Inktober spotlight: Francesco Francavilla’s movie monsters

The artist tackles Beetlejuice, Darkman and more, just in time for Halloween.

October is not only the scariest month, but it’s also Inktober, where artists from all over the world create a different ink drawing every day of the month. While the official Inktober site provides a list of “prompts” to help inspire artists, many of them choose their own themes.

With many comic artists are participating this year — you can find a lot of them on Twitter or Tumblr using the #inktober hashtag, and we’ve been posting a bunch on our own Tumblr — we thought we’d spotlight a few of the “can’t miss” ones we’ve seen so far.

Artist Francesco Francavilla is no stranger to horror, having worked on Archie Comics’ flagship horror title Afterlife with Archie. The artist celebrates both Halloween and Inktober with a series of sketches of movie monsters, from classics like the Bride of Frankenstein to more modern horrors like Beetlejuice. Check out some of them below, and you can see more of them on Twitter.

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Huizenga, Harkham and more contribute to New York Times Magazine’s all-comics issue

Tillie Walden, Francesco Francavilla, David Mazzuchelli, Tom Gauld help turn New York news stories into compelling comics.

The New York Times Magazine has posted their very first all-comics issue, which features cartoonists turning stories that came through the NYT Metro desk into comic strips.

Tom Gauld, Sammy Harkham, Tillie Walden, Francesco Francavilla, David Mazzuchelli and several others contributed strips, while Kevin Huizenga provided the introductory strip that explains the concept. You can view all the strips by going here.

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Comic industry pays tribute to David Bowie

News of David Bowie’s passing brought an outpouring of tributes from many who were creatively influenced and admire the pop future legend, including those in the comic industry. Bowie’s eccentric life attracted a diversity of comic industry pros who celebrated his life in their own way.

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2016: Year of the (Black) Beetle?

Francesco Francavilla takes to Twitter to tease the return of ‘The Black Beetle,’ his well-regarded pulp comic from Dark Horse.

Our long, national nightmare may soon be over, as creator Francesco Francavilla teased on Twitter the return of The Black Beetle. Francavilla posted an image of the pulp hero with the hashtags #TheYearOfTheBeetle and #BlackBeetleReturns.

The Black Beetle originally appeared on Francavilla’s website back in 2009, then Dark Horse brought him to comic shops in 2013. Their first miniseries, Black Beetle: No Way Out, received many accolades (including an Eisner nomination for best miniseries) and appeared on several “best of the year” lists. But a second miniseries, “Necrologue,” was scheduled but never made it out of the gate. But it looks like that might be changing this year:

No word yet on when the excellent series will return, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for it.

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