‘Wonderfully weird’ series ‘Gogor’ debuts in May

‘Planetoid’ creator Ken Garing returns for a new series in May.

Planetoid creator Ken Garing will return to comics in May with Gogor, a “high fantasy” series aimed at teens.

Here’s how his publisher, Image Comics, describes the series: “The debut issues of Gogor will feature 28 pages of a wonderfully weird and fantastical story. Deep underground, among the floating islands of Altara, the mystical Gogor sleeps. But trouble brews above ground as soldiers of the Domus impose their will across the land. Now, a young student named Armano must awaken Gogor and begin his quest to protect the culture of Altara.”

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Gillen + Mora team for ‘Once and Future’ from BOOM! Studios

Family secrets and Arthurian legends collide in a new miniseries coming in August.

Writer Kieron Gillen has been on a roll lately, with the popular The Wicked + The Divine continuing to turn heads, and the newly minted Die and Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt garnering attention and good reviews. Now he’s teaming up with Dan Mora (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) for a new miniseries from BOOM! Studios that sounds like it’s right in his wheelhouse: Once and Future, which will involve Arthurian legends, monster hunting and a kick-ass grandma.

“I’ve been chewing over how the classic explorer adventure serial could operate in the twenty-first century for a while. Doctor Aphra transplanting the genre to space was one conclusion. Once and Future is another, taking a genre whose core has barely changed since the 19th century, and updating it for the now,” Gillen said. “Adventure, romance, supernatural horror and too much bloody research, as always. When BOOM! Studios told me one of the most talented action artists of his generation was interested in collaborating, I knew that we had all the ingredients we needed to create gold. Gold which, inevitably, our heroes will steal.”

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‘Copra’ finds a new home at Image Comics

Formerly published by Bergen Street Press, the indie superhero comic’s first five collections arrive from Image in May.

Michel’s Fiffe’s excellent superhero series Copra has found a new home at Image Comics, the creator announced on Twitter. New printings of all five Copra collections can be found in the just-released Image Comics solicitations for May.

Fiffe has self-published the single issues of Copra, while collections have come out from Bergen Street Press, the comics publishing arm of the now-closed Brooklyn comics shop of the same name. Bergen Street Press announced last month that both Copra and Chuck Forsman’s Revenger would move to new publishers this year; the latter has landed at Floating World Comics.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Stuart Moore

The comics veteran discusses his work for Ahoy Comics, “Captain Ginger,” the upcoming “Bronze Age Boogie” and more.

Stuart Moore has been working in comics in a variety of ways for decades. He was an editor at DC Comics, where he was one of the founding editors of the Vertigo imprint, overseeing books like Swamp Thing, Jonah Hex, Preacher and Hellblazer, before working on DC’s Helix imprint, where he oversaw Vermilion, The Black Lamb and Transmetropolitan, before working on the Marvel Knights imprint, overseeing Alias and Fantastic Four 1234. He’s written books like Firestorm with Jamal Igle, Namor: The First Mutant and The 99. He also adapted Brian Jacques’ Redwall, and created projects like Earthlight, Lone, Giant Robot Warriors and Para.

Right now Moore is working at Ahoy Comics, where he’s not just working behind the scenes, but also writing books for the company. Those books include Captain Ginger, the first season of which wrapped up last month, and Bronze Age Boogie, which launches in April. That’s in addition to writing a story for Ahoy’s Free Comic Book Day issue coming out in May, and one story in June’s Steel Cage One Shot. The titles are all very different kinds of stories that feature collaborations with talented artists doing some of the best work of their careers.

Somehow Moore found a few minutes to answer my questions.

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‘Love and Capes’ returns this summer

Thom Zahler’s rom-com comic returns for a fifth volume.

Thom Zahler produced four volumes of his charming Love and Capes series before seemingly sending Mark and Abby off for their happy ending. But now the creator has said on Twitter that he’s planning a fifth volume of the popular series, set to be released this summer.

Although there aren’t a lot of details just yet, he did share two pages of art and some promo art that revealed the subtitle of the new volume — Love and Capes: The Family Way.

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Ferrier, Malhotra smuggle ‘Narcos’ into comics

IDW Publishing will publish a four-issue miniseries set in the Netflix show’s first season.

Netflix’s Narcos will make the jump from the streaming giant to comics this April, as IDW Publishing as announced plans to make a comic book based on the popular TV show.

Ryan Ferrier and Vic Malhotra have been enlisted to create a four-issue miniseries that “introduces new dangers for DEA agents Steve Murphy and Javier Peña to face, while at the same time, El Patrón must contend with a dangerous threat to his drug empire.”

“I’m thrilled to take fans new and old into a deeper, unseen story from the volatile, teeth-gritting world of Narcos,” Ferrier said in a press release. “I’m even more excited to bring this to life alongside Vic Malhotra, whose immense talent and style will show us a new side of Narcos — one with dangerously high stakes and a new, chaotic presence that will affect the DEA, the Cartels, Don Pablo himself, and all of Colombia.”

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‘Calamity Kate’ hunts monsters in March

New miniseries by Magdalene Visaggio, Corin Howell, Valentina Pinto and Zakk Saam debuts from Dark Horse Comics next year.

Magdalene Visaggio, Corin Howell, Valentina Pinto and Zakk Saam are headed for calamity — Calamity Kate, that is, a new miniseries from Dark Horse Comics.

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Millar + Netflix unleash ‘Sharkey the Bounty Hunter’ next year

Millar says the new sci-fi series is “all the things ‘Star Wars’ or Marvel can’t get away with.”

For their third comic book collaboration, Mark Millar and Netflix are headed to space next February with Sharkey the Bounty Hunter. The new series will be drawn by former Wolverine and Astonishing X-Men artist Simone Bianchi and will be published by Image Comics.

Sharkey the Bounty Hunter follows The Magic Order and Prodigy, the first two comics from Millar following the acquisition of his Millarworld imprint last year.

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Craig Thompson gears up for his first serialized comic

‘Ginseng Roots’ will explore Thompson’s childhood ‘weeding and harvesting ginseng’ in order to buy comic books.

Craig Thompson is best known for his long-form graphic novels, including Blankets, Habibi and other titles that regularly appear on year-end “best of” lists. But now the creator is turning his attention to “the form of the medium that imprinted itself on me and my little brother, Phil, as children.”

Coming next spring from Uncivilized Books is Ginseng Roots, a bi-monthly comic book about the creator and his brother growing up in Wisconsin.

“For a decade of our childhood, Phil and I toiled in Wisconsin farms,” Thompson wrote on his blog. “Weeding and harvesting GINSENG—an exotic medicinal herb that fetched huge profits in China—funded our youthful obsession with comic books. Comics in turn, allowed us to escape our rural, working class trappings.”

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Zdarsky, Checchetto head to Hell’s Kitchen as the new ‘Daredevil’ creative team

New team takes over in February.

Writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Marco Checchetto will chronicle the adventures of Daredevil starting February, Marvel.com revealed this week.

The new team follows Charles Soule and Phil Noto’s run on Matt Murdock’s alter-ego — a run that ends with a storyline called “The Death of Daredevil.”

“A lot of writers in the past have left Daredevil in terrible situations at the end of their runs,” Soule said in a promotional video released by Marvel in September. “Brian Michael Bendis put him in prison for Ed Brubaker to handle; Mark Waid, who preceded me, had Daredevil in San Francisco, his secret identity was blown, he wasn’t a lawyer anymore. I had to handle all of that. So, I wanted to carry on in the tradition of leaving Daredevil in the worst spot imaginable, and letting the next writer somehow deal with this impossible problem that Matt would never get out of. And I wanted to make mine the biggest one that has ever been done.”

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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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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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