Milligan + Kowalski bow down to the ‘God of Tremors’ in August

The new title from AfterShock Comics is a ’19th Century gothic horror of exorcism, demonic worship and epilepsy.’

Peter Milligan, writer of X-Statix, Shade the Changing Man and so much more, will team with Bloodbourne and Sex artist Piotr Kowalski for a story of “gothic horror of exorcism, demonic worship and epilepsy” in God of Tremors, a new one-shot from AfterShock Comics.

“It’s a story of dark secrets, shameful longings and terrifying changes,” Milligan said. “A Gothic tale of isolation and horror. Aubrey is a young man living in a straight-laced, 19th century English Victorian world, whose father is a vicar, renowned for his fiery speeches against the evils of new scientific ideas. When Aubrey has his first epileptic seizure it begins a harrowing series of ‘exorcisms,’ as both Aubrey and his father are convinced his condition is the work of the devil. Hidden away in his father’s country estate, Aubrey’s only release is walking in the wild woods that surround the house. It’s deep in these woods that Aubrey discovers an ancient stone pagan effigy that slowly changes his and all his family’s lives.”

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‘Blackhand Ironhead’ returns for a second season

David Lopez’s digital comic returns at Panel Syndicate today.

David Lopez‘s Blackhand Ironhead returns for a second season today at Panel Syndicate, the digital comics website founded by Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin and Muntsa Vicente. It’s available for download in Panel Syndicate’s traditional “choose your own price” model.

Lopez writes and draws the comic, while Kike J. Diaz provides the colors.

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Clownhunter takes the spotlight in a ‘Secret Files’ one-shot this summer

The Gotham vigilante is on a collision course with Punchline in a story by Ed Brisson and Rosi Kämpe.

Clownhunter will hunt again in Batman Secret Files: Clownhunter by Ed Brisson and Rosi Kämpe, which arrives in August. The one-shot follows the previously announced Secret Files issues that will focus on The Signal and the Huntress, who get the spotlight in July.

The comic will mark Brisson’s first work for DC in six years, while it will be the first for Kämpe, who draws the Unknown Lands webcomic on Tapas.

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Kakao Entertainment buys Tapas Media for $510 million

Founder Chang Kim will continue the day-t0-day management of Tapas.

South Korea-based entertainment company Kakao Entertainment has announced that they’ve acquired the webcomics site Tapas Media for an estimated $510 million.

Chang Kim, who founded Tapas in 2012, will continue to oversee the day-to-day management of Tapas and also become Global Strategy Officers within Kakao Entertainment.

Kakao Entertainment was already a stakeholder of Tapas as of last November, and several of Kakoa’s webcomics are available via Tapas, including A Business Proposal, Space Sweepers, The Uncanny Counter, and Navillera.

“We’re thrilled to join forces with Kakao Entertainment, an entertainment content juggernaut with a massive library of original webtoon IPs, which can be introduced to the US audience through the Tapas platform,” Kim said. “Our team, our unique company culture and our awesome creator community stay the same while we race ahead with the exact same mission but on a much bigger scale.”

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Re-reading ‘World’s Finest’ #258, the comic that got Jason Aaron into world-building

Tom Bondurant dives into a classic issue of DC’s ‘Dollar Comics’ line that helped inspire the architect of Marvel’s ‘Heroes Reborn’ event.

As part of our round-robin Heroes Reborn [2021] coverage, I learned that writer Jason Aaron’s first superhero comic book was August-September 1979’s World’s Finest Comics #258. Back then it was part of DC’s “Dollar Comics” line, boasting 68 pages’ and five features’ worth of colorful characters. In his newsletter, Aaron says

I fell in love with these books, in part because they didn’t just give me one story, but instead gave me a taste of an entire world of characters and adventures and history that was out there waiting for me. The sort of gargantuan super-world that would come to consume a large portion of the rest of my life. […] In other words, I think I’ve been primed from the beginning to want to build my own world of superheroes. And HEROES REBORN is maybe as close as I’ll ever come to doing exactly that.

It will surprise none of you to learn that I also read World’s Finest Comics regularly as a kid, especially during the Dollar Comics phase. (It lasted over five years and almost 40 issues, from April-May 1977’s #244 through August 1982’s #282; and a Green Arrow/Black Canary backup continued for a couple of issues past that.) Although the Dollar Comics line was largely an experiment in marketing and economics of scale, World’s Finest was pretty impressive among the company’s late-1970s output.

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Can’t Wait for Comics | Return to Future State Gotham; X-Corp opens for business; Lee Lei’s ‘Stone Fruit’ debuts

New comics and graphic novels arrive this week from Jason Aaron, Dale Keown, Lee Lai, Aminder Dhaliwal, Matt Lesniewski, Mike Mignola, Declan Shalvey 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. This week brings new comics and graphic novels from Marvel, DC, Fantagraphics, Image, AfterShock, Drawn and Quarterly, and more.

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 will debut the new character Somnus in ‘Marvel’s Voices: Pride’

Steve Orlando, Claudia Aguirre and Luciano Vecchio bring the new character to life.

The Marvel’s Voice: Pride anthology arrives in June, and when it does, it will bring the debut of a new character — Somnus, who will appear in a story written by Steve Orlando and drawn by Claudia Aguirre.

“Somnus, Carl Valentino, is inspired not only by my own family history, but by my experiences with past generations of LGBTQ+ folks from across the country, people I wouldn’t have met without comics,” Orlando said. “While there is still plenty of work to do, we’ve also come a long way as a community. Somnus is a chance to explore how my own late queer relatives may have felt, living in more prejudiced times. He’s also a chance to celebrate past generations as a whole and acknowledge the strides we’ve made that they may not have lived to see.”

The character was designed by artist Luciano Vecchio, who also provides a variant cover featuring Somnus:

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Marvel announces ‘The Trial of Magneto’ for August

Leah Williams and Lucas Werneck are the creative team for the upcoming miniseries.

Marvel has revealed more details about that teaser they released last week concerning Magneto, and it has some potential SPOILERS for an upcoming X-Men-related storyline. So consider yourself warned before reading further.

Coming in August is X-Men: The Trial of Magneto, the first of a five-part miniseries featuring the Master of Magnetism. It’s by the team of Leah Williams and Lucas Werneck.

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Magpies and rats: The Heroes Reborn roundtable, week one

Carla, Tom, Shane and JK assemble to discuss Marvel’s latest comics event.

Marvel kicked off a new Heroes Reborn miniseries/event last Wednesday, the first of eight issues (and several tie-ins) that tell the story of a Marvel Universe where the Avengers never assembled. Instead, the Squadron Supreme, which takes its direction from a Phil Coulson who is much more menacing than Clark Gregg ever was, is now the MU’s primary super team.

With the first issue by Jason Aaron, Ed McGuinness, Mark Morales and Matthew Wilson now out in the wild, Shane Bailey, Tom Bondurant, Carla Hoffman and I thought we’d discuss the event each week, roundtable style, like we did with Future State earlier this year.

So grab your copy of the first issue and let’s get to it …

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What Are You Reading? | ‘Fist of the North Star,’ ‘Atlantis Wasn’t Built for Tourists’ 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 — from older stuff like Usagi Yojimbo and Fist of the North Star to newer stuff like Atlantis Wasn’t Built for Tourists and even a balloonless book about Stan Lee you may have heard about.

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

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Winners announced for the 2021 Doug Wright Awards

S. Bédard, Veronica Post and more took home awards as Fred Kelly was inducted into the ‘Giants of the North’ hall of fame.

The Doug Wright Awards, which honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics,” presented their 2021 awards last night during a livestream, which you can find embedded below.

Author Margaret Atwood, cartoonist David Collier, last year’s Nipper winner Sylvia Nickerson and author/teacher Emily Pohl-Weary were on hand to present the awards during a ceremony hosted by Don McKellar. R. Sikoryak was on hand once again to “live” draw the ceremony, and the evening also included tributes to Annie Koyama of Koyama Press and Bill Wright, the son of Doug Wright, who died in December.

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Dark Horse will wrap up ‘She Can Fly’ with a graphic novel

The third chapter of Christopher Cantwell and Martín Morazzo’s Berger Books title will arrive all at once, in October.

Christopher Cantwell, Martín Morazzo and Miroslav Mrva will soar once more with the final volume of She Can Fly in October. She Can Fly: Fight or Flight will be released as an original graphic novel through Dark Horse’s Berger Books imprint, wrapping up the story of Luna — who finally gets to fly.

“Luna finally gets to fly, and we fly with her in this storytelling tour-de-force from Christopher, Martin and Mirsolav,” said Karen Berger, who oversees the Berger Books imprint. “It’s an emotional and thrilling finale that totally captured my heart.”

She Could Fly debuted as a miniseries back in 2018, and was followed by a second miniseries, She Could Fly: The Lost Pilot, in 2019. While both were released as single issues and then later collected, the third volume will be released as a single collection, much like the finales of two other Berger Books titles, Invisible Kingdom and The Seeds.

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