Smash Pages Q&A: Gustavo Borges on ‘Petals’

The Brazilian creator discusses the American printing of his wordless tale, his webcomics and more.

Petals, the new book out from BOOM! Studios, isn’t a new release. Gustavo Borges, who wrote and drew the book, originally published it in his native Brazil in 2015. The book is presented as an oversized hardcover and the wordless tale owes as much to picture books as it does to comics. The story of three characters – two foxes and a bird – dealing with a hard winter, it manages to be both sweet and fable-like, but also serious. It’s a story about three people coming together to survive a long, difficult winter and the result is a book that is truly striking and moving.

This is Borges first book to be released here in the United States, but he’s been making comics for many years. He’s made webcomics like Edgar and A Entediante Vida de Morte Crens, and books like Escolhas and Até o Fim. Borges was kind enough to answer a few questions about the book.

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Inktober Spotlight: Colleen Coover’s hands and feet (really!)

The co-creator of ‘Bandette’ participates in Inktober in a unique way this year.

October is also known as Inktober in artist circles. During Inktober, artists from all over the world create a different ink drawing every day of the month. While the official Inktober site provides a list of “prompts” to help inspire artists, many of them choose their own themes.

With many comic artists once again participating this year — you can find a lot of them on Twitter or Tumblr using the #inktober hashtag, and we’ve been posting a bunch on our own Tumblr — we thought we’d spotlight a few of the fun ones we’ve seen so far.

Today’s spotlight is on Colleen Coover, creator of Banana Sunday, Small Favors and Bandette, with Paul Tobin.

Coover has taken a different approach to Inktober — she’s drawing hands and feet, all month long! She’s even shared a video of her process for one of the pieces, which you can check out below:

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Smash Pages Q&A: Craig Hurd-McKenney on ‘The Magic If’ and more

The publisher of Headless Shakespeare Press discusses his return to publishing, his latest Kickstarter and more.

Craig Hurd-McKenney was writing, editing and publishing comics for years in the early 2000s. He edited and published the anthology Stalagmite, collaborated with Rick Geary on multiple books and received a Xeric grant to publish The Brontes: Infernal Angria. After many years away, Hurd-McKenney has come back to comics with a new printing of a comic he’s written and published through his own Headless Shakespeare Press, with some other comics available for free on the site, a Kickstarter for a new book and plans for at least two more books a year for the next few years.

The Magic If is a departure for Hurd-McKenney. While most of his work is fantastic, this is a comic about a relationship involving a self-destructive magician, and the result is a deeply felt story about jealousy and anger, and a queer romance that isn’t like anything else on comics stands right now.

I asked why he wrote about the Brontes, why he left comics and coming back after years away. Hurd-McKenney is also currently running a Kickstarter campaign for Some Strange Disturbances, a Victorian Horror comic featuring artwork by The Magic If art team, Gervasio and Carlos Aon. It went live after this interview was conducted.

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GWAR returns to comics with new graphic novel and website launch

Gwar partners with publisher Renegade Arts Entertainment to release ‘The Enormogantic Fail.’

Gwar: Enormogantic Fail
Gwar: The Enormogantic Fail graphic novel

Following the success of the Kickstarter project Orgasmageddon (which had 666 backers), GWAR returns with more mayhem. This time, they are teaming up with publisher Renegade Arts Entertainment, offering the new graphic novel GWAR: The Enormogantic Fail.

The book synopsis promises more GWAR-ish alien adventures: “The Master is at it again in a fierce battle against Cardinal Syn. To get into the Master’s good graces, the Destructo brothers have trapped GWAR in order to interrogate them to find the key to destroying Cardinal Syn once and for all. Will Sawborg and Bozo Destructo get the answers they need? Can GWAR escape their clutches? Will Cardinal Syn destroy them all? And what really happened when GWAR were banished to earth?”

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‘Criminal’ returns as a monthly series

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ award-winning series continues in January.

Since debuting in 2006, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have created four separate volumes of Criminal through two publishers, multiple awards and countless glowing reviews. Now the duo returns in January with an ongoing Criminal title.

“Criminal was where Sean and I really established our brand as a team, and while writing My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies (which takes place in the Criminal world), it just suddenly felt like the perfect time to bring it back to the monthly comic shelves. But this time I wanted it to be different—not just serialized graphic novels, but also single-issue stories and even the odd two-issue story sometimes,” said Brubaker. “I love the elasticity that Criminal allows me—because this world we’ve created gives me a place to tell any kind of crime story and to focus on different characters, both old and new—and I want to really embrace the monthly comics format, and try to create a series where readers will never know what’s coming next from issue to issue.”

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Comics Lowdown: Alex Ross’ ‘DayGlo’ Fantastic Four pitch

Plus: Bill Jemas, Liza Donnelly and an IKEA comic!

Artist Alex Ross pitched Marvel on taking over the Fantastic Four last year, and you can find his pitch inside Marvelocity, a coffee-table book that highlights the artist’s Marvel work. The 13th Dimension reviews the book and shares several pages from the 2017 pitch. “It just goes to show you that even the biggest talents in comics don’t always get what they want – and what Ross wanted was an eye-popping comic that echoed the DayGlo ’60s while offering something fresh,” reviewer Dan Greenfield writes.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Jamila Rowser

The co-founder of Geek Girl Brunch and former Girl Gone Geek blogger discusses two comic projects, ‘Wash Day’ and ‘Wobbledy 3000.’

Jamila Rowser is familiar to a lot of people in the comics community because she created Straight Outta Gotham, co-founded Geek Girl Brunch and launched the blog Girl Gone Geek. This fall though she’s doing something different, turning her attention to writing comics.

Wash Day is a comic drawn by Robyn Smith which was kickstarted earlier this year and is out now. In addition to an English language edition, there’s a Spanish language edition of the comic, Dia de Lavado, which is also available. Rowser is following that up with her second comic, Wobbledy 3000, which is drawn by Sabii Borno and is out this month as a digital comic from Black Josei Press.

The comics are very different, made with different artists and approaches, but both of them demonstrate Rowser’s skill at dialogue, her subtle talent of characterization and, through this, a very nuanced and lovely consideration of friendship. One book may be realistic and set in the here and now, and the other is science fantasy, but they are both an effort to tell slice of life narratives, and explore the lives of characters who are rarely explored in comics. Taken together, the comics show Rowser is very interested in finding ways to use the medium to convey and explore personal experience, to both break new ground and be a part of the medium and its traditions. I caught Rowser in between shows, and she was kind enough to answer a few questions.

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Inktober Spotlight: Benjamin Dewey’s super-pets

The ‘Beasts of Burden’ artist creates Jean Greyhound, The Green Labtern, Barkseid, Mews Wayne and more for Inktober.

October is also known as Inktober in artist circles. During Inktober, artists from all over the world create a different ink drawing every day of the month. While the official Inktober site provides a list of “prompts” to help inspire artists, many of them choose their own themes.

With many comic artists once again participating this year — you can find a lot of them on Twitter or Tumblr using the #inktober hashtag, and we’ve been posting a bunch on our own Tumblr — we thought we’d spotlight a few of the fun ones we’ve seen so far.

Today we spotlight Benjamin Dewey, the artist of Beasts of Burden: Wise Dogs and Eldritch Men and The Autumnlands, and the creator of the Tragedy series. Given his resume, it makes sense that for Inktober he’d focus on turning pets into superheroes — or turning superheroes into household pets. Take your pick.

Check out some of his Inktober contributions below; you can see more on his Twitter feed, and you can buy several of them as prints on his Etsy shop.

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Whitta, Robertson reinterpret a Charles Dickens classic in January

‘Oliver’ from Image Comics imagines Oliver Twist as a post-apocalyptic superhero.

Screenwriter Gary Whitta and The Boys artist Darick Robertson are putting a “twist” on Charles Dickens’ classic Oliver Twist — by reimagining him as a post-apocalyptic superhero fighting to liberate a war-ravaged England.

“Oliver has been more than 15 years in the making, so it’s a particular thrill to finally see it on its way to a comics store near you, and at a time when it feels more relevant than ever,” Whitta said in a press release. “I couldn’t be more excited to be working with my long-time friend Darick Robertson, whose artwork I’ve admired ever since his groundbreaking work on Transmetropolitan.”

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Ridley’s ‘The Other History of the DC Universe’ starts with Black Lightning

The screenwriter/producer for ’12 Years a Slave’ will write a ‘largely prose-driven’ series featuring heroes from ‘from different disenfranchised groups.’

DC Comics has revealed more details about The Other History of the DC Universe, a five-issue “largely prose-driven” series written by John Ridley.

According to the press release, “The Other History of the DC Universe will look at notable events from DC Universe history through a different perspective, telling the equally vital stories of heroes who have been there throughout the DCU’s past, but come from different disenfranchised groups.” The first issue will spotlight Black Lightning and will feature illustrations by Alex Dos Diaz.

The series will run five issues, and subsequent issues will feature Karen and Mal Duncan, Katana and Renee Montoya. It’ll be published under DC’s Black Label imprint.

Here’s the first issue’s cover and solicitation information; it arrives in January:

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Detective Wyrd is on the case at Dark Horse

Curt Pires and Antonio Fuso team up for a ‘James Bond meets the X-Files’ miniseries.

Curt Pires and Antonio Fuso have a new series coming from Dark Horse next year, and it’s weird — or Wyrd, actually.

Wyrd, is a four-issue comics series that’s decribed as “James Bond meets The X Files,” and features Pitor Wyrd — “an un-aging, invincible detective with a penchant for the strange who steps in to assist…for a fee. Between a botched attempt at recreating a certain U.S. supersolider, a monster roaming the countryside and a trail of bodies, there is no case too big, too small, or too weird.”

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Comics Lowdown: Chuck Wendig says Marvel fired him because of negative tweets

After posting a controversial interview, Bleeding Cool gets a new editor in chief! Plus Steve Ellis, Alex Ross, MAD Magazine and more!

Comics writer and novelist Chuck Wendig says he has been fired from Marvel “because of the negativity and vulgarity that my tweets bring. Seriously, that’s what Mark [Paniccia], the editor said. It was too much politics, too much vulgarity, too much negativity on my part.” Wendig had just been announced as the writer of Shadow of Vader, with artist Greg Smallwood, and said he had another as-yet-unannounced Star Wars comic in the works.

In addition to various Star Wars comics, Wendig also wrote Star Wars: Aftermath, a novel that included LGBT characters and was one of the first books published after Lucasfilm ended the “expanded universe” Star Wars books. After it was published, Wendig said he received “TONS” of harassment online — “harassment that has gone on for years, harassment that has required me to contact local police and warn them of SWATting attempts, harassment across all corners of the Internet, here, FB, Reddit, YouTube. Some of it was bot stuff, obviously, or sock puppets, but some of it was pretty creepy, and very personal.”

This story has been reported on widely, with stories from Deadline, io9, the Verge, Vulture and more. Update: Wendig has a post answering many of the questions he’s received since he went public with this news.

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