Nick Derington mixes it up with the Young Animal cast

Check out his cover for the comic that came out last weekend on Record Store Day.

I mentioned before that Gerard Way, former My Chemical Romance singer and current curator of DC Comics’ Young Animal line, released a song about Cave Carson for Record Store Day on April 22. (You can hear the song for yourself here).

The 12″ picture disc came with a comic — a “mixtape” sampler featuring material from the various Young Animal comics, along with a framing sequence by Way and artist Michael Allred. If you didn’t make it out to your local record shop this past weekend to see it for yourself, Doom Patrol artist Nick Derington has posted the cover on his Tumblr.

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Batman ’66 to meet the Legion of Super-Heroes, courtesy of the Allreds

Lee, Michael and Laura Allred team up for a one-shot featuring time travel, Egghead, Universo and more.

The creative team behind the DC/Young Animal Bug title Bug!: The Adventures of Forager will turn their attention to the 30th century this June in the Batman ’66 Meets The Legion of Super-Heroes one-shot special.

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DC previews ‘Bug,’ announces ‘Cave Carson’ back-up at WonderCon

Gerard Way shares that ‘Doom Patrol’ lives, announces Mike Allred will draw an issue in July.

WonderCon returned to Anaheim this weekend, and the crew behind DC’s Young Animal imprint were there for a panel on everybody’s favorite pop-up imprint. DC shared some of the highlights from the panel, including:

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‘Love is Love’ raises $165,000 for victims of Orlando Pulse nightclub attack

The benefit anthology Love is Love has raised more than $165,000 thus far through print and digital sales, according to the Washington Post and a press release from co-publisher IDW.

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Team Allred assembles for ‘Bug!: The Adventures of Forager’ from Young Animal

Michael, Laura and Lee Allred team up to tell a story straight from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World.

DC Comics’ Young Animal line will expand in May with ‘Bug!: The Adventures of Forager’ by Michael, Lee and Laura Allred. The six-issue miniseries is set to debut May 10.

“Every time I get to work with my ‘big bro’ Lee, it’s like tapping into our most thrilling childhood comic book daydreams,” Michael Allred said in the press release. “If you gave me the chance to list the characters I’d most like to get my hands on from Kirby’s ‘Fourth World,’ Forager the Bug sits squarely at the top. And now we are throwing him into the DC’s Young Animal mix, winding him up and letting him go! When you add in our not-so-secret weapon of Laura’s magical colors, I couldn’t possibly be more pumped about this series!”

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‘Love is Love,’ ‘Lumberjanes,’ ‘Black Panther’ among 2017 GLAAD Award nominees

DC Comics, IDW, Marvel, BOOM! Studios, Image and Black Mask Studios all represented as comics category expands to 10 nominations.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or GLAAD, have announced the nominees for their annual Media Awards, which recognize and honor media for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the LGBTQ community and the issues that affect their lives.

DC Comics and Marvel Comics both received three nominations apiece (Dc shares one of theirs with IDW, as the co-published the Love is Love anthology), while BOOM! Studios received two — which include last year’s winner, Lumberjanes.

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Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye — and a theme song

Watch Michael Avon Oeming draw Cave Carson to the tune of Gerard Way and Ray Toro’s ‘Into the Cave We Wander.’

At this year’s New York Comic Con, Gerard Way and DC Comics gave away a cassette tape featuring a new, original song, “Into the Cave We Wander.” Recorded by Way and his former My Chemical Romance band mate Ray Toro, it serves as a theme song for the second Way-written Young Animal comic, Cave Carson has a Cybernetic Eye.

The first issue of Cave Carson arrives tomorrow, by Way, Jon Rivera and Michael Avon Oeming, and if it’s as good as Way’s first Young Animal title, Doom Patrol, has been, then I suspect we’re all in for a treat. In the meantime, if you weren’t one of the lucky few to get a copy of the song in New York, Oeming has released a YouTube video that features the song AND Oeming working on a Cave Carson sketch.

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DC to launch new ‘Batwoman’ title next year

Spinning out of ‘Detective Comics,’ Marguerite Bennett and Steve Epting team up to tell solo stories starring Kate Kane.

Batwoman will once again star in her own solo title beginning next February, by writer Marguerite Bennett and artist Steve Epting, who returns to DC Comics after a 16-year absence. James Tynion IV, who currently writes the character in Detective Comics, will co-write the first arc.

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‘Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love’ has the right spirit

Whether they’re being Rebirthed or Young Animaled, DC’s various superhero series may be getting all the attention; but they’re not all the publisher is putting out these days. Deadman: Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love isn’t really a relaunch, and — somewhat refreshingly — it’s not a hip new take on a couple of decades-old concepts. Instead, writer Sarah Vaughn, artist Lan Medina, and colorist José Villarrubia have given a good old-fashioned ghost story a few tweaks and a superhero component, and produced one of the most entertaining first issues I’ve read in a while.

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WildStorm imprint returns, with your host Warren Ellis

“The Wild Storm” kicks off the revival, by Ellis and artist Jon Davis-Hunt.

Much like Gerard Way is both writing and curating content for the Young Animal line, DC Comics has recruited Warren Ellis to revive and curate a new WildStorm line.

Ellis, who breathed new life into the imprint back in 1999 with the launch of The Authority and Planetary, will write The Wild Storm with Clean Room artist Jon Davis-Hunt. It’ll reset the WildStorm shared universe and feature Grifter, Voodoo, The Engineer, Jenny Sparks and others. It launches in February as an ongoing series and will serve as the launching pad for new WildCATS, Zealot and Michael Cray (AKA Deathblow) series.

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How much ‘old’ does DC Comics need?

How much “old” do you need?

That question was more hypothetical back in the spring, before DC’s “Rebirth” initiative started quantifying it. “Rebirth” was as direct a response to the New 52 as the publisher has ever given, even bringing back specific characters from the old days to help the healing process along. “Rebirth” also up-ended the normal relaunch paradigm, which seeks to streamline a character’s presentation so as to keep what works and discard what doesn’t. By contrast, “Rebirth” took the position that the status quo generally needed fixing, and specifically could use a healthy dose of what had come before.

Regardless of its inelegance, though, the New 52’s streamlining had to come from somewhere. The old regime had been in place for at least 25 years, ever since the great cosmic streamlining of Crisis On Infinite Earths. Back then, the question of “how much old” related to what the character could do without. Today, it seems like the question is what the character needs to have put back.

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Creators unite for anthology benefiting Orlando shooting victims [Updated]

Marc Andreyko, IDW Publishing and DC Comics’ “Love is Love” will feature 144 pages of stories from Damon Lindelof, Patton Oswalt, Phil Jimenez and more.

Marc Andreyko, IDW Publishing, DC Comics and an army of comics creators are coming together to create Love is Love, an anthology to benefit Equality Florida and their fund supporting the victims of the June 12 attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

“Events like this shouldn’t be compartmentalized,” Andreyko told The New York Times. “They should hurt, and we should want to change for the better.”

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