Tag: Mark Russell

Mark Russell + Ramon Rosanas invite you to their ‘Rumpus Room’

AWA presents a new parable about billionaires, skin cream and revenge.

Second Coming and Not All Robots writer Mark Russell is back at AWA Studios this fall for a new miniseries, Rumpus Room, with artist Ramon Rosanas.

Rumps Room tells the story of a psychotic billionaire who needs a special cream to hide his skin condition. That cream is made from people, so naturally he kidnaps all the people he hates and locks them in his Rumpus Room, letting them vote for his next victim.

“Rumpus Room is a parable for how in American civilization, on some level, we’re set against each other by forces that are too powerful for us to reach,” Russell said. “It parallels the underlying assumption of American life as well: ‘I can’t do anything about the real things that are destroying me, so I’ll take all my rage out against the people who cross me.’ Rumpus Room is about this misguided anger that we all have and how it weaponizes us against each other.”

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Ahoy will collect Russell + Snejbjerg’s ‘Cereal’ in October

The trade paperback collects ‘a dark, distinctly adult and lovingly funny take’ on breakfast cereal mascots.

Sugary cereal has never been scarier than when it’s in the hands of writer/satirist Mark Russell and artist Peter Snejbjerg. Their “Cereal” serial, which first appeared in the Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of… series of miniseries, will be collected in October by Ahoy Comics.

Described as “a dark, distinctly adult, and lovingly funny take on an earlier generation’s beloved monsters,” the story follows several breakfast-loving monsters who will seem familiar to any fans of General Mills’ “Monster” line of cereal. I was always a big fan of Franken Berry.

“Monsters play such an expansive role in our collective conscience, being used for everything from giving face to our deepest fears to selling us breakfast cereal,” said Russell. “This book looks at monsters from every angle at once. It sees them as we are — as cartoonish but scary, as comical, and yet, still sad.”

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‘Second Coming’ returns for a third series

Shouldn’t that be ‘Third Coming’? I mean, it’s right there …

Sunstar and Jesus. Mark Russell and Richard Pace. Cranius and God. They’re all back for a third helping of Second Coming, this one subtitled “Trinity.”

Russell, Pace, co-artist Leonard Kirk and colorist Andy Troy are joined this time by editor Sarah Litt for the continuing adventures of the Son of God and the world’s greatest superhero.

“If you haven’t read a Second Coming series and you think you know what it is, I guarantee you do not,” said AHOY Editor in Chief Tom Peyer. “The high concept of ‘What if Jesus lived with a superhero?’ is an arresting one, but it doesn’t begin to suggest what a wise, kind and funny piece of work its creators have given us.”

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Russell + Meli are ‘Traveling to Mars’ in November

The new series from Ablaze chronicles the last days of the first man on Mars.

Superman: Space Age and Second Coming writer Mark Russell will team with Italian artist Roberto Meli for a new “witty” science fiction series, Traveling to Mars, which kicks off this fall from Ablaze.

The story stars Roy, a former pet store manager who is terminally ill. Because of this, he’s chosen to become the first man on Mars, with no expectation of ever returning to Earth.

“Traveling to Mars is an intimate story about the end of days,” says Mark Russell. “Both Roy’s and ours. But Mars is as good a place as any to bow out of existence, I suppose.”

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Quick Hits | Remembering Tim Sale

Plus: News on Comixology, Mark Russell, Michael Allred, Tillie Walden, TCAF, Jerry Craft and Ric Flair!

Passings | Via Tim Sale’s Twitter account comes word that the 66-year-old artist died of kidney failure.

“He was sick for years and was even in the hospital since May 24. He was a private person and never wanted to worry all of you, but his death was neither preventable or unexpected. Tim was a wonderful man and simply didn’t want to cause any unnecessary stress to his friends and fans,” the statement says.

Many have posted remembrances of the Long Halloween artist since his death last week. At The Comics Journal, Joseph McCabe posts an in-depth obituary. Augie De Blieck looks back at several of Sale’s comics, including Batman: The Long Halloween. And artist Elsa Charretier shares a post on Substack titled “I wouldn’t be drawing comics if not for Tim Sale.”

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Russell + Allred send Superman on ‘an unforgettable journey through U.S. history’ in ‘Superman: Space Age’

The three-issue prestige series will offer ‘head-spinning iconography, top tier characters, twists, thrills, and chills,’ according to its artist.

Second Coming co-creator Mark Russell and Madman creator Mike Allred will team up for a unique look at the Man of Steel in Superman: Space Age. The three-issue prestige series kicks off in July.

“This is a dream project for me,” Russell said. “Not only because I get to work with a genius like Mike Allred, but because I’ve always found Superman such a philosophically fascinating character, one which forces us to ask how different would the world be if we chose to be our best selves?”

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Humanoids will preview ‘The Incal Universe’ on Free Comic Book Day

Mark Russell, Yanick Paquette, Pete Woods and more will contribute new stories based on ‘The Incal.’

Humanoids’ Free Comic Book Day offering for 2022 will preview an ambitious new graphic novel line based on The Incal, the classic graphic novel by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Mœbius.

“Four decades after its publication, the world of The Incal remains a shock to the system and a transcendent work,” said Humanoids CEO Fabrice Giger. “This new Incal Universe project, to which Alejandro Jodorowsky has given his blessing, will open the door for a new generation of readers to discover all new adventures featuring John Difool, the Metabaron, Kill Wolfhead and the Incal.”

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Ahoy expands the ‘Wrong Earth’ multiverse with one-shots by Simone, Waid + more

‘The Wrong Earth: Trapped On Teen Planet’ will kick off the series of one-shots next March.

Mark Russell, Gail Simone, Mark Waid and more will help expand the multiverse introduced in The Wrong Earth, the humorous superhero comic created by Tom Peyer and Jamal Igle. Publisher Ahoy Comics has announced five one-shots by five different creative teams that will arrive next year.

If you aren’t familiar with The Wrong Earth, imagine Adam West Batman and the Batman in The Dark Knight Returns switching worlds. Ahoy’s title featured the campy Dragonflyman of Earth Alpha switching places with the gritty Dragonfly of Earth Omega, resulting in chaos, a pretty clever comics miniseries and subsequent sequels.

And now imagine that multiverse getting bigger.

“Words will be written, words will be deleted, and nothing will ever be the same,” Peyer said. “This is Crisis on Infinite Earths, minus the line-wide consequences that made it interesting. This is Secret Wars without toys. This is the kind of epic, superheroic storytelling that publishers and CFOs love, where the tail of wealth-enhancing variant covers wags the dog of art.” 

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Russell + Lieber serve up the ‘One-Star Squadron’ in December

The new title features DC characters trying to make a living as superheroes.

Red Tornado, Power Girl, Plastic Man and several other B-list DC heroes will team up to make a buck while saving the world in One-Star Squadron.

Mark Russell, Steve Lieber and Dave Stewart will bring together a “ragtag group of heroes,” led by Red Tornado, who use an app to answer the call for justice — or attend your kid’s birthday party, for a fee.

“One of the things I love about this project is that [Mark Russell] and I get to imagine what it would be like to live from gig to gig, entirely at the mercy of distant corporations and their mercurial customer base,” Lieber said on Instagram.

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‘Darkhold’ continues in November with Wasp + Black Bolt

Jordie Bellaire, Claire Roe, Mark Russell and David Cutler will bring the next chapters in the event series to life.

Marvel has announced two more of the one-shots from their upcoming Darkhold event series, which features the infamous mystical tome causing problems for the Marvel Universe. Following the “Alpha” issue in September will be a series of one-shots featuring different characters “recruited to combat the Darkhold’s horrifying effects,” starting with Blade and Iron Man in September and Black Bolt and Wasp in October.

Colorist and writer Jordie Bellaire and artist Claire Roe are the creative team for Darkhold: Wasp, while Mark Russell teams with artist David Cutler on Darkhold: Black Bolt.

“As a writer, it’s a joy to get to write a character who spends even more time inside their own head than you do,” Russell said. “So Black Bolt is a writer’s dream character and when I heard which other creators were involved with the series, I was totally on board, like someone who’d unwittingly bought a house in a really great neighborhood.”

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Russell + Tiesma + Popov bring ‘Deadbox’ to life in August

The new horror title will take readers to Lost Turkey, where a cursed DVD machine holds the town in its grip.

Vault Comics has announced a new horror series from the team of writer Mark Russell, artist Benjamin Tiesma, colorist Vladimir Popov and designer Tim Daniel. Deadbox is about a town caught in the grip of “a cursed DVD machine.”

From the cover it looks like it’s a cursed Redbox, but for trademark reasons I’m sure they couldn’t say that. But somebody call The Last Blockbuster, because this could be good news for them.

“I wrote Deadbox as a horror story, not just about a cursed DVD rental machine, but also about the feeling of being trapped, boxed if you will, in a town that doesn’t get you and a place you will never feel at home in no matter how long you live there,” Russell said.

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Russell + Izaakse team for ‘Fantastic Four: Life Story’

The six-issue miniseries will tell the story of the Fantastic Four across 60 years.

Following in the footsteps of Spider-Man: Life Story, Marvel has recruited Mark Russell and Sean Izaakse for Fantastic Four: Life Story. Each issue of the six-issue miniseries will be set in a subsequent decade, starting with the 1960s, and tell the story of the life of the Fantastic Four against the historical backdrop of each decade.

“What I’ve always loved about the Fantastic Four is how it reduces the cosmic struggle of human survival to the scale of a family squabble while treating personal relationships as a matter of truly galactic importance,” Russell said. “Weaving their story and their world into our story and what’s happened in our world over the last sixty years was an important reminder to me of how smart it is to approach life like that.”

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