‘Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds’ anthology supports Ukraine relief efforts

A comics anthology featuring an impressive line-up of talent that’s being offered through Zoop will benefit Operation USA.

A new anthology featuring the works of Walt Simonson, Kurt Busiek, John Layman, Rob Guillory, Stan Sakai, Sergio Aragones, Dave Gibbons and more will benefit relief efforts in the war-torn Ukraine.

Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds can be purchased in several variations from the comics crowdfunding website Zoop, which will donate proceeds to Operation USA. The charitable organization is raising money to support Ukrainian refugees on the ground in Poland and other nearby countries.

The project is being edited by Scott Dunbier, who currently works at IDW and heads up the Artist’s Edition line. The campaign ends in May, when funds will be collected and sent to Operation USA, and delivery of the final books is expected to be wrapped up by December.

“Like everyone, I have been sickened by the atrocities perpetrated on the Ukrainian people for nearly two months,” said Dunbier, “and I had to do something, anything, to try and help. The comic-book community is full of good and caring people who have stepped up to say, ‘I stand with Ukraine,’ and to contribute to this book.”

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Matt Kindt + Dark Horse team for new Flux House imprint

New imprint will kick off with a new Mind MGMT comic and will be the exclusive home of Kindt’s creator-owned comics.

Matt Kindt will team with his longtime publisher Dark Horse on a new imprint, Flux House, that will become the exclusive home of his creator-owned comics.

“Flux House is inspired by Fluxus – an avant-garde art movement from the 1950s that was an extension of Surrealists and Dadaists,” Kindt said in the press release. “The Fluxus movement focused on the creative process and experimental art forms. Their trademarks include accessibility, absurdism, and a sense of humor. If you’ve seen me burn or cut one of my books apart at a signing, you already have a sense of where I’m going with this. Flux House aims to embody all of these elements. It won’t be limited by traditional forms of books and print. And the story format will, as the name implies, always be in flux.”

The first title to be published by the new imprint will be Mind MGMT: Bootleg, which is set in the same universe as the previous Mind MGMT series. Written by Kindt, he’ll be joined by artists Farel Dalrymple, Jill Thompson, David Rubín and Matt Lesniewski for the four-issue series.

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Final four set in DC’s 2022 Round Robin tournament

The fans have spoken.

And then there were four — DC’s Round Robin tournament, where pitches from different creators face off in a fan vote on social media, is down to its final four competitors.

The four pitches moving on to the next round are:

  • Constantine & The Demon: Vacation From Hell by Frank Allen and Nik Virella
  • Suicide Squad: Dark by Zac Thompson and Garry Brown
  • Green Lantern: Light at the End of Forever by Si Spurrier and Marco Santucci
  • Superboy: The Man of Tomorrow by Kenny Porter and Jahnoy Lindsay

Voting for the next round will kick off next Tuesday. Here’s the updated brackets:

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Jonathan Luna pays tribute to ’90s Image Comics in ‘The Phalanx’

Image will publish the crowdfunded comic in June.

Jonathan Luna’s latest one-shot, a tribute to 1990s Image Comics, has found a publisher — Image Comics.

Luna ran a Kickstarter campaign for The Phalanx last fall, raising more than $8,000 in the process. He described it as “my homage to 90s comics and the founding series of Image Comics,” calling out WildCATS, Youngblood and other titles that helped launch the publisher. And you can see even from the comic’s logo what he was going for.

“This era was a magical and formative time for me,” he said on the Kickstarter campaign page. “For many years, I’ve wanted to show my love, and I finally figured out how–this one-shot comic, The Phalanx. I want it to ooze ’90s comics’ in story, art and format, yet still contain my style and sensibilities. There will be tons of references, and I challenge you to find them!”

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Landy + Land land on Marvel’s ‘All-Out Avengers’

The new series will ‘launch readers directly into the thrilling missions of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.’

As teased last week, Marvel officially announced All-Out Avengers this past weekend during Fan Expo Philadelphia. The new series will feature stories that jump directly into the action –“From page one, panel one, the Avengers will be knee-deep in the action with no setup, no explanations and no time for questions,” according to Marvel.

Derek Landy, who worked on the recent Captain America and Iron Man series, will team with artist Greg Land for the new title, which will feature Iron Man, Captain America, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman and more.

“When Tom Brevoort approached me with this concept, I thought it was an inspired idea, a slice of creative genius, and also totally unworkable…! But the chance to launch a new Avengers title, and the chance to write any character who’d ever BEEN an Avenger, was impossible for this particular Marvel fanboy to resist,” Landy told Marvel.com. “Add in the fact that Tom wanted to get Greg Land on art and my fate was pretty much sealed.”

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Smash Pages Q&A | Emma Hunsinger + Tillie Walden

The creators of ‘My Parents Won’t Stop Talking!’ discuss the new picture book, their creative process, the differences between making comics and children’s books, and more.

Separately Emma Hunsinger and Tillie Walden have crafted impressive bodies of work. Tillie Walden is the Eisner Award winning cartoonist of Spinning, On a Sunbeam, Are You Listening? and other books. Emma Hunsinger is known for She Would Feel the Same, which was published by Shortbox, and How To Draw a Horse, which was published in The New Yorker and nominated for an Eisner Award, a National Magazine Award and a National Cartoonist Society Divisional Award.

The two have collaborated on a new picture book, My Parents Won’t Stop Talking! which is hilarious and visually exciting. The main character Molly just wants to go to the park, and what follows is deeply relatable but also beautifully bizarre and inventive in all the best ways.

I spoke with both Hunsinger and Walden about the new book, the differences between creating children’s books and comics, their inspirations and boring “adult chit chat.”

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Can’t Wait for Comics | A wrong turn into ‘Nightmare Country’

Check out comics and graphic novels this week from Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Terry Moore, James Tynion IV, Lisandro Estherren, Yanick Paquette, Ann Nocenti, Siddharth Kotian, Steve Niles, Szymon Kudranski, Rob Guillory and more.

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

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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Jeff Lemire announces a new Black Hammer title on his Substack

The weekly series ‘Colonel Weird & Little Andromeda’ will feature the work of a variety of artists.

Black Hammer co-creator Jeff Lemire has announced another comic set in the universe he created with Dean Ormston — Colonel Weird & Little Andromeda, which will appear weekly in his Substack newsletter for paid subscribers.

The new comic is written by Lemire, Ray Fawkes and Tate Brombal, and will feature art by a variety of creators, including Ariela Kristantina, Andrea Sorrentino, Marguerite Sauvage, Yuko Shimizu, Dani, Tyler Bence and Nick Robles.

“We describe this new story as ‘Little Nemo’ Meets ‘The Little Prince’ Set in the World of the Eisner Award–winning Black Hammer Universe,” Lemire posted on Substack. “This new weekly original comic brings together a host of creators to tell self-contained stories of beloved Black Hammer characters Colonel Randall Weird and Dr. James Robinson in a series of dimension-hopping cross-world capers!”

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Aaron + Walker head back to the past for ‘Avengers: 1,000,000 B.C.’ one-shot

The one-shot promises to reveal more about ‘Thor’s mysterious connection to the Phoenix Force.’

Jason Aaron will continue the story of the prehistoric Avengers in a one-shot this summer titled Avengers: 1,000,000 B.C. He’ll be joined by artist Kev Walker on the story, which promises to reveal more about Thor’s relationship with the Phoenix Force.

“The Prehistoric Avengers have been an important key to my Avengers run since the very beginning,” Aaron told Marvel.com. “They are the earliest versions of some of the earth’s most powerful legacy characters. They’re the heroes who protect the Marvel Universe in its crib. Now, we finally get to see them all in the spotlight in a huge way, in a story that shows how these prehistoric heroes shaped Marvel history in the most profound ways and that will also have big ramifications for the Avengers going forward.”

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Moon Girl hangs with Miles Morales, the Avengers + more this summer

Novelist Mohale Mashigo teams with different artists to chronicle Moon Girl’s search for a missing Devil Dinosaur.

Hey, remember last fall when Marvel announced a batch of “eight tentpole projects” for 2022? They included Devil’s Reign, the new She-Hulk miniseries, a pair of Wolverine miniseries — and Moon Girl, whose creative team was “top secret” at the time.

While the other seven have all come to fruition, Moon Girl, which was supposed to kick off in February, didn’t. Until now. Marvel has announced a pair of one-shots teaming up Moon Girl with Miles Morales and the Avengers, with more on the way. In them, she takes a “thrilling journey across the Marvel Universe” as she searches for a missing Devil Dinosaur. They’re written by novelist Mohale Mashigo (The Yearning), and each are drawn by a different artist. They also say an ongoing Moon Girl title is on the way.

“Writing Moon Girl is a dream come true,” Mashigo said. “Lunella is fun, quirky, smart and full of energy. I’ve enjoyed seeing her get out of her comfort zone and shine even brighter.”

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Dark Horse to publish S. Craig Zahler’s ‘Organisms from an Ancient Cosmos’

The novelist, musician and director of ‘Bone Tomahawk’ writes and draws his second graphic novel.

Dark Horse has announced plans to publish a graphic novel by S. Craig Zahler, the director of the movies Bone Tomahawk and Dragged Across Concrete, as well as the creator of the graphic novel Forbidden Surgeries Of The Hideous Dr. Divinus.

He’s also a novelist and the drummer for the metal band Charnel Valley, and he’s working to bring one of his novels, Hug Chickenpenny: The Panegyric of an Anomalous Child, to the screen with the help of The Jim Henson Company. So he has a lot going on creatively, but he still found time to write and draw Organisms from an Ancient Cosmos, his new graphic novel.

“My first artistic interest was illustration, and after writing eight novels, recording nine albums, and directing three movies, it was a pleasure to draw once more. In this graphic novel, which is my second, I explore morally complex characters, intimate human drama, large-scale world building, and speculative science,” Zahler said. “I began working on the piece at the very beginning of lockdown and finished more than a year later when I received my first vaccine. Creating ‘Organisms from an Ancient Cosmos’ was an incredibly gratifying experience, and I’m thrilled to have it published by Dark Horse Comics, whose books I’ve read since the eighties.”

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Webtoon + DC announce three new webcomics

Vixen, Zatanna and the Red Hood will arrive on Webtoon later this year.

Following the success of Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, which launched last year, DC Comics and Webtoon have announced three new projects that will debut on the popular mobile comics platform.

The first, titled Vixen NYC, will debut in May, while two others — Red Hood: Outlaws and Zatanna & The Ripper, are expected to launch this summer.

“WEBTOON is home to a new generation of comics fans, and DC is home to some of the most iconic characters and franchises in comics,” said David Lee, Head of Content at WEBTOON U.S. “Our partnership with DC represents the future of the comic industry, combining legendary franchises with new technologies and global fandoms that cross borders. Fans can’t get enough of ‘Batman: Wayne Family Adventures,’ and we know they are going to love what we have in store for the 2022 slate.”

Here are a few more details and the creative teams for each of them:

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