Image announces a sequel to Zdarsky, Anka + Wilson’s ‘The White Trees’

The trio of creators returns to the fantasy world they created with ‘The Whisper Queen,’ which begins in May.

Back in 2019, Chip Zdarsky, Kris Anka and Matt Wilson introduced the fantasy world of Blacksand in the two-issue Image Comics miniseries The White Trees. They’ll return to that world in The Whisper Queen, a three-issue miniseries that begins in May.

“The White Trees is the best project I’ve ever been involved in, thanks to the gorgeous work by Kris and Matt,” Zdarsky said. “We always knew there were more stories to tell in the world of Blacksand, so getting the gang back together for another wild, action-filled adventure was a no-brainer. It’s years in the making, and I hope everyone is ready to find out what happened next in The Whisper Queen!”

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Deadpool and Wolverine team up in ‘WWIII’ this May

Joe Kelly and Adam Kubert return to two characters they know very well in this three-issue miniseries.

Joe Kelly, one of the creators who helped define the character of Deadpool, and Adam Kubert, who has drawn more than his fair share of panels featuring Wolverine, will bring the two characters together in Deadpool & Wolverine: WWIII this May.

The announcement landing this week is perfectly timed, in a “Why didn’t he propose to her after the game?” kind of way, what with the new trailer that was released last Sunday.

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Taylor + Redondo’s final Nightwing arc begins in May

‘We wanted to show how high this flying Grayson could soar. Now, it’s time for him to fall.’

It’s been almost three years now since Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo took over Nightwing, taking an approach that wasn’t “Not Batman,” as my colleague Tom Bondurant put it when reviewing their first issue, but instead, was “Fun Batman.” I think the title has stuck to that ideal pretty well, and now we’ll see if they can stick the landing.

DC has announced that Nightwing #114 is the first of a five-part arc that will wrap up their run on the title. And thanks to the villain Heartless, it could be the end of Nightwing’s career as a superhero.

“When Bruno Redondo and I first took on this series, we felt it was the perfect time for a big Nightwing story,” Taylor said. “We wanted to show the world why Dick Grayson was an A-lister in our eyes. It was the right time for a charming, entertaining, positive force for good pushing back against corruption and greed. It was also time for Dick and Babs to get a puppy.”

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Juni Ba’s ‘Boy Wonder’ series will launch in May

The DC Black Label series will feature Damian Wayne teaming up with the other Robins.

Juni Ba, creator of the wonderful Djeliya from TKO Studios and Monkey Meat for Image Comics, will take Robin in a fun direction this May in Boy Wonder, a Black Label series from DC that kicks off in May.

Ba is joined by colorist Chris O’Halloran and letterer Aditya Bidikar on the five-issue series.

“There‘s a real drive here to capture some adventurous fun as well as heartfelt humanity,” Ba said on social media. “The story of a kid who was hurt a lot, raised wrong, and who has to learn to navigate conflicting sets of expectations from both his families, with fear of not being good enough for either.”

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It’s open season on dragons in Orlando + Huang’s ‘The Scale Trade’

Steve Orlando and Megan Huang hunt the dragon hunters in the new title coming from Magma Comix in May.

Now that we’re a couple weeks into the Year of the Dragon, Magma Comix has officially announced The Scale Trade, the new modern fantasy series by Steve Orlando and Megan Huang. Magma mentioned it last month when the publisher started unveiling their 2024 slate.

In any event, the new series sounds great — set in a modern world where dragons still exist but are high on the endangered species list, one man takes a stand against the poachers and corrupt governments that want their scales.

“The Scale Trade was absolutely influenced by the depravity of the illegal exotic meat trade, poaching, and specifically the street-level vigilance against the abuse of horses and sale of horse meat in a variety of parts of the country,” said Orlando. “We wanted to talk about these things, but also thrill and excite on an elevated scale (no pun intended). So we built a world where dragons were part of the animal kingdom, where THEY, these creatures that awe us, were also some of the most valuable commodities in the world. It’s a modern fantasy—not high fantasy or low sword and sorcery. At the end of the day it’s about the way we as a species interact with nature—concepts bigger and older than us—and how we tend to commodify life on this planet. At the core, The Scale Trade is about heroic animal rescue. A man and his dog… if his dog was a majestic flying lizard.”

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Tom Waltz makes his Marvel debut on ‘Wolverine: Blood Hunt’

The ‘Last Ronin’ writer joins artist Juan José Ryp on a tie-in miniseries for this summer’s ‘Blood Hunt’ event.

Wolverine’s recent troubles with the vampire nation will only get worse, as Tom Waltz and Juan José Ryp send him head first into Marvel’s Blood Hunt event this summer.

Wolverine: Blood Hunt will “conclude Logan’s private war against the vampire nation,” which has been a running plot thread in Benjamin Percy’s work on the ongoing Wolverine title.

The miniseries marks the Marvel debut for Waltz, the co-writer of the white-hot Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin.

“I’ve spent much of my career writing about iconic mutants, so having my Marvel debut be a chance to put ‘the best there is’ through a vampiric bloodstorm in Wolverine: Blood Hunt is an absolute thrill of a lifetime,” Waltz said. “It’s made even better by getting to do it alongside the amazingly talented Juan José Ryp, top-notch colorist GURU-eFX, and stellar editors Mark Basso and Drew Baumgartner! Blood, bullets, claws, and fangs—nothing gets held back in our four-issue gauntlet of gore!”

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Spidey hunts for Morbius in ‘Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt’

Spider-Man and his fanged frenemy star in a ‘Blood Hunt’ tie-in series by Justina Ireland and Marcelo Ferreira.

Morbius the Living Vampire, Spider-Man’s sometimes enemy, sometimes ally, may be the only hope Marvel’s heroes have in saving the world from the vampiric apocalypse in Blood Hunt.

We ‘ll find out for sure in Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt, one of eight tie-in miniseries that will arrive in May. Justina Ireland and Marcelo Ferreira will send Spider-Man, Misty Knight and the Lizard on a quest to find Morbius.

“Getting to write Morbius, The Living Vampire, has been a lot of fun,” Ireland said. “He’s always been a delightful foil to Spider-Man and other heroes of the Marvel Universe, and I hope I can capture the determination to change one’s fate that I’ve always loved about the character. Well, that and the brooding.”

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Smash Pages Q&A | ‘The Omega Eleven’ creators James Aquilone + Zac Atkinson

The duo are crowdfunding their latest collaboration, a comic about history’s greatest thieves attempting to steal the Philosopher’s Stone from Merlin.

What do you do when you need to steal a powerful artifact from history’s greatest wizard? Assemble a team of history’s greatest thieves, of course. That’s the premise behind The Omega Eleven, a five-issue series by Bram Stoker Award-winning writer James Aquilone and Young Justice and Teen Titans artist Zac Atkinson.

The story follows time traveler Doctor Omega and his companion Jack Dawkins, aka The Artful Dodger, as they recruit a team to travel to Camelot to steal the Philosopher’s Stone from Merlin. 

The campaign to fund the first issue of The Omega Eleven is live on Kickstarter, where it has already met its funding goal. This isn’t Aquilone’s first crowdfunding rodeo — through his publishing company Monstrous Books, he’s funded projects like the Kolchak: The Night Stalker 50th anniversary graphic novel, the prose collection Dead Detectives Society and the first issue of the pulp/horror-themed Monstrous Magazine. A new, second issue of Monstrous is a reward in this current campaign.

Aquilone was kind enough to answer my questions, and even pulled in Atkinson on some of them as well.

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Thomas + Matthews team for the family crime drama ‘Mugshots’

The first issue of the miniseries arrives in May from Mad Cave Studios.

Writer Jordan Thomas and artist Chris Matthews will team up on Mugshots, a new miniseries coming from Mad Cave Studios in May. They’re joined by letterer by Lucas Gattoni on a crime series with a distinctly English flair.

Set in Brighton, the story starts with a kidnapping and soon devolves into “family trauma, betrayal, murder and revenge.”

“Mugshots is an incredibly personal story for me. It’s set around where I grew up, contains experiences I’ve had and features characters based on people I’ve known, and it’s a collaboration with one of my best friends whom I’ve known since we were 11-years-old,” said Thomas. “Mainstream U.S. comics are full of crime stories set in the States but not many set in England by English creators, so I’m excited to see the reaction to this series we’ve poured our hearts and souls into and so happy that Mad Cave are the publisher putting the book out as they never put any restraints on what we wanted to do. It’s a tough, violent, complex, and sometimes funny 36-page per issue 4-parter – not many publishers out there would let you do that. It’s gonna be wild.”

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Rest in peace, Paul Neary

The former editor-in-chief of Marvel UK and veteran artist passed away on Feb. 10 after a long illness.

Paul Neary, the former Marvel UK editor-in-chief and artist of Captain America, Excalibur, The Ultimates and more, has passed away at the age of 74. Neary died of a long illness on Feb. 10, as reported by his longtime colleague Alan Davis and shared by Paul Levitz.

“In a career of more than 50 years Paul earned international respect and recognition in numerous roles within the comic book industry,” Davis shared. “Paul could write, pencil, ink, colour, letter and edit. Skills he learned from studying the medium with an academic zeal.”

Neary was born in Bournemouth, England in 1949, and would attend college at Leeds University. According to Davis, Neary traveled to New York over his first summer at university to try and break into the comics industry.

“Comics were an enthusiastic hobby for Paul when he moved to Leeds University to study for a degree in Metallurgy, but in his first summer break Paul travelled to New York, bluffed his way into Jim Warren’s office, and secured his first professional work on Eerie magazine,” Davis said.

Neary’s work would regularly appear in Eerie, where he drew the “Hunter” series, which was about a half-breed warrior who fights for survival on a weird, irradiated alternate Earth.

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Strange Academy enters the ‘Blood Hunt’ in May

School’s back in session, as Daniel José Older and Luigi Zagaria send the Strange Academy students on a scavenger hunt for the Darkhold.

The students from Strange Academy will return in May courtesy of writer Daniel José Older and artist Luigi Zagaria, as they engage with the bloodthirsty undead in this summer’s Blood Hunt.

“As a huge fan of the incredible work of Skottie Young and Humberto Ramos, I was beyond honored to be able to jump into the world of Strange Academy,” Older said. “And what better way to do it than in this epic crossover event? Truly a comic writer’s dream come true. I’ve spent the past couple weeks walking around my home city of New Orleans, dreaming up thrilling adventures for these kids, and I can’t wait to watch them come to life in Luigi Zagaria’s brilliant art.”

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The Midnight Sons reunite to battle the vampire horde during ‘Blood Hunt’

Blade, two Ghost Riders and more will come together in a new miniseries by Bryan Hill and Germán Peralta.

The Midnight Sons will rise once more as a part of Marvel’s vampire-infused summer crossover series, Blood Hunt.

Midnight Sons: Blood Hunt by writer Bryan Hill and artist Germán Peralta will bring together Blade, Johnny Blaze, Danny Ketch and more to not only battle vampires, but also “tragically spill the blood of one of their own.”

“FINALLY, the world realizes I’m a ‘horror guy’ and I’m grateful,” Hill said. “Working with Blade has been a blast, and what I’m doing with Midnight Sons is maybe even more ferocious than that. This event is really exciting, the hype is real, and what I have planned for this will hopefully satisfy fans of action… and terror.” 

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