who we are along with the many shadows that follow us. This is Maddy’s.”

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‘Holler’ tells the story of the ‘unkempt, final generation of analog teenagers’

Dark Horse Comics will collect Jeremy Massie’s comic into one volume later this year.

Dark Horse Comics will collect Holler, Jeremy Massie’s ode to the grunge era of the 1990s, into one volume this fall.

Originally self-published via crowdfunding and It’s Alive, the collection will include all eight issues Massie produced and eventually posted on his website. The comic tells the story of Magnesium Mama, the grunge band formed by four friends in an Appalachian town in Virginia.

“I’ve gotten to a certain time in my life where I’ve gotten introspective, maybe even sentimental, about the time and place I grew up,” said Massie. “Even if the times and place weren’t the greatest, I was dwelling on that period a lot. I was so hung up on it I started making comics about my band-playing teenage years. They’re the type of comics I’ve always wanted to make.”

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Papercutz will publish several Disney + Pixar graphic novels later this year

The Mad Cave imprint will release graphic novels featuring ‘Turning Red,’ ‘Encanto’ and more.

Papercutz, the kid’s graphic novel imprint owned by Mad Cave Studios, has announced a publishing partnership with Disney that’ll bring Turning Red, Phineas & Ferb, Encanto, Frozen and more to comics — or back to comics, in some cases — later this year.

The partnership isn’t too much of a surprise, as Papercutz announced a Free Comic Book Day title featuring Encanto and Turning Red for this year’s event. But the bench goes deeper than those two titles, as their plans include several titles that look like they may be reprints. For instance, the listing for Phineas & Ferb notes that it’s collecting comics that originally appeared in the Disney Presents magazine.

Here’s a rundown on what they plan to publish:

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Brubaker + Phillips explore the ’80s ‘Satanic Panic’ in ‘Houses of the Unholy’

The graphic novel will arrive in stores in August.

Image Comics has announced the next graphic novel coming from the award-winning team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, arguably comics’ greatest creative team right now. Houses of the Unholy will explore the “Satanic Panic” craze of the 1980s, which involved conspiracy theories that grew from unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse.

Houses of the Unholy is something I’ve been describing as Satanic Panic Noir. It’s somewhere in-between a creepy horror story and a fucked-up noir, and directly tied to the Satanic Panic craze of the ’80s,” said Brubaker. “The book really speaks to my obsessions with cult horror, and plays with the demonic tropes of classic horror from Hammer to Carpenter to Stephen King. The fear that was everywhere back then has clearly resurfaced, and that made me want to dive back into those dark waters and try to find a Brubaker-Phillips take on noir and horror at the same time.”

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Image Comics will publish Sabir Pirzada’s ‘Dandelion’

The graphic novel anthology will include stories drawn by Martín Morazzo, Vanesa R. Del Rey, Eric Koda and more.

Ms. Marvel writer Sabir Pirzada has a new project coming from Image Comics this summer — Dandelion, an anthology graphic novel featuring “climate crisis-infused tales” drawn by several different artists.

“It’s been a grand undertaking to gather some of the industry’s hottest artists, and build a shared continuity where they could take inspiration from one another in illustrating a wide range of genres that all add up to a larger world of speculative fiction with a mystery unfolding in the background: who is the founder of the Dandelion ship?” Pirzada said. “We are excited to present a unique reading experience as can only exist in an anthology graphic novel format.”

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This is … Spinal Cord!

Dark Horse will release a new heavy metal-themed graphic novel by David Braña and Pahito this fall.

The Midnight: Shadows isn’t the only music-themed graphic novel coming from Dark Horse this year. This week the publisher also announced Spinal Cord, a heavy metal horror graphic novel written by David Braña and illustrated by Pahito.

It’s a tale as old as time — a heavy metal band wants to make it big, so they enter a competition that ends up being more than they bargained for.

“The idea of Spinal Cord had been in my head for a long time,” said Braña. “I wanted to write about a music band trying to make its way in today’s complicated industry. Pahito and I both love metal music, so after talking, the creative sparks flew for Spinal Cord. It has been a pleasure to travel Route 666 in his company. We have paid a well-deserved tribute to the music and we have let ourselves be carried away on an adventure with different styles of horror, with characters who feel and suffer and who try to achieve their dreams, like most of us. Now I just hope readers enjoy this journey too!

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Dark Horse teams with synthwave band The Midnight for a new graphic novel

Zack Kaplan, Stephen Thompson and Jahnoy Lindsay will bring the band’s music to the comics page.

Music and comics will collide in a new graphic novel this fall, as the synthwave band The Midnight teams with Dark Horse for The Midnight: Shadows.

Written by Zack Kaplan with art by Stephen Thompson and artist Jahnoy Lindsay, the graphic novel is about a soon-to-be father who gets literally sucked into a cyberpunk video game from his youth called The Midnight. Colorist Thiago Rocha and letterer DC Hopkins round out the team.

“Before I got the privilege to write this graphic novel, I was a fan,” Kaplan said. “Intoxicated by the immersive beats and heartfelt lyrics since their very first demo. It was no surprise to me to see them become one of today’s best synthwave bands. Their presence is so narrative that it was dying to be shared in this form. And it’s been a joy to bring it all to comic life, to partner with Dark Horse for such a vivid and mind-bending series, and to create this electrifying world with a powerhouse creative team, Stephen, Jahnoy, Thiago and DC, that will blow your mind with one visually stunning page after the next. Whether you are a listener of the music or you just love a good sci-fi adventure, we cannot wait to take you to that place half in dark and half in light, where arcade dreams are a reality, where heroes battle monsters. Get ready for a truly epic, synth wave adventure.”

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DC will publish YA takes on Wonder Woman, Blue Beetle this year

DC will collect ‘Young Diana’ by Jordie Bellaire and Paulina Ganucheau, and publish a Blue Beetle OGN by Julio Anta and Jacoby Salcedo.

DC has announced two projects coming later this year aimed at the young adult market, which include a Wonder Woman collection and a new Blue Beetle graphic novel.

Up first is Wonder Woman: The Adventures of Young Diana, written by Jordie Bellaire and drawn by Paulina Ganucheau. These stories originally ran as a back-up in the regular Wonder Woman title starting 2021, and featured a look at Diana’s early life on Themyscira.

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Warren Pleece returns to Dark Horse for ‘a dystopian eco-noir thriller’

The creator of ‘Incognegro’ will write and draw a new graphic novel for the Berger Books imprint.

Incognegro creator Warren Pleece will return with a new graphic novel next year from Berger Books, the Dark Horse imprint run by former Vertigo chief Karen Berger.

The Sunny-Luna Travelling Oracle is described as “a dystopian eco-noir thriller about power, escape, creation, and the mark we leave on the world.”

“My love of the natural world and learning about the Wood Wide Web grafted to my other permanent obsession with the long dramatic shadows cast by classic film noir, finally led me to this rip-snorting eco-thriller story with more than a touch of magic,” Pleece said.

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Erman + Beck journey to ‘Loving, Ohio’ in a new graphic novel coming next year

Dark Horse Comics will publish the new graphic novel about surviving cults, murderers and high school.

Dark Horse Comics will publish Loving, Ohio next year, a graphic novel about four friends trying to survive high school in a town built around a cult.

Matthew Erman, writer of Good LuckWitchbloodTerminal Punks and Mariko Between Worlds, and Sam Beck, the wonderful artist of Verse and Renegade Rule, will introduce The Chorus, a cult that “has infiltrated every structure of Loving.”

 “Loving, Ohio is the best piece of fiction I’ve written so far in my life,” said Erman. “I grew up in a cult, as many people do and Loving, Ohio says everything I want to say on the matter. I am immensely proud of it and so grateful for Sam and the gorgeous book she created with me. I can’t wait for you to read this because I think you all are going to be wowed by what we’ve made. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

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