The Comics Super Blog!
Comics gets a wake-up call, Wonder Woman gets a long-lost brother and Ted Rall gets SLAPPed.
It’s like comics is going through its half-year review, and manga and kids’ graphic novels get high marks but Marvel and DC get a low “needs improvement.” Heidi MacDonald has a long but very readable article at The Beat summarizing what’s going on: Comics are thriving, but not monthly comics and not in comic shops:
Continue reading “Comics Lowdown | Bookscan charts, female readers and the Big Two”
‘Black,’ ‘Plume,’ ‘The Secret Loves of Geek Girls” and more get remixed as they return to the crowdfunding site for another go.
Kickstarter is giving new life to several of their past campaigns, including seven of them from the comics category.
“Kickstarter Gold” brings back projects by creators who were “specially selected for their creativity, ingenuity and past success on Kickstarter,” the site reads. “We’re spotlighting them because they do excellent work — and because creators who repeatedly use Kickstarter to support and sustain creative ventures are an integral part of our community’s ecosystem.”
Continue reading “Kickstarter ‘Gold’ brings back 7 comic projects”
A cartoonist gets his career back, manga and kids’ comics are booming, and a con veteran offers advice for first-timers
Trolling the Trolls: Your bizarre read for the day is Emma Grey Ellis’s account of the strange career of Ben Garrison, a libertarian political cartoonist who became a sort of real-life Pepe the Frog after alt-right trolls started altering his cartoons to include Nazi imagery and seeded the internet with fake stories:
New series from Image Comics launches in September.
Former “X-Men” writer Seth Peck is teaming with “The Beauty” artist Jeremy Haun on “The Realm,” a story about a post-apocalyptic Earth invaded by orcs, dragons and other Dungeons and Dragons monsters.
“Creator-owned comics are the only place you can tell stories like ‘The Realm’ exactly as you want them to be told,” Peck said in a statement. “You can have an F-14 take on a dragon in the skies over Chicago, or have a horde of orcs lay siege to the White House without worrying about special effects or budgets. At the same time, you can tell very intimate, emotional, and human stories and develop complicated, meaningful characters over the course of time. With ‘The Realm,’ Jeremy and I wanted to blend all the genres we enjoy, mix in plenty of action, and give readers something unique and exciting to look forward to each month.”
The duo will work with colorist Nick Filardi and letterer Thomas Mauer on the project, which launches in September.
“’The Realm’ is the book I’ve wanted to do my entire life,” said Haun. “It’s the perfect mash of everything I love to draw. Post-apocalyptic landscapes, dark magical citadels, machine gun-toting barbarians, unnamable horrors, DRAGONS—it doesn’t get more fun than this.”
Continue reading “Peck, Haun team for post-apocalyptic fantasy series ‘The Realm’”
Genndy Tartakovsky’s popular animated samurai returns in a new comic by Fabian Rangel Jr. and Warwick Johnson Cadwell.
Samurai Jack returns to comics this fall for a new series by Fabian Rangel Jr. and Warwick Johnson Cadwell, the team behind IDW’s recent “Helena Crash” series.
Titled “Quantum Jack,” the new series will send Jack to alternate realities with “his memories erased, but his spirit intact,” as he becomes the leader of a biker gang and more. It sounds kind of like “Quantum Leap,” only with Genndy Tartakovsky’s popular animated character doing the leaping.
Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder’s time-traveling teen returns this summer.
Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder’s Kickstarter-turned-Image Comics series “Rocket Girl” returns in August with issue #8.
“I don’t mean to sound alarmist, but everything we’ve done so far with ‘Rocket Girl’ has been leading up to these next few, completed issues,” said Reeder in a press release. “Major things are about to happen! And I for one wouldn’t want to hear the gossip second-hand at the water cooler.”
“Rocket Girl” debuted back in 2013, following a successful Kickstarter for the first issue. The book stars DaYoung Johansson, a teenaged cop from the future who goes back to 1986 to investigate “crimes against time.” The project followed the duo’s work on “Halloween Eve” and preceded their all-ages Marvel title, “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.”
“The Walking Dead” villain’s story from Image+ gets collected this fall.
The baddest bad guy from “The Walking Dead” started life on a different path, as Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard revealed in the pages of Image+ magazine. Now that story is being collected in “Here’s Negan!” this October, as Image Comics gives Lucille’s main man the hardcover treatment.
Continue reading “Negan’s origin story collected this October”
Michael May and Jason Copland discuss the massive collection of their giant monster series coming from Dark Horse, the future of the series and more.
Michael May and Jason Copland have been working on Kill All Monsters! for more than a decade now, and come July they — and you — will see all their work on it collected into an omnibus from Dark Horse Comics.
And in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I’ve been blogging with Michael in some form or fashion for about a decade now myself. So I’ve watched from ringside as KAM progressed from a webcomic to a Kickstarter project to a story in Dark Horse Presents and now to this giant-sized collection. It’s a fun story about an Earth overrun with giant monsters and the humans trying to take it back. I’m glad I’ve gotten to watch it come to life, just as I’m happy to talk with the two of them about the project’s origins and what comes next for this world they’ve created.
Continue reading “Smash Pages Q&A: May + Copland on ‘Kill All Monsters’ Omnibus”
Simon Spurrier and Caspar Wijngaard tell the story of teenage rebellion on a human-less Earth.
Simon Spurrier and Caspar Wijngaard are teaming up for a new “young adult” title called Angelic, which launches from Image Comics in September.
“Angelic’s about teenage flying monkeys having adventures in the far future, because that’s totally a genre now,” Spurrier said in a press release. “But in the best traditions of age-friendly fiction—think Pixar or Ghibli—there’s also a bunch of meaty themes beneath the fun: religion, parenthood, technology and responsibility, it’s all in the mix. Ultimately it’s a tale about the Earth—after us. And all rendered in the unmistakably vivid color and crackle of superstar-in-the-making Caspar Wijngaard.”
Featuring genetically modified winged monkeys, techno-dolphins and quantum alley cats, Angelic tells the story of Qora, a flying monkey who doesn’t want to lose her wings in a human-less future.
Continue reading “When monkeys fly: Image announces ‘Angelic’”
Plus: The mother of shojo manga, Naruto and real-life politics and more
Amalgam University Gets Its First Grant: In happier retailing news, Ariell Johnson, proprietor of Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse in Philadelphia, has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to set up a programming space, which will expand the footprint of the store and allow her to create an “Amalgam University.” Johnson says that because she sells self-published work, she sees a lot of comics that have potential but are falling short in terms of craft. She hopes to offer classes to help those who can’t go to art school learn the nuts and bolts of making comics.
Continue reading “Comics Lowdown: Bricks fly through one comic shop; Grant given to another”
A father learns to relax on a cruise with his daughter, a cartoonist adjusts to Parkinson’s disease, and refugees struggle to survive
Every Sunday, we round up the best comics we’ve seen online in the past week. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.
Continue reading “Sunday Comics: ‘Father’s Day at Sea’ and more”
The man who finished ‘Omaha the Cat Dancer’ passes away, Frank Quitely finally gets that degree, and more.
Passings: James Vance, the author (with artist Dan Burr) of the graphic novels Kings in Disguise and On the Ropes, died on June 5 at the age of 64. Kings in Disguise was first published as a limited series by Kitchen Sink Press in 1988 and in 1989 won the Eisner and Harvey awards for Best New Series, and the first issue won the Eisner for Best Single Issue. W.W. Norton published a collected edition in 2006, with an introduction by Alan Moore. The sequel, On the Ropes, was published by Norton in 2013. Vance was married to Omaha the Cat Dancer writer Kate Worley from 1994 to 2004, and many years later he collaborated with Omaha artist Reed Waller to complete the story, which was left unfinished at Worley’s death; it was published in 2013. Vance, who was also a playwright, talked about his work with Alex Dueben at CBR in 2013. His illness and death leaves his family in a difficult financial situation, so a GoFundMe has been set up to help.
