Smash Pages Q&A: Whit Taylor on ‘Ghost Stories’

The award-winning cartoonist discusses her new book, her work at ‘The Nib’ and more.

Whit Taylor has been making a number of award-winning and nominated comics and mini-comics for years including Watermelon, Boxes and Ghost. She’s written for The Comics Journal and Publishers Weekly, and has contributed to The Nib where she’s written about race, Chris Christie, pandemics, health care and hair.

Ghost Stories, which was just published by Rosarium, is her first book. It collects three stories, each made in a different style and approach, that deal with questions of memory in different, interesting ways. I read Ghost when it was first published and like a lot of people thought it was her best work to date, and while none of the stories are ghost stories in that way, each involves hauntings in interesting ways. Taylor was kind enough to answer a few questions about the book and her work.

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Keatinge + Clark serve up some ‘Flavor’ in May

A true ‘Hunger Games’ hits comics as chefs compete in a high-stakes competition.

Shutter writer Joe Keatinge and Megagogo creator Wook Jin Clark will spice up the Image Comics line this May with Flavor, the story of a young chef in a closed-off metropolis who enters a high-stakes cooking tournament — and discovers a mystery along the way.

“Flavor is a book with a lot of ingredients; we’re cooking up a comic unlike anything else I’ve collaborated on before,” said Keatinge. “I’ve long desired to work with each and every person on this creative team, and I could not be happier with the results.”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Alejandra Gutiérrez on ‘Twisted Romance’

The comics creator and designer discusses her work with Alex de Campi on the Image Comics anthology, how she came into comics and more.

Alejandra Gutiérrez has been posting comics and illustrations online for a while now on Twitter and Instagram in addition to her published art and covers. She’s shown a sense of design and fashion, a willingness to play with layout. Some of that may come from her background in design, but she’s clearly interested in multimedia, in playing with how people read the page and finding ways to tweak that.

Gutiérrez may wear her influences on her sleeve, but she’s also moved past simply imitating them and is clearly coming into her own. She’s drawing “Twinkle and Star” in Twisted Romance #2 written by Alex de Campi and so I asked her about how she came to comics and why she signed on to draw romance.

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Francesco Francavilla celebrates Black History Month

The comics creator shares portraits of Jack Johnson, Alice Coachman and many more.

In honor of Black History Month, artist Francesco Francavilla has been sharing portraits he’s done of various Black athletes, including Jack Johnson, Wally Triplett and Alice Coachman. He’s been sharing them on both his Tumblr and his Twitter feeds.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Katie Skelly brings ‘grotesquerie’ and spectacle to ‘Twisted Romance’

The creator of ‘My Pretty Vampire’ and ‘Nurse Nurse’ discusses the story she drew for Alex de Campi’s romance anthology, the romance genre, what it’s like working with another comics writer and more.

2017 saw the publication of My Pretty Vampire, which may be Katie Skelly‘s most acclaimed book to date. The writer-artist best known for books like Night Nurse and Operation Margarine has always worked on her own projects, so it was a surprise to some of us when it was announced that she would be collaborating with writer Alex de Campi on Twisted Romance, the new anthology series out this month from Image Comics.

Their story “Old Flames” opens the first issue of the series, which is out this week and I asked Skelly a few questions about the project, genre and how it fits in with her body of work.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Alex de Campi aims for the heart with ‘Twisted Romance’

The versatile writer discusses the weekly anthology series, which breaks hearts this month from Image Comics.

Alex de Campi has established a reputation as a versatile writer who seems to move effortless from one genre and one approach to another. Her work has ranged from Smoke and its sequel Ashes to the mobile comic Valentine, from Grindhouse to My Little Pony, and Archie vs. Predator, which is hard to classify for a number of reasons. More recently she’s written books including Mayday, No Mercy, Bankshot, Semiautomagic and Astonisher for a number of companies and worked with a broad range of artists working in a broad range of styles.

To continue her habit of working with many artists in many styles, de Campi’s new big project tackles one genre she hasn’t written – romance. Twisted Romance is a four-issue weekly series coming out this month from Image Comics. Each issue is self-contained with two comics stories and a prose story. I reached out to Alex to find out more about the project.

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DC announces Bendis plans: Superman, new imprint, sampler comic

Bendis takes over all the Supermans as Jinxworld moves to DC and a “curated” imprint from the writer looms.

Former Marvel stalwart Brian Michael Bendis’ first work for DC will be on Action Comics #1000, but it won’t be his last opportunity to tug on Superman’s cape.

DC Comics has announced the writer’s plans at his new home, which includes a whole lot of Superman, the return of his Jinxworld books and a brand-new “curated” imprint. They’ll also release a 25-cent sampler, called DC Nation #0, spotlighting not only Bendis’ work but that of his fellow writers Tom King and Scott Snyder.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Sophia Foster-Dimino on ‘Sex Fantasy’

The creator of the minicomic-turned graphic novel discusses the new collection from Koyama Press, process and much more.

Sophia Foster-Dimino has been making comics for years. A designer who worked at Google for years, she crafted a number of the famous google doodles, in addition to other projects. She’s drawn the webcomic Swim Thru Fire, which was written by Annie Mok, and a number of short comics, but Foster-Dimino is best known for her minicomic series Sex Fantasy. The series manages to both live up to and not fulfill all the expectations that the name implies in different ways. Each issue of the comic was different but there were thematic links that tied the issues together in different ways.

Last year Koyama Press published a collection of Sex Fantasy. The collection is a small brick of a book, containing the eight issues that had been published in addition to two comics exclusive to the book. I reached out to Foster-Dimino to talk about the book, how the stories are connected and the ways she thought about the 10-issue structure.

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‘A Star Wars Comic’ explores ‘small moments’ from the epic saga

Jim Mello, Alex Ray and Tony Ray bring their interpretations of various Star Wars characters to the web once a month in six finely crafted pages.

I came across the site “A Star Wars Comic” in my Tumblr feed recently, and at first thought that Lucasfilm or Marvel had started up some sort of webcomic project — but as it turns out, it’s actually a fan-made site featuring various comics that spotlight “the small moments, characters, and themes of a galaxy, far far away.” And it’s very impressive.

The comics — there are 19 of them right now, plus an annual — cut across the Star Wars mythos, featuring main characters like Luke and Rey, as well as lesser-explored characters like Mon Mothma, Plo Koon and even “Gonk” the power droid. All the comics are done by Jim Mello, Alex Ray and Tony Ray. Each story (except the annual) is six pages, so they’re very quick, in and out, looks at these characters, and they’re posted once a month on the 25th.

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‘Action 1000’ hardcover to include unpublished Siegel + Shuster story

Edited by Paul Levitz, ‘Action Comics #1000: 80 Years of Superman’ will include essays and past ‘Action Comics’ stories, including one by Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster that was given to Marv Wolfman when he was a kid.

With plans for the 1,000th issue of Action Comics in place, DC Comics revealed more details about the hardcover collection they previously announced that will accompany the milestone issue.

Action Comics #1000: 80 Years of Superman, edited by former DC Publisher Paul Levitz, will feature several past Superman stories along with essays. The collection will also a never-before-published 12-page story from original Superman writer Jerry Siegel with art by the Joe Shuster Studio titled “Too Many Heroes.”

“The found Siegel and Shuster story is a true treasure with a fascinating backstory,” Levitz said. “Back when DC did regular tours of the New York office, it was common for fans to get original art that would have been otherwise disposed of as a tour souvenir. As a young fan on a tour Marv Wolfman found this Superman story and kept it all these years. It’s incredible to think that Marv not only rescued this unpublished story, he then went on to become one of DC’s most prolific writers, and shared the story with DC to publish as part of this special new collection.”

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Image Comics defies gravity in new comic ‘Skyward’

Joe Henderson and Lee Garbett team up for a new series about a world without gravity, which is set to launch this April.

Gravity is one of those things you take for granted — until it’s gone. In the new Image Comics series Skyward, writer Joe Henderson (showrunner of Fox’s TV adaptation of Lucifer) and artist Lee Garbett (Lucifer, Loki: Agent of Asgard) tell the story of an Earth where gravity is only a fraction of what we experience, and a young girl who stumbles onto a plot to bring it back.

“Skyward is my all of my favorite things mashed together,” said Henderson. “It’s a coming-of-age story filled with action and humor, devastation and hope. It explores a world turned upside down, where anyone can leap tall buildings with a single bound — but if you jump too high, you die. And getting to see Lee Garbett bring it to glorious life is a dream come true.”

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An end, and a new beginning, for ‘Astro City’

With the final issue of the current volume due out in April, writer Kurt Busiek reveals the title’s future.

DC Comics’ solicitations for April 2018 reveal that the latest volume of Astro City, currently published as a part of their Vertigo imprint, will end with issue #52. But don’t panic: writer Kurt Busiek says Astro City will be back, as a graphic novel rather than a comic series.

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