Cates + Stegman plan to launch three comics on Substack

The two ‘King in Black’ creators launch Kids Love Chains Press on the email platform.

Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman are the latest creators to sign on for the Substack revolution, following James Tynion IV, Skottie Young, Chip Zdarsky, Molly Ostertag and others last week.

This morning the duo behind Venom and King in Black launched Kids Love Chains Press on the email newsletter platform and announced three comics they’ll share through Substack’s premium service. Cates and Stegman will work on the first title, Vanish, while Cates will write the other two with different artists attached.

Here’s the lowdown:

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Chip Zdarsky will write + draw ‘Public Doman’ for his Substack newsletter

His collaboration with Kagan McLeod, ‘Kaptara,’ will also return as a digital comic.

Chip Zdarsky is the latest creator to sign on as a premium content provider for Substack. In what has been an eventful week for the email newsletter platform, Zdarsky joins Skottie Young, James Tynion IV, Saladin Ahmed and others in posting comics through their newsletters for those willing to pay.

“So, last year I finished illustrating Sex Criminals. It was bittersweet. The bitter was that I loved creating it and was sad to see it go,” Zdarsky wrote. “The sweet was that my hand was a mashed mess of mincemeat from drawing and colouring 31 issues of a book and it was nice to kick back and relax and instead write 13 books for Marvel and DC. But then I had an idea. And now, like an absolute moron, I’m destroying my hand again.”

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Skottie Young will bring back ‘I Hate Fairyland’ in his Substack newsletter

The creator moves his newsletter to a premium model, offering new comics, behind-the-scenes information and more.

Although he wasn’t mentioned in the initial announcement, Skottie Young (Rocket Raccoon, Strange Academy, Middlewest) has announced he’ll move his Substack newsletter to a subscription model and will use it to share new comics content — including new I Hate Fairyland.

Young joins James Tynion IV, Jonathan Hickman, Molly Ostertag and others in using the Substack platform to share and sell new comics content.

“This is no longer just a ‘Newsletter.’ It’s a Creative Platform,” Young said in his newsletter today. “A place to explore new ideas, stories, products to share with you instantly.”

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Brubaker, Martín + Vicente’s ‘Friday’ is coming to print

Image Comics will bring the digital series to a comic shop near you in November.

Ed Brubaker, Marcos Martín and Muntsa Vicente’s critically acclaimed, awardnominated digital comic Friday is coming to print, courtesy of Image Comics.

Friday is available digitally from Panel Syndicate using the site’s “pay what you want” model. The comic debuted last year close to the beginning of the pandemic, when Diamond Comics Distributor was shut down and new comic books were not arriving in comic book stores. Three chapters have been published so far.

“I’m so excited to finally see Friday in print. This is one of my career-favorite projects, and every chapter that Marcos draws ups his game to an unbelievable level,” said Brubaker. “I’ve never really done anything like this book before, a post-YA coming of age story with that beautiful mid-70s era look, and watching Marcos and Muntsa bring the town of Kings Hill to life has been astonishing. I can’t wait for a whole new audience to discover Friday Fitzhugh and her terrible Christmas.” 

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Tapas taps Jamie S. Rich as its new editor-in-chief

The former DC editor joins the webcomics company next week.

Former DC and Vertigo editor Jamie S. Rich has joined the webcomics juggernaut Tapas as its new editor-in-chief.

“Growing up reading indie and self-published comics in the 1980s, I saw whole new worlds, and I started telling my stories, too,” Rich told The Hollywood Reporter. “These days the realm may be digital, but it’s still comics. It’s still words and pictures, the basic components of modern storytelling. So, the great thing about Tapas is that it provides a platform for new voices, a place for the storytellers coming up now to share their voices. Anything is possible in a comic book.”

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Can’t Wait for Comics | Time to get dolled up for ‘The Hellfire Gala’

Scholastic’s Miles Morales OGN arrives, plus new Rick and Morty, Brecht Evens, ‘North Force,’ ‘The Nice House on the Lake’ and more.

Welcome to Can’t Wait for Comics, your guide to what comics are arriving in comic book stores, bookstores and on digital this week. This week brings new comics and graphic novels from Marvel, DC, Image Comics, Dark Horse and more.

Check out a few highlights below, or visit Diamond’s website for this week’s almost complete list of new comics arriving in stores — you can visit Lunar Distribution’s home page to see DC’s release — and the comiXology new releases page for what’s available digitally.

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‘Blackhand Ironhead’ returns for a second season

David Lopez’s digital comic returns at Panel Syndicate today.

David Lopez‘s Blackhand Ironhead returns for a second season today at Panel Syndicate, the digital comics website founded by Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin and Muntsa Vicente. It’s available for download in Panel Syndicate’s traditional “choose your own price” model.

Lopez writes and draws the comic, while Kike J. Diaz provides the colors.

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comiXology Originals announces ‘Hailstone’

Rafael Scavone and Rafael de Latorre head to a winter-ravaged Montana for a new horror title.

comiXology Originals and Stout Club Entertainment are teaming up again for Hailstone, a “horror thriller set during the U.S. Civil War,” by Rafael Scavone, Rafael de Latorre, Wesllei Manoel, Bernardo Brice and Bis Stringer Horne.

This is the second comic in a five-title deal between comiXology and Stout Club, following last year’s Funny Creek.

Hailstone presents a story of mystery, mixed with historical, horror and supernatural elements, all seasoned with good old western action,” Scavone said. “If I had to pick only one genre to define it, I’d definitely go for weird-fiction. The characters range from a traumatized Sheriff, unable to help his people, to an arrogant army officer running a military factory in a remote town. Art-wise Rafael de Latorre gave it a beautiful but uneasy atmosphere, his work is a perfect match for the story. The moody ambience he created grows denser as the story goes on poking the characters’ fears with it. All of these elements allowed us to play with sequences and pacing. We hope the readers dig it as much as we did while creating this comic.”

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Matt Kindt jumps into the controversial world of NFTs with a new ‘Mind MGMT’ story

The one-of-a-kind story will go to the highest bidder of an NFT auction.

Creator Matt Kindt is exploring the world of non-fungible tokens with Mind MGMT: The Artifact, a full-length comic that’s currently up for auction on the NFT auction website OpenSea.

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have been making headlines recently; they’re a type of code that acts sort of as a unique certificate of authenticity for a digital piece of art, tied to bitcoin and block chain technologies. The Verge, Bankrate and NPR have Q&A’s up on what NFTs are and how they’re being used right now in the art world.

“I wanted to create an original Mind MGMT comic book narrative that would explore the nature of belief and the value of ideas and their intangible nature as a way of exploring the idea of NFTs,” said Kindt. “The best way to explore this idea was for the actual story – the Mind MGMT narrative – to become what it is about. This story is written as a Mind MGMT espionage narrative – an agent sent on a mission to retrieve a priceless artifact. There are secret codes, monk-ninjas. LOTS of monk-ninjas and a teenage immortal intent on stealing this priceless artifact. It is both a real apple…and a drawing of an apple.”

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Victor Santos’ ‘Paranoia Killer’ launches at Panel Syndicate

Pay what you’d like for the new sci-fi thriller by the creator of ‘Polar.’

In celebration of its 8th anniversary, the digital comics site Panel Syndicate has launched a new comic by Polar creator Victor Santos. Paranoia Killer is described as “a thriller with elements of sci-fi about identity, divinity and the privatization of violence.”

“She is the reckless FBI Agent Nathalie Laertes. Her twin brother is the international hitman known as Delon Sombre. And now one must become the other. Princess Knight meets Philip K. Dick in this sci-fi crime thriller,” Santos posted on Twitter.

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Matthew Dow Smith launches ‘Doctor Secret’ on Twitter

The creator launches his fourth and final free, serialized comic on social media, keeping a promise he made when the pandemic started.

Matthew Dow Smith has spent almost a full year posting his own comics to Twitter, and he’s not stopping now — this week he launches Doctor Secret, a three-parter that will wrap up a year’s worth of comics posted to social media.

Smith started posting comics the same week that Diamond Comics Distributors announced their pandemic-related shutdown. He started with the autobiographical My Life as Riley and continuing on with the serialized Johnny Chaos, Arch Nemesis and Amelia Shadows, the latter just wrapping up last week.

“I gave myself one year to see what would happen, hoping that the weekly comics would at least keep my career alive until the industry figured out a path forward, while secretly hoping it might lead to me finally breaking through as a writer as well as an artist,” Smith wrote on Twitter.

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DC launches ‘Let Them Live!’ on DC Universe Infinite

A lost Suicide Squad story written in 2011 surfaces on DC’s digital comics system.

When DC relaunched their DC Universe Infinite service last month, they promised exclusive content for subscribers. Today brought the first DCUI-exclusive comic, titled Let Them Live!: Unpublished Tales from the DC Vault, featuring a “lost” Suicide Squad story by Jim Zub, Tradd Moore, Felipe Sobreiro and Nate Piekos.

The story will be the first of several released by DC under this title, which seems like a way for them to clean out their files and share comics that were commissioned but never published. In fact, each issue will feature a framing sequence by Elliott Kalan, Mike Norton and Marissa Louise starring Ambush Bug — who has taken a job as a night janitor at the DC offices, where he finds the unreleased comics and provides commentary.

Future issues will include:

  • Let Them Live! #2 — a Nightwing story by Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing, Jorge Corona, Mat Lopes and Carlos M. Mangual — debuting Feb. 16 with a frame story by Elliott Kalan, Mike Norton and Marissa Louise. Let them Live! #3 — a Batman story by Scott Bryan Wilson, John Paul Leon, Dave Stewart and Deron Bennet — debuting 3/2 with a frame story by Elliott Kalan, Mike Norton and Marissa Louise.
  • Let them Live! #3 — a Batman story by Scott Bryan Wilson, John Paul Leon, Dave Stewart and Deron Bennet — debuting March 2 with a frame story by Elliott Kalan, Mike Norton and Marissa Louise.
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