Tag: Matt Bors

The Toxic Avenger is heading to Washington in December

Take an exclusive look at the covers for ‘Toxic Avengers Comics’ #6 by Fred Harper and Erica Henderson.

Courtesy of Ahoy Comics, we’re pleased to present a look at the covers for Toxic Avenger Comics #6, which will arrive in stores on the last day of the year.

If you’ve been following along, you know that the new ongoing series written by Matt Bors (The Nib) started off with each issue being illustrated by a different artist and showcasing a different genre. That included horror and crime in the first two issues, which have already been released, and then sci-fi (#3), romance (#4) and fantasy (#5) in the September, October and November issues. Each issue also includes a two-page back-up story illustrated by Fred Harper that sets up the second storyline, “Toxie Goes to Washington.”

Which brings us to today’s cover reveals, as Harper and variant cover artist Erica Henderson bring the former janitor to the White House to help clean up Washington:

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The Toxic Avenger meets the Justice Warriors in ‘Toxie Team-Up’ #5

Check out Ben Clarkson’s cover for the big event.

Ahoy Comics’ Toxic Summer has put the spotlight on the Toxic Avenger, with multiple titles like Toxic Crusaders and the Toxic Avenger Pin-Up Special arriving to support the re-emergence of the cult classic character into the pop culture sphere.

One of the more interesting titles has been Toxie Team-Up, a take on the classic team-up title that has featured Troma’s best boy meeting characters from other Ahoy titles, like the Jersey Devil from Project: Cryptid, Dragonflyman and even Jesus Christ from Second Coming. And in October, Toxic Avenger writer Matt Bors will have the chance to team up again with artist Ben Clarkson as they bring together the Toxic Avenger with Swamp Cop and Schitt, the breakout stars of the Justice Warriors.

Justice Warriors, if you aren’t familiar, started as a miniseries about two cops in the fictional series of Bubble City. It was followed last year by the graphic novel Justice Warriors: Vote Harder. Swamp Cop is a take off on the Creature from the Black Lagoon, while Schitt is, well … a living poop emoji. The satire poked fun at capitalism, law enforcement and “free” elections in a future of severe inequality — and one populated by mutants. Which makes them the perfect companions for someone like the Toxic Avenger.

Check out Clarkson’s cover for Toxie Team-Up #5 below, which we are pleased to debut today: 

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Exclusive | Check out Lane Lloyd’s variant cover for ‘Toxic Crusaders’ #2

The five-issue miniseries will feature the Toxic Avenger and other characters from the 1990s animated series.

Courtesy of the fine folks at Ahoy Comics, we are pleased to debut Lane Lloyd’s variant cover for The Toxic Crusaders #2, which will arrive in stores in October.

The five-issue miniseries will debut in September and is written by Matt Bors, former editor of The Nib and current writer of The Toxic Avenger Comics. He’s joined by artist Tristan Wright on the series, which will feature the Toxic Avenger teaming up with several other mutants who appeared in the Toxic Crusaders animated series back in the 1990s, including No-Zone, Junkyard, Major Disaster and the all-new character Fungirl.

Lloyd has drawn many comics and covers for Oni Press, Ahoy, Image Comics, Legendary and more, and I’ll point you to Someone’s Died at Adventure Mountain, his current project that’s up on Kickstarter.

“In the aftermath of the chemical spill that created Toxie, other mutants arose — and they have united to wage war against an alien conspiracy,” Bors said. “We are taking everything from the original Toxic Crusaders cartoon —gross mutations, evil aliens, and over-the-top ecological action — to bring readers a must-read mutant monthly.”

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Sunday Comics | Nightwing’s Butt takes center stage on DC Go

Plus: Crucial Comix, Poetry Comics Month and more!

Here’s a round up of some of the most interesting comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

In the lead-up to the New York Comic Con, DC announced DC Go, their Webtoon-esque scrolling comics addition to their DC Universe Infinite digital comics. They’ve now posted four chapters of their original comics featuring Harley Quinn, Raven and Nightwing’s butt, as well as several “vertically reformatted” DC and MAD Magazine classics, including Batman: Hush, All-Star Superman and the Court of Owls storyline that kicked off Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s New 52 Batman.

And what’s great is, everything they’ve posted so far is available for free.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Matt Bors + Ben Clarkson on ‘Justice Warriors: Vote Harder’

The creators of the dystopian satire sequel graphic novel talk about their secret origins, being ‘plagiarized’ by real-world events, meatball riots, buddy-cop bro-mances and more.

I’m not sure if Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson could have asked for better timing for their new graphic novel, Justice Warriors: Vote Harder, which arrives in stores today.

Now, obviously, it is election season here in the U.S., and their sequel to the first Justice Warriors miniseries is focused on an election in the fictional city of Bubble City — so that tracks. But when the project was announced by Ahoy Comics, they had no idea that it would arrive the day after the second presidential debate or that said debate would feature different candidates than the first debate.

If you read the first Justice Warriors miniseries, you know that the story drew heavily from the headlines, twisting our reality into a dystopian satire series that poked fun at capitalism and law enforcement in a future of severe inequality — and one populated by mutants. This time around our two protagonists, Swamp Cop and Schitt, get pulled into the chaos of the first Bubble City elections that have happened in, like, forever.

I spoke with Bors and Clarkson about the new graphic novel, their work process, why they went with an OGN instead of another miniseries and more. I thank them both for their time — or at least the concept of their time.

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‘Justice Warriors’ returns this fall as an original graphic novel

‘Justice Warriors: Vote Harder’ takes aim at politics and elections.

Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson’s Justice Warriors will return from Ahoy Comics this fall as a full-length graphic novel, titled Justice Warriors: Vote Harder.

A dystopian satire series that pokes fun at capitalism and law enforcement in a future of severe inequality, the first Justice Warriors miniseries was released in 2022 and collected in 2023. This new graphic novel takes aim at politics and elections, which no doubt makes it the perfect companion to what’s happening in America this year.

“Bubble City is having its first ever mayoral election and mutant cops Swamp and Schitt are pulled in to special duty to protect the vote from the people,” Bors said in his newsletter. “Ben Clarkson and I have been hard at work, along with our colorist Felipe Sobreiro, to top our first volume of the series and bring you an election year satire for the ages.”

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‘Toxic Avenger’ returns to comics courtesy of Matt Bors + Fred Harper

Ahoy Comics takes us back to Tromaville this fall.

The Toxic Avenger, the star of the 1984 Troma movie of the same name, will return to comics this fall in a new series by Matt Bors (The Nib, Justice Warriors) and Fred Harper (Snelson).

Ahoy Comics will publish the series, which Bors says will combine elements of the original films — it had several sequels — and the Toxic Crusaders cartoon. The original film was about a New Jersey teenager named Melvin who fell into a vat of toxic waste while fleeing bullies and became the Toxic Avenger.

“The Toxic Avenger is first and foremost an environmental satire, one about a small town and its unremarkable people trapped and transformed by circumstances they don’t control,” Bors said. “The story Fred Harper and I are telling is about people frustrated by authorities telling them not to worry about their life, that things are fine, even as their dog mutates in front of their eyes. And at its core it is about a powerless boy, Melvin, who finds out he can be incredibly strong, hideously mutated, well-admired, and incredibly heroic… but still ultimately powerless over human behavior.”

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Sunday Comics | Read The Nib magazine for free (while you can)

Also check out recent webcomics by Meredith McClaren, Simon Roy, Mad Rupert, Cat Farris and Mike Russell.

Here’s a round-up of some of the best webcomics we’ve seen online recently — and news about them as well. If we missed something cool or you have your own recommendation, let us know in the comments below.

As editor and publisher Matt Bors announced back in May, the award-winning nonfiction webcomics site The Nib will stop publishing new comics at the end of the month. Bors is hoping to keep an archive of the site up and running, so he’s currently taking donations to help make that happen.

He has also made all the back issues of The Nib magazine available to read for free:

The Nib is wrapping up ten years of publishing and closing down at the end of August. But before we go, we are making all 15 issues of our Eisner and Ignatz award-winning magazine available for anyone to download for free. That’s more than 1,600 pages of comics, including our out of print Secrets, Nature, Food, and Color issues.

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The Nib will shut down after August

Editor Matt Bors announced the decision today, noting ‘The math isn’t working anymore.’

The Nib, the award-winning, critically acclaimed and much-needed political comics website and publisher, will shut down at the end of the summer.

Editor and publisher Matt Bors announced the decision on the site, noting the decision was “incredibly hard,” but “the math isn’t working anymore.”

“This was an incredibly hard decision to make and there’s no one factor involved,” Bors said. “Rather it involves, well, everything. The rising costs of paper and postage, the changing landscape of social media, subscription exhaustion, inflation, and the simple difficulty of keeping a small independent publishing project alive with relatively few resources—though we did a lot with them. The math isn’t working anymore.”

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Sunday Comics | Afghanistan, masks and killer bees

Check out recent comics by Jay Hosler, Alex de Campi, Christine Larsen, MariNaomi, B.J. Mendelson and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below or on social media.

As the United States ends its occupation of Afghanistan, political cartoonist and The Nib founder Matt Bors looks back at the comics he created as a result of a trip he took to the country in 2010:

In August of 2010 I embarked on a month long trip through Afghanistan with fellow cartoonists Ted Rall and Steven Cloud. We traveled unembedded throughout the North of the country and in the capital of Kabul. It was the ninth year of the war and, at the time, the height of the Taliban insurgency and US troop presence.

The goal of the trip was to hear from Afghans directly, see the occupation for ourselves, and share those experience—through writing, comics, and photography. I captured a lot in sketchbooks and filed a series of comics through my syndicate where papers normally ran my political cartoons. The following comics are a series of vignettes on Afghanistan and represent some my earliest attempts at more realistic nonfiction comics. These originally ran online at Cartoon Movement, but appear to be lost to web decay, so I wanted to publish them again here—for posterity and for any insight they still hold.

You can see his comics here.

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Matt Bors retires his weekly political comic strip; will still run ‘The Nib’

Bors will turn his attention to creating fiction comics and longer-form nonfiction comics.

After almost two decades, cartoonist and The Nib founder Matt Bors has announced he’s retiring from his weekly political comic. His comic on background checks that ran at the end of March will be his last regular political cartoon.

He plans to continue running The Nib, the award-winning webcomics site that features political and nonfiction comics on a daily basis by a variety of artists. He also said he plans to do more nonfiction comics, including comic interviews, for the site. And he’s preparing pitches for fiction comics as well.

“So I will be staying busy, as always,” he said in his announcement post. “Something had to give in my life to make room for other things and, frankly, it was an easy decision. I’ve drawn political cartoons every week since I was 19 and feel like I have said everything I can say, often a few times over. I know this may be disappointing to longtime readers, but my creative desires pull me in another direction, one where I hope to create more work on par with what I’ve done in this field. I also owe it to both The Nib’s readers and creators to keep the publication going as long as possible.”

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Mail Call | Dark Horse to bring several comiXology Originals titles to print

A round-up of news from DC, Marvel, Titan Comics, IDW and more.

Mail Call is a roundup of the announcements we’ve received from comics publishers in our mailboxes recently. Hit the links for more information.

ComiXology announced this week that they’ve struck a deal with Dark Horse to bring several of their comiXology Originals digital titles to print, starting with four titles next spring: Afterlift, Breaklands, Youth and The Black Ghost.

“We were always hopeful comiXology Originals books would get into readers’ hands via comics retailers and book stores, and Dark Horse is a terrific collaborator to work with to do so, with an unmatched history of supporting creator-owned projects alongside unmatched distribution expertise. This deal fortifies the ability for these stories to reach customers like never before,” said David Steinberger, comiXology co-founder and CEO. “We’re thrilled to be working with Dark Horse.”

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