Captain Ginger takes flight once more in ‘The Last Feeder’

Stuart Moore and June Brigman return to the stars for another tale of evolved cats in space.

Although its existence was revealed in May when Ahoy Comics announced Project: Cryptid, they made it official this week that writer Stuart Moore and artist June Brigman will reunite for Captain Ginger: The Last Feeder .

The two-issue miniseries is part of Ahoy’s celebration of their fifth anniversary, and follows the two previous Captain Ginger series. If you aren’t familiar with Captain Ginger, it’s kind of like Star Trek, but with cats. Evolved cats at that.

“I’d rather write Captain Ginger than anything else in the world, so I’m grateful to AHOY for giving us the chance to continue our story,” said Moore. “This time, we decided to tell a self-contained, Strange New Worlds-type adventure that, at the same time, tackles some of the biggest questions in the Captain’s universe. All his life, Ginger has wondered about his father, and all the evolved cats have wondered about the long-dead humans who created them. Now the answers are in their grasp—maybe.”

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Smash Pages Q&A | Paul Cornell on ‘Con & On’

The writer of Ahoy’s newest title talks about comic conventions, working with Marika Cresta and more.

Most people reading this are probably familiar with the San Diego Comic-Con, the annual gathering of Hollywood, the comics community, media of all shapes and sizes, and fans from around the world. But are you familiar with the Vista Al Mar Comics Festival, which also has taken place on the California coast for the past five decades?

If not, don’t worry — the Vista Al Mar Comics Festival is fictional, a construct of writer Paul Cornell and artist Marika Cresta for their new miniseries from Ahoy Comics, Con & On. The first issue arrives in stores this week.

The comic is set in five different years in the life of the Festival—one year per issue, spanning three decades—from the points of view of “a diverse bunch of desperate people whose lives revolve around this greatest show on Earth.” The comic will track the lives of two young comics talents trying to break into the business; three “brilliant, boozy and bombastic” British creators; as well as crusty editors, forgotten TV stars and fans who “make the convention experience something to revisit year after year.” 

Cornell was kind enough to answer a few of my questions about his work on the title, as well as share some convention memories. My thanks for his time.

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Ahoy will collect Russell + Snejbjerg’s ‘Cereal’ in October

The trade paperback collects ‘a dark, distinctly adult and lovingly funny take’ on breakfast cereal mascots.

Sugary cereal has never been scarier than when it’s in the hands of writer/satirist Mark Russell and artist Peter Snejbjerg. Their “Cereal” serial, which first appeared in the Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of… series of miniseries, will be collected in October by Ahoy Comics.

Described as “a dark, distinctly adult, and lovingly funny take on an earlier generation’s beloved monsters,” the story follows several breakfast-loving monsters who will seem familiar to any fans of General Mills’ “Monster” line of cereal. I was always a big fan of Franken Berry.

“Monsters play such an expansive role in our collective conscience, being used for everything from giving face to our deepest fears to selling us breakfast cereal,” said Russell. “This book looks at monsters from every angle at once. It sees them as we are — as cartoonish but scary, as comical, and yet, still sad.”

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Ahoy Comics celebrates five years with several new projects

‘Project: Cryptid,’ an anthology title featuring the work of Grant Morrison, Alex Segura, Mark Russell, Zander Cannon, Hanna Bahedry, Liana Kangas and more, will kick off in September.

Ahoy Comics will celebrate five years of publishing with several fun projects — an anthology titled Project: Cryptid, a “back matter” prose project titled “Partially Naked Came The Corpse!” and several anniversary specials.

“Five years of AHOY?! It doesn’t seem possible!” said editor-in-chief Tom Peyer. “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the comic books of our lives. September ’23 will mark the fifth anniversary of The Wrong Earth #1, the first comic we ever shipped. Jamal Igle, June Brigman, Stuart Moore, Mark Russell, Greg Scott, Grant Morrison — these artists and writers who helped launch AHOY — will return, and new creators will join them in the wildest celebration this young century has seen! The boisterous bacchanalia begins with our bestial new anthology Project: Cryptid and continues with a wave of projects, familiar and new, through the end of the year.”

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‘Black’s Myth’ returns with a new miniseries this summer

Eric Palicki and Wendell Cavalcanti head back into L.A.’s seedy supernatural underground in ‘Black’s Myth: The Key to his Heart.’

Black’s Myth, the story of a werewolf PI named Strummer who lives in Los Angeles and tries unsuccessfully to avoid the supernatural world, will return with a new miniseries from Ahoy Comics this summer.

The first miniseries by writer Eric Palicki and artist Wendell Cavalcanti came out in 2022, introducing the world to Janie Jones “Strummer” Mercado and her djinn assistant Ben Si’lat. The new story, titled Black’s Myth: The Key to his Heart, will involve Strummer trying to save a young girl from becoming a monster, as well as reveal a more sympathetic side to the character whose name appears in the title.

“I’ve made a terrible mistake, and I don’t just mean pursuing a career in comics!” Palicki said. “How can we continue calling our book Black’s Myth unless Strummer once again finds herself in the orbit of her enigmatic client-turned-nemesis Rainsford Black? Hopefully, Volume Two reveals Mister Black to be a little less mysterious and perhaps a tad more sympathetic, as Wendell and I build on the unanswered questions of the first volume while also delivering a new mystery for Strums and Ben to unravel.”

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Paul Cornell + Marika Cresta satire Comic-Con in the new miniseries ‘Con & On’

The five-issue miniseries will arrive from Ahoy Comics in (naturally) July.

Paul Cornell and Marika Cresta are teaming up for a new comic about Comic-Con — Con & On is “a tragicomic satire of five decades of the world’s biggest comics festival, and the industry that parties there,” according to Cornell, and it’s coming from Ahoy Comics in July.

“This is a heartfelt insider comedy history of the roller coaster that is the comics industry, with bite but also with love,” Cornell continued. “It’s about the romance of every big convention, the bittersweet journey through time and success, the highs and the lows and the silliness. It’s the story of every fan and every pro and everyone who’s just trying to make a buck in the midst of extremity. Through the narratives of our large cast of characters we see, in miniature, the story of the last few decades of modern comics: how some things have changed and how some things have stayed exactly the damn same.”

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‘Second Coming’ returns for a third series

Shouldn’t that be ‘Third Coming’? I mean, it’s right there …

Sunstar and Jesus. Mark Russell and Richard Pace. Cranius and God. They’re all back for a third helping of Second Coming, this one subtitled “Trinity.”

Russell, Pace, co-artist Leonard Kirk and colorist Andy Troy are joined this time by editor Sarah Litt for the continuing adventures of the Son of God and the world’s greatest superhero.

“If you haven’t read a Second Coming series and you think you know what it is, I guarantee you do not,” said AHOY Editor in Chief Tom Peyer. “The high concept of ‘What if Jesus lived with a superhero?’ is an arresting one, but it doesn’t begin to suggest what a wise, kind and funny piece of work its creators have given us.”

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Slugfest | Get ready for ‘The Gimmick’

Check out news and announcements featuring the X-Men, Captain Marvel, The Last Barbarians, Harrower, The Archies in India and more.

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you from comics creators, publishers and more. Hit the links for more information.

Ahoy Comics has announced a new project by writer Joanne Starer (Sirens of the City; Away From Here) and artist Elena Gogou (Quests Aside) — The Gimmick, which is “how I imagine the Coen brothers would tell a story about the wrestling business,” Starer said.

Colorist Andy Troy, letterer Rob Steen and editor Tom Peyer round out the creative team.

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Moore + Harper raise a glass to ‘Highball’ in September

The new sf comedy features a space pilot who can only hit a target while drunk.

Stuart Moore and Fred Harper, the team behind Ahoy Comics’ recent The Wrong Earth: Purple one-shot, will re-team for Highball, a new miniseries about a “sozzled space pilot” who can only hit a target when he’s drunk.

They’re joined by colorist Lee Loughridge, and letterer Rob Steen for the science fiction/comedy series, which shockingly came to Moore while he was at a bar.

“I was out having a few beers with an AHOY Comics colleague when a funny thing happened,” said Moore. “The more my friend had to drink, the better he got at throwing darts. It was uncanny! And at that booze-soaked moment, the idea for Highball was born.”

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Smash Pages Q&A | Alisa Kwitney on ‘G.I.L.T.’

The comics writer, novelist and former Vertigo editor discusses her latest comic from Ahoy Comics, which she describes as ‘The Golden Girls’ meets ‘Sex and the City’—by way of ‘The Twilight Zone.’

Alisa Kwitney is a name familiar to many comics readers. For many years, she was an editor at Vertigo, overseeing The Dreaming and many other projects, in addition to being the Eisner-nominated writer of comics like Vertigo Visions: Phantom Stranger, Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold and A Flight of Angels. She’s also written number of other comics, including Token for the short-lived Minx imprint and Mystik U. Kwitney is also a well known novelist of books including The Dominant Blonde, Sex As a Second Language, and Cadaver & Queen, in addition to being one-half of the people behind the Endless podcast.

In the new Ahoy Comics series that launches next week, Kwitney and artist Alain Mauricet introduce us to G.I.L.T. An acronym, we come to learn, that stands for “Guild of Independent Lady Temporalists.” The book opens in 1973 before jumping to 2017 and to say much more would spoil it, but Kwitney was kind enough to talk about the book without, we hope, saying too much.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Eric Palicki on ‘Black’s Myth’

With the collection now out from Ahoy Comics, writer Eric Palicki talks about the first volume of the supernatural ‘L.A. noir’ comic ‘Black’s Myth.’

In the past few years Eric Palicki has developed his reputation as a writer and editor thanks to comics like Atlantis Wasn’t Built for Tourists, Fake Empire and No Angel, and anthologies like All We Ever Wanted, Dead Beats and This Nightmare Kills Fascists. For the Ahoy Comics series Black’s Myth, the collection of which was just released, Palicki re-teamed with artist Wendell Cavalcanti to tell the story of a werewolf named Strummer who lives in Los Angeles and avoids the supernatural world. Or tries to, at any rate.

The book is a dark noirish tale with a lot of humor, with Cavalcanti’s black and white artwork inside contrasted with the neon colors of Liana Kangas’ covers, the book screams “L.A. noir.” The supernatural angle, though, is all Palicki, and Black’s Myth feels like a book he’s been building towards, both in terms of subject and sensibility, and in his skill at storytelling.

The trade collection of the first was just released with a second volume coming out in the fall, and Palicki answered a few questions about the book.

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Ahoy Comics announces the time-travel dramedy ‘G.I.L.T.’

The new series begins in April.

Comics writer and novelist Alisa Kwitney and artist Mauricet will travel through time — not literally, but literary — in the new series G.I.L.T. from Ahoy Comics.

“G.I.L.T.” stands for “Guild of Independent Lady Temporalists,” and the comic features two women who travel back in time to the day they first met, in 1973. Ahoy describes it as “a snappy, stylish romantic dramedy.”

“G.I.L.T. follows two very different women whose lives become entangled when they both slip through a portal in time to the day they first met in 1973,” said Kwitney. “Trista is the Bill Murray of home health care aides, a cynical screw-up who doesn’t care for anything but her Fleuvog shoes and her paycheck. She meets her match in Hildy, a sarcastic second-wave feminist living on a steady diet of cigarettes and regret. When Hildy seizes her last chance to return to a fateful day in 1973, she accidentally takes Trista along for the ride. But as the old saying goes, there are no accidents in time travel. And Hildy and Trista don’t remember each other, but they met each other 40 years earlier—on Hildy’s wedding day. Now they’ve got to come to terms with the past before they accidentally dismantle the future.”

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