‘Monstress,’ ‘Saga,’ ‘On a Sunbeam’ among the 2019 Hugo Awards finalists

‘Abbott,’ Paper Girls’ and ‘Black Panther: Long Live the King’ round out this year’s nominations in the the ‘Best Graphic Story’ category.

The nominees for the 2019 Hugo Awards have been announced, including the “Best Graphic Story” category. This year’s nominees include three comics from Image, one from Marvel, one from BOOM! Studios and a graphic novel from First Second.

Presented annually since 1955, The Hugo Awards recognize the best science fiction in books, comics, movies, TV and more. The Hugo Awards are voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Convention every year. The Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story has been awarded since 2009, with previous winners including volumes of Saga, Ms. Marvel, Girl Genius and Sandman: Overture. Monstress won the award for the last two years and is up for the award again this year.

This year’s nominees are:

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Smash Pages Q&A: Diana Chu

The award-winning cartoonist discusses her work on the latest Patti Smith-influenced issue of “Ley Lines.”

Diana Chu is a cartoonist and illustrator based in Milwaukee, who in recent years has made an impressive body of comics and zines including Where Everything is Music, Woolies, No Mames Guey, Cloud Houseand Sudden Death. She was awarded a Gold Medal by the Society of Illustrators at last year’s MoCCA Festival.

Her new project, which comes out next month, is the new issue of Ley Lines. The issue is about Patti Smith and music, but it’s also about Jimi Hendrix, Dante Alighieri and Henri Rousseau. Chu is an artist who is not especially interested in narrative, but she’s fascinated in mood and design in interesting ways. She was kind enough to open up and talk about her work in process.

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Sharing is caring: ‘Care Bears’ coming from IDW this July

New series by Agnes Garbowska, Matthew Erman and Nadia Shammas debuts in July.

IDW has picked up another kid-friendly comic license. At WonderCon this weekend, they announced a new Care Bears series by Agnes Garbowska, Matthew Erman and Nadia Shammas, set to debut in July.

“I am extremely excited to be working on Care Bears since it was such a huge part of my childhood and impacted me greatly. I hope the series brings the same love and joy to new fans as it did for me,” Garbowska said in the press release.

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‘Pope Hats’ returns in June

New issue of the critically acclaimed series will feature an autobiographical story from Hartley Lin.

The award-winning, critically acclaimed, darling of 2018 “best of” lists returns with a new issue this summer, as AdHouse Books announces Pope Hats #6 will be published in June.

This will be the first issue that creator Hartley Lin, formerly known as Ethan Rilley, releases under his real name. Lin began using his real name with the publication of Young Frances last year, which collects four of the five previous issues of the series

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DC’s Walmart-exclusive stories headed to comic shops

DC Comics announced at WonderCon that stories by Brian Michael Bendis, Tom King and others will be released in the direct market.

DC Comics answered a question at WonderCon that’s been in the minds of readers and retailers — will the stories they’ve released exclusively to Walmart ever be collected and available in comic shops?

The answer is yes, as DC announced at their publisher’s panel today that stories like Brian Michael Bendis and Nick Derington’s Batman: Universe will be collected and released in the direct market.

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Trust Top Shelf to deliver a new Shannon Wheeler collection

‘Why Did You Trust Him?’ brings more single panel comics from the creator of ‘Sh*t My President Says’ and ‘Too Much Coffee Man.’

Top Shelf Comix will release a new collection of Shannon Wheeler comics in August, making us all ask, “Why Did We Trust Him?“

The creator of Too Much Coffee Man took home an Eisner Award for his 2011 collection, I Thought You Would Be Funnier. And now he’s taking a break from focusing on President Donald Trump and the sh*t he says (just kidding; check his Twitter account!) to release another collection that includes comics on “relationships, social norms, cats, dogs, food and himself.”

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Rodríguez + Adams re-imagine ‘The Island of Dr. Moreau’

Announced at WonderCon, IDW will release the story in two parts, starting in July.

For a while now artist Gabriel Rodríguez has been teasing his next project, and at this weekend’s WonderCon IDW announced what it is — a new take on The Island of Dr. Moreau written by IDW founder Ted Adams.

According to the press release, Adams and Rodríguez will present “an all-new interpretation” of the H.G. Wells classic, replacing the protagonist with a female lead. They’ll be joined by colorist Nelson Dániel and letterer Robbie Robbins on the two-part series.

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‘Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles’ wins a GLAAD Media Award

The comic by Mark Russell and Mike Feehan was recognized in a ceremony this week in Los Angeles.

The DC Comics revival of several classic Hanna Barbera cartoons as comics has brought some interesting results — and now it’s brought them a GLAAD Media Award.

Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles took home the award last night in the Outstanding Comic Book category. The comic re-imagined the pink cougar as a gay playwright in the 1950s dealing with McCarthyism and the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

The comic was created by writer Mark Russell, penciller Mike Feehan, inker Mark Morales, colorist Paul Mounts and editors Marie Javins, Diego Lopez and Brian Cunningham.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Alex Law

The creator of ‘Bubblegum Lovers’ discusses making comics, having two Twitter accounts and more.

Alex Law has been making comics for as long as they remember, but over the past few years they’ve posted online a series of comics and illustrations like Bubblegum Lovers, Voluntary Feminization, The Cutest Gangbang and others that play with and question ideas and assumptions about gender and gender roles. Some of the work is sexually explicit and some not, some takes the form of comics, some of it is illustration, but what unites them is this sensibility and this very casual matter of factness about subverting some of these ideas around gender and sexuality. The work manages to be sexy and cute, thoughtful and funny, and sometimes startling in how those come together and play out.

Recently Law posted two comics pointing out certain tropes around female heroines and villains, and they were thoughtful and pointed at how the genre has handled certain tropes. They’ve gotten some flack for them online unfortunately, but I reached out to Law to talk about their work, drawing sex and why they have two Twitter accounts.

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It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood … and the neighborhood is Asgard

Thor meets Mr. Rogers in a team-up for the ages.

There’s a really fun fan comic making its way around the internet that features an expected but very welcome team-up — Thor and Mr. Rogers.

It’s written by Matthew Wisner and was turned into a comic by the artist known as Twistwood, creator of Captain Macbastard. It may not be canon, but it’ll strike you like lightning right in the feels.

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Rodriguez +Lopez kill it in these ‘History of the Marvel Universe’ preview pages

New series written by Mark Waid will cover everything from the Big Bang until the ‘twilight of existence.’

During C2E2 last weekend, Marvel announced a new project by Mark Waid, Javier Rodriguez and Alvaro Lopez — History of the Marvel Universe, which will detail exactly what the title implies. According to Marvel, the comic “will go all the way back to the Big Bang and the beginning of time and conclude with the twilight of existence.”

And boy, are Rodriguez and Lopez bringing their “A” game on these preview pages. It’s not surprising, of course; they brought their vibrant visual style to Spider-Woman, Exiles and other titles, but these pages in particular really blew me away when I saw them.

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New Originals title from Zub + Dunbar debuts on comiXology

Jim Zub and Max Dunbar team up on ‘Stone Star,’ a five-issue miniseries.

They’ve been teasing it for days on Twitter, and today comiXology stealth-released a new title as part of their Originals line — Stone Star, by Jim Zub and Max Dunbar.

The science fiction story is set on a nomadic space ship called Stone Star that provides entertainment/arena-style combat to various planets, and stars a young thief, Dail, who gets in over his head — as young thieves tend to do.

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