Smash Pages Q&A | Stjepan Šejić explains ‘Fine Print’

The acclaimed creator of ‘Sunstone’ talks about his newest project, creating a supernatural world, what makes a good sex scene and more.

Stjepan Šejić was an acclaimed artist who spent years drawing comics like Witchblade, Artifacts and Aphrodite IX before he wrote and drew Sunstone, which has become a smash hit. The series has been acclaimed for his skill at telling a romance story, and the realistic and thoughtful details with which he portrays BDSM.

In recent years Šejić has been busier than ever. DC’s Black Label imprint released Harleen, but Šejić has made clear that his focus is on creator-owned projects, which include Sunstone, Death Vigil and The Queen and The Woodborn.

Top Cow will release the first book of a new series from Šejić, Fine Print on Nov. 24. The story bears some resemblance to some of his other books (and is part of a shared universe of other books by Šejić and his wife Linda Šejić’s book Punderworld) but Šejić’s art continues to be masterful in his ability to convey so much through body language and facial expressions. The book manages to be a story about mythology and a tale of a self-destructive antihero, but has the same wry sense of humor that Šejić’s work is known for. Startling and laugh-out-loud funny, the first volume of Fine Print is some of Šejić’s best work, and he was kind enough to answer a few questions about it.

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Ennis + Holden take flight in ‘The Lion & the Eagle’ next year

The war comic kicks off in February.

AfterShock Comics has announced a new prestige-format war comic coming from the team of Garth Ennis and PJ Holden next year.

The Lion and the Eagle will tell the story of the Chindits, a British special forces unit active in Burma during the Japanese occupation in 1944.

“The conflict between the British and Japanese in Burma is almost lost to history now; indeed, the British soldiers who fought there came to refer to themselves as The Forgotten Army,” Ennis said. “That’s partly what drew me to their story, a chance to keep alive the memories of the men who faced Imperial Japan. There’s also the political aspect, as the two warring nations find themselves fighting for possession of Burma and India, two countries who by and large would have preferred to have neither of these foreign powers on their soil.”

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Fund Me Tuesday | ‘Outrage’ by Fabian Nicieza + Reilly Brown

Help bring the Webtoon comic to print by pledging by Nov. 12.

Fabian Nicieza and Reilly Brown’s creator-owned comic Outrage started life as a webcomic on Webtoon, and now a print collection is being crowdfunded via the publisher Rocketship.

Outrage Volume 1 will collect the entire 26 chapter run of the first season of the Outrage webcomic, running 150 pages. As they have with other collections of webcomics, Rocketship has redesigned the pages for print.

“After our years on Marvel’s Cable & Deadpool comic, Reilly Brown and I had been looking to work together again and we both thought the silliness and seriousness of Outrage would be a perfect fit,” Nicieza said on the project’s Kickstarter page. “The digital comic debuted on Webtoon in the fall of 2018 and was an instant success among readers with slightly unhinged inclinations.”

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‘How to Create Comics the Marvel Way’ by Mark Waid coming next year

The guide will walk readers through the production process of creating a comic.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to create comics for Marvel, Mark Waid is going to show you how.

Simon & Schuster will publish How to Create Comics the Marvel Way next summer. The guide will walk readers through the comic book production process from pencil roughs, inking, coloring, as well as how comic book illustration has been revolutionized through advances in digital/desktop technology.

“Putting a book like this together is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, and it’s thrilling,” Waid told Marvel.com. “My goal was to write the kind of how-to I wish I’d had when I first started out. No matter what discipline is calling to you — writing, art, coloring, lettering, or all of the above — you’ll come away from How to Create Comics the Marvel Way with the tools and guidance you’ll need to bring your favorite heroes and villains to life on the page.”

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comiXology Originals stealth-launched ‘.Self’ by Sebela + McGee today

See what happens when your life is saved to the Cloud — and then hacked.

ComiXology today stealth-released a brand new Originals title from Christopher Sebela (High Crimes, Crowded), and Cara McGee (Dodge City, Black Canary: Ignite), the five-issue miniseries .Self. They’re joined by colorist Rebecca Nalty and letterer Aditya Bidika.

“In this new era of crypto and NFTs I wanted to explore the idea that even we ourselves are capable of being exploitable digital assets,” Sebela said. “In .Self, we play with the concept that you can see yourself in different bodies that have chosen to follow different paths and dreams you may have let go of over the course of your life either because the dream was silly, or you changed, or life just didn’t allow for it.”

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Smash Pages Q&A | Siena Cherson Siegel and Mark Siegel

The creators of ‘Tiny Dancer’ their approach to the memoir, the ways that comics can capture dance and working together in a difficult time.

Siena Cherson Siegel and Mark Siegel are the authors of the new graphic memoir Tiny Dancer, which is a companion of sorts to their earlier collaboration, the picture book To Dance, which was released in 2006. In the years since, Mark has become known for books like Sailor Twain, or the Mermaid in the Hudson, and for his work as the editorial director of First Second Books. 

In Tiny Dancer, Siena talks about her youth as a dancer and her elite education before being injured as a teenager. It is a beautiful and moving story that offers insight into an art form and life that few people know. It’s a complicated and at times heartbreaking story that ends in a beautiful  and emotional way, featuring some of the best work of Mark Siegel’s career to date. I spoke with the couple over Zoom from their home in New York’s Hudson Valley about passion and time, the ways that comics can capture dance and working together in a difficult time.

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Lemire + Sorrentino announce ‘The Bone Orchard Mythos’ for 2022

The ‘Gideon Falls’ creators will reunite for a new horror project next year from Image Comics.

On Halloween Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino announced their creepy new Image Comics project, The Bone Orchard Mythos, which will kick off in 2022.

The two creators took to social media to announce the new title with a short teaser trailer:

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Can’t Wait for Comics | ‘Dark Knights of Steel’ draw their swords

New comics arrive this week from Chip Zdarsky, Jacob Phillips, Tom King, Greg Smallwood, Tom Taylor, Mark Millar, Stuart Immonen, Mike Mignola 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 sees the return of the Human Target and the Magic Order, as well as debuts from DC, Image, Vault and more.

You can visit Diamond’s website for this week’s almost complete list of new comics arriving in stores. The Lunar Distribution home page has DC’s releases and the comiXology new releases page for what’s available digitally.

I should also add that the list of what is actually arriving at your local shop can vary from what’s on anyone’s official website for a myriad of reasons — so always check with your comics retailer for the final word on availability.

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Sunday Comics | Happy Halloween!

Check out spooky webcomics by Janie Lee, Grant Snider, Sarah Hopkins and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

It’s my last legal day of the year to share spooky things with the universe, so I thought I’d dedicate this edition of Sunday Comics to all things Halloween. Or, to be more specific, to Halloween-themed webcomics, whether they provide tricks, treats or just plain old creeps.

Let’s start with Camp Counselor Jason, a series of comics by Junkmix, aka Janie Lee, that features a different take on Jason Voorhees and other horror icons. In Jason’s case, the Cap Creek Lake murder machine from the Friday the 13th movies isn’t the maniac you find in the movies — instead, he “becomes a camp counselor to make sure no kids ever drown on his watch.”

He’s still got his machete and hockey mask, though.

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A new Iron Fist will debut in February

A new character will inherit the mantle from a powerless Danny Rand.

Marvel has announced that Danny Rand, who lost his powers in the excellent Heart of the Dragon miniseries, will pass on the mantle of Iron Fist to a new hero next year.

Iron Fist by Alyssa Wong and Michael YG will debut in February, and the five-issue miniseries will show the “hero’s journey” of the new Iron Fist, whose idnetity Marvel is keeping under wraps.

“It’s an incredible honor to introduce a new Iron Fist to the Marvel Universe. I’m excited to delve into the comic’s rich mythos and build on it. What does it mean for someone to take up the mantle of the Iron Fist right now, today? As a newcomer, how does one interact with legacy, and how does one honor it while forging a new path?” Wong told Marvel.com.

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Twitter schools San Francisco MOMA on Roy Lichtenstein

Happy birthday to the artist/swiper who copied comics panels by Russ Heath, Jack Kirby and many others.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SF MOMA, took to Twitter earlier this week to wish a happy birthday to Roy Lichtenstein, the pop artist who came to fame in the 1960s and passed away in 1997.

Lichtenstein is notorious in comics circles, and not in a good way. Many of his paintings were copies of comic book panels by artists like Jack Kirby, Russ Heath and Irv Novick, and rarely did he credit the original artists, nor were they compensated. As such, many comic artists and fans have called him a copycat at best and a plagiarist at worst. (Well, maybe not “at worst;” I’m sure much has probably been said about him that’s worse than that).

SF MOMA, however, seems to have a different opinion. In their description on social media, they said: “Lichtenstein transferred the clichéd comic-book compositions to the canvas with a projector and simplified them; the resulting paintings mimic the appearance of four-color printing, despite being meticulously handmade.”

“Clichéd comic-book compositions.” Yep, they really tweeted that out.

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Fund Me Thursday | Headless Shakespeare Press kickstarts their 2022 projects

Craig Hurd-McKenney, Rick Geary and more contribute to the 2022 titles.

Headless Shakespeare Press, the imprint run by Craig Hurd-McKenney, is currently crowdsourcing funds to publish their 2022 line-up. You can visit Kickstarter to back them.

With this Kickstarter, Hurd-McKenney is hoping to fund the publication of four different projects — three he’s written, along with one written and drawn by Rick Geary (A Treasury of Victorian Murder).

Smash Pages’ Alex Dueben spoke with Hurd-McKenney about his return to publishing a few years back. Since then, he’s published several chapters of Some Strange Disturbances, a supernatural Victorian story by Hurd-McKenney, Gervasio and Carlos Aon, as well as the final chapter of the Xeric Grant-funded The Brontes: Infernal Angria drawn by Geary.

Here’s a look at the four projects:

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