Dark Horse serves up ‘The Butcher’s Boy’ in May

Landry Q. Walker, Pannel Vaughn and Justin Greenwood bring a tale of gruesome folklore to life in a new miniseries.

Landry Q. Walker, Pannel Vaughn and Justin Greenwood will hit the backroads of the Pacific Northwest for a folk horror tale in The Butcher’s Boy, a new miniseries coming from Dark Horse Comics later this year.

Walker, known for the excellent Danger Club, will co-write the series with Vaughn. Greenwood, who worked with Walker on The Last Siege, is the artist, along with colorist Bard Simpson. Letterer Pat Brosseau rounds out the team.

“Appetite – whether it be desire for food, affection, or power – and the ability that hunger has to drive you to become unrecognizable – even to yourself – has always sat at the heart of my favorite horror stories,” Walker said. “Writing this book has led me down some dark psychological pathways that border somewhere between healthy obsession and self-destructive spirals. On some level, you need to feel what you write. The goal of this story is to take that discomfort, that yearning appetite (in all its myriad forms) and contextualize it as a malignant and conscious force. As a story, one that is finally ready for consumption.”

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Slugfest | Get ready for ‘The Gimmick’

Check out news and announcements featuring the X-Men, Captain Marvel, The Last Barbarians, Harrower, The Archies in India and more.

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you from comics creators, publishers and more. Hit the links for more information.

Ahoy Comics has announced a new project by writer Joanne Starer (Sirens of the City; Away From Here) and artist Elena Gogou (Quests Aside) — The Gimmick, which is “how I imagine the Coen brothers would tell a story about the wrestling business,” Starer said.

Colorist Andy Troy, letterer Rob Steen and editor Tom Peyer round out the creative team.

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Image Comics maps the route to eternal life in ‘Compass’

The adventure comic from Robert Mackenzie, Dave Walker and Justin Greenwood debuts in June.

Robert Mackenzie and Dave Walker, who worked on Lazarus Sourcebook with Greg Rucka, will team up with artist Justin Greenwood for a new adventure series set in 13th century Britain, titled Compass.

Compass was born out of our desire to tell a story of discovery without colonialism, of adventure without exploitation—something with the verve and energy of the pulps, but with a perspective that hadn’t been seen much in that genre,” said Mackenzie. “Getting there was its own process of discovery, and it’s been a joy to work with co-creators who have the talent to truly unearth Shahidah‘s quest. I’m so pleased to be able to share Compass with the world.”

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‘Crone’ fights one last time this November

Dennis Culver, Justin Greenwood, Brad Simpson and Pat Brosseau team up on a new comic from Dark Horse.

An old fighter fights again as Dennis Culver, Justin Greenwood, Brad Simpson and Pat Brosseau present Crone, coming this fall from Dark Horse Comics.

“This is a story I’ve long wanted to tell,” said Culver in a press release. “Crone is about facing death after a long life of regret and trying to rise to the challenge of making up for your mistakes when given one last chance.”

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Image reveals many, many new titles at Image Expo

New projects announced from Matthew Rosenberg and Tyler Boss, Rob Guillory, J.H. Williams and Haden Blackman, Sam Humphries and Jen Bartel, Annie Wu and more.

As they’ve done in previous years, Image Comics dropped a metric ton of announcements at their Image Expo event, held today in Portland, Oregon.

The line-up of announcements this year includes five new titles from Todd McFarlane’s camp, new titles from Chew creators John Layman and Rob Guillory, two comics from Christoper Sebela, the fact that they’ll publish the Netflix/Millarworld titles starting with The Magic Order and much more. No doubt there are interviews aplenty dropping around the internet on all these new projects, so I’ll start with the text of the press release, then add art and commentary as I find it.

So let’s get to it …

Blackbird by Sam Humphries & Jen Bartel
Sam Humphries and Jen Bartel team up to co-create Blackbird, a modern fantasy story best described as Harry Potter meets Riverdale. It follows a young woman named Nina who discovers a neon-lit world of magic masters in Los Angeles. Now they’ve kidnapped her sister, and Nina is the only one who can save her.

“Blackbird is a labor of love, a coming of age story and beautiful people doing insane things with magic,” said Humphries.

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New miniseries expands the world of ‘Lazarus’

Greg Rucka and Michael Lark’s Image series enlists Eric Trautmann, Steve Lieber and more to explore different corners of the ‘Lazarus’ universe.

Greg Rucka and Michael Lark have recruited several writers and artists for a new six-issue miniseries set in the world of their popular Lazarus comic from Image. Lazarus: X+66 will feature six different stories that look into “neglected” corners of the world they’ve been building.

“Part of the joy of writing Lazarus for me is exploring and defining different aspects of the world, and in particular the characters who inhabit it,” Rucka said in a press release. “Following the events of ‘Cull,’ and gearing up for the inevitable trauma that will be ‘Fracture,’ this was the ideal time and place to look into some of the corners of our universe that had been, for one reason or another, neglected, while at the same time buttressing and expanding on the overall ‘main story’ that Michael and I are telling. Every one of these stories is important in the larger narrative, and getting to provide a laser focus on them is simply something that we can’t do in the confines of the pages of the monthly.”

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