Duggan + Brown team for ‘Falling in Love on the Path to Hell’ at Image Comics

A gunslinger and a samurai walk into purgatory …

If you’re wondering what Gerry Duggan will be up to once his run on X-Men ends, never fear — he’s teaming up with artist Garry Brown for an ambitious creator-owned series at Image Comics.

Falling in Love on the Path to Hell will start at the end for the two main characters — an Onna-musha warrior and an Old West gunslinger. After being mortally wounded on different continents, the pair “awake together in a purgatory ruled by a ruthless, nightmarish society of damned warriors.”

“We’re inspired by samurai films, grindhouse, westerns, Tarantino, Lone Wolf & Cub and of course all our favorite weird, supernatural comic books,” said Duggan. “This romance is our love letter to creator-owned comics—it’s a story we can only tell at Image Comics.”

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Juni Ba’s ‘Boy Wonder’ series will launch in May

The DC Black Label series will feature Damian Wayne teaming up with the other Robins.

Juni Ba, creator of the wonderful Djeliya from TKO Studios and Monkey Meat for Image Comics, will take Robin in a fun direction this May in Boy Wonder, a Black Label series from DC that kicks off in May.

Ba is joined by colorist Chris O’Halloran and letterer Aditya Bidikar on the five-issue series.

“There‘s a real drive here to capture some adventurous fun as well as heartfelt humanity,” Ba said on social media. “The story of a kid who was hurt a lot, raised wrong, and who has to learn to navigate conflicting sets of expectations from both his families, with fear of not being good enough for either.”

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Deck the claws with boughs of Hellboy

Mike Mignola and Matt Smith present a holiday story featuring Hellboy and a giant cat.

I’d never heard of Jólakötturinn, the “ferocious Yule Cat of Icelandic folklore,” who is said to lurk about “the snowy countryside during Christmas time and eats people who have not received any new clothes to wear before Christmas Eve.” Let’s hope Hellboy remembered to buy a new outfit, because he’ll be facing off with the Yule Cat in a new special this December.

It’s by Barbarian Lord creator Matt Smith, with colors by Chris O’Halloran and letters by Clem Robins, and of course the oversight of Hellboy creator Mike Mignola (whose birthday was yesterday! Happy belated birthday, Mike Mignola!)

“The land of fire and ice, trolls and necropants, Iceland is as natural a setting for a Hellboy story as any I could think of,” Smith said. “Set in 1990 and coming close to the events of the Hellboy: Bones of Giants, Hellboy likely hasn’t forgotten about the wrath of old Norse giants. But a giant, child-eating cat—that would be something new.”

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Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon and Peter Bergting will inspire ‘Mortal Terror’ this November

The miniseries imagines an underground London filled with vampires.

Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon and Peter Bergting will flip the vampire world upside down in Mortal Terror, a new miniseries coming this fall from Dark Horse Comics. Golden and Lebbon will write the series with art by Bergting, along with colors by Chris O’Halloran and letters by Clem Robins.

Mortal Terror is set in an underground version of London filled with vampires who think the mortals living above ground and the stories of Count Dracula are just myths.

“Inventing this world with Tim and Peter has been some of the most fun I’ve had telling stories in a long time,” Golden said in a statement to Daily Dead. “It first occurred to me the way so many things do, floating up from the depths to grab my attention with a single question—what if we inverted Dracula? But that question was really just the spark. When I mentioned it to Tim, we started talking, and I knew this was the perfect next collaboration for us—not only because we enjoy working together so much, but because I knew he would have a hundred world-building questions and ideas that would make Mortal Terror so much richer.”

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Love is quite literally Hell in the new miniseries ‘Hellboy in Love’

Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, Matt Smith, Chris O’Halloran and Clem Robins tell a story filled with love, ex-girlfriends, punk rock and goblin train robberies.

It’s all about the love in a new miniseries coming from the creative team of Hellboy: The Bones of Giants. Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, Matt Smith, Chris O’Halloran, and Clem Robins reunite for Hellboy in Love, a five-issue series that also reunites Hellboy with Dr. Anastasia Bransfield, his ex-girlfriend from the novel Hellboy: The Lost Army.

“It’s been 25 years since Dr. Anastasia Bransfield first appeared as Hellboy’s ex-girlfriend in my novel Hellboy: The Lost Army,” Golden, who wrote the novel, said. “I’ve always thought one of the reasons Mike considered my three Hellboy novels as canon is because of that relationship. Over the years we talked many times about telling the stories of their adventures together, and the day has finally come. It’s Romancing the Stone-style action, occult weirdness, and first love, with gorgeous Matt Smith art! We’re having so much fun!”

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What Are You Reading? | ‘Batman: Fortress,’ ‘The Closet’ and more

See what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately, which includes ‘Avengers Forever,’ ‘JLA Classified,’ ‘Little Monsters,’ ‘Strange’ and more.

Welcome to What Are You Reading?, our look at what the Smash Pages crew has been checking off their “to read” list lately. Today’s reviews include some Batman, some Justice League, some Avengers and some horror comics.

Let us know what you’ve been reading lately in the comments or on social media.

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Ryall + Wood will launch Syzygy Publishing in January with ‘Joe Hill’s Rain’ adaptation

The imprint will publish and distribute comics through Image Comics.

World of Syxygy Publishing , the new initiative from Zombies vs Robots creators Chris Ryall and Ashley Wood, will kick off next year with an comic book adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story “Rain.”

Image Comics will publish the five-issue miniseries by the creative team of writer David M. Booher, artist Zoe Thorogood, colorist Chris O’Halloran and letterer Shawn Lee.

“You couldn’t ask for a better inaugural creative team and story with which to kick of Syzygy,” Ryall said in a press statement given to Screen Rant. “David, Zoe, and Chris all bring such immense skill and storytelling acumen to this project, and what they’ve done with Joe Hill’s gripping story is somehow both gorgeous and terrible to behold. Syzygy is defined as ‘the configuration of celestial bodies in a gravitational system and the added benefit and utter thrill to me is that Image Comics is Rain’s gravitational center. We have long admired how Image has expanded and enhanced this industry, and it’s as exciting to see that ‘i’ on our cover as it is the names of the creators involved.”

Last year Ryall left his position as president, publisher and chief creative officer of IDW Publishing to start his own publishing initiative with Wood — although he’s still involved with some IDW titles, like Hill’s Locke & Key.

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Dark Horse will adapt ‘Hellboy: The Bones of Giants’ into comics

Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, Matt Smith and Chris O’Halloran will adapt the prose novel as a four-issue miniseries.

Dark Horse announced plans to release a comic book adaptation of the Hellboy prose novel Hellboy: The Bones of Giants. The four-issue miniseries kicks off in November and is by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, Matt Smith and Chris O’Halloran.

Released in 2001, Hellboy: The Bones of Giants was written by Golden and featured illustrations from Mignola. It’s one of three Hellboy novels Golden has written over the last 20-plus years, as he also wrote first one, The Lost Army, as well as 2007’s The Dragon Pool.

“It’s a thrill to return to the world of Hellboy: The Bones of Giants,” Golden said. “I’ve been deeply in love with Norse mythology since first reading Dorothy Hosford’s Thunder of the Gods in the fifth grade. I might have been the only one to take it out of the St. Bridget’s School library that year, but I read it 15 times, so there wasn’t much opportunity for other kids to read it. When Mike first told me he had this image in his head of lightning flashing down from the sky to strike Mjollnir, where it lay in the grip of the corpse of Thor…well, that was like Christmas morning, getting to indulge my love of Norse myth and my love of Hellboy.”

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Quarantine Comix to be collected in September

‘Ice Cream Man Presents: Quarantine Comix’ #1 will collect stories by W. Maxwell Prince, Martin Morazzo, Chris O’Halloran and more.

If you’ve been waiting for all the fun Quarantine Comix released by the Ice Cream Man team to come to print, have I got some good news for you, with sprinkles on top — Image Comics will release Ice Cream Man Presents: Quarantine Comix in September.

Originally started to help raise money for retailers who had to close down their shops during the corornavirus pandemic and shelter-in-place orders, Quarantine Comix was the brainchild of the team behind Image’s crazy horror anthology, Ice Cream Man. W. Maxwell Prince, Martin Morazzo, Chris O’Halloran and Good Old Neon created six minicomics that they released and sold online, with half of their profits going to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, or BINC. Those were followed by a “guest series” that wraps up this week with a new comic by Christopher Cantwell and Eoin Marron.

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Shalvey, Camp, Topilin contribute to Quarantine Comix

The imprint started by the “Ice Cream Man” team kicks off a new “Quarantine Comix Guest Series.”

Along with Animal Crossing and a new season of Dead to Me, the weekly Quarantine Comix releases have been one of the highlights of the coronavirus pandemic. Created by the team behind Image’s Ice Cream Man anthology series, they’ve now broadened their umbrella to include guest contributors through the aptly named Quarantine Comix Guest Series.

The first two guest comics are by Declan Shalvey of Moon Knight and Savage Town fame, and the team of Deniz Camp (Maxwell’s Demons) and Artyom Topilin(Long Rain).

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Quarantine Comix promises ‘a nice little surprise’ after sixth issue arrives

Support a good cause and get some great comics.

The creators of Image’s bonkers horror title Ice Cream Man — W. Maxwell Prince, Martin Morazzo, Chris O’Halloran, Good Old Neon — have been selling four-page comics to help support comics retailers over the past few weeks, with issue #6 arriving this week.

If you’re a fan of Ice Cream Man — or just good, kinda creepy, out-there comics — then you should check out Quarantine Comix. Half of their profits go to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, aka BINC, so you get a quick read and a good cause, all for less than $2.

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Death cults and depravity descend in post-apocalyptic ‘Death Orb’

New title from Ryan Ferrier, Alejandro Aragon and Chris O’Halloran follows a “heartbroken, axe-wielding wasteland survivor in search of his wife and son.”

Writer Ryan Ferrier (D4VE) artist Alejandro Aragon (Robocop) and colorist Chris O’Halloran (Ice Cream Man) are headed back to the future — a post-apocalyptic, mutant infested, nightmarish future in Death Orb, a new miniseries from Dark Horse Comics.

“We’re going off the rails with this one,” Ferrier said on Twitter.

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