Can’t Wait for Comics | Girls, unicorns and nuclear war

New comics and graphic novels arrive this week from John Ridley, Olivier Coipel, L.L. McKinney, Robyn Smith, Matt Fraction, Lilah Sturges, Colleen Doran, Kurt Busiek, Ben Dewey and many more.

Welcome to Can’t Wait for Comics, your guide each week to what comics are arriving in comic book stores, bookstores and on digital. This week sees the wrap-up of DC’s Future State event and the latest Ms. Marvel series, as well as debuts from AfterShock, Scout, Image and more.

Check out a few highlights below, or visit ComicList for this week’s full list of new comics arriving in stores, and the comiXology new releases page for what’s available digitally.

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What Are You Reading? | ‘Empyre,’ ‘Wicked Things’ and more

See what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately.

Welcome to What Are You Reading?, our weekly look at what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately — including comics from past decades and some from the past week.

Let us know what you read this week in the comments or on social media.

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Marvel, Scholastic team up for graphic novel line

‘Miles Morales: Shock Waves’ will be the first OGN released as part of the partnership.

Marvel is teaming up with Scholastic for a line of graphic novels featuring Ms. Marvel, Shuri and other Marvel characters. The line will kick off next spring with Miles Morales: Shock Waves, an original graphic novel by novelist Justin A. Reynolds (Early Departures) and artist Pablo Leon (The Journey).

The new line of OGNs will be part of Scholastic’s Graphix Media line, the home of Bone, Dog Man and Raina Telgemeier’s books, among others. It follows Marvel and Scholastic’s prose collaboration program that was announced last year.

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‘Marvel Team-Up’ returns in April

The first arc by Eve Ewing and Joey Vazquez will feature Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man.

One of the staples of Marvel’s 1970s/1980s comic line will return in April, as the publisher has announced plans to reboot Marvel Team-Up.

Written by Eve Ewing with art by Joey Vazquez, the first arc of the new ongoing series will feature a team-up between Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man. Ewing and Vazquez are also working together on a Ms. Marvel story that will be included in Ms. Marvel #38.

“I don’t want to reveal too much, but my goal with the story is to have maximum fun with two characters that are both really sweet and really cool people who are fan favorites (and faves of mine), and to put them both in some delightful awkward and uncomfortable situations where they have to stretch to the limits of their abilities,” Ewing told The Chicago Tribune.

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Comics Lowdown: Off to a roaring start

Zunar sues his persecutors, Bosch Fawstin is booted (temporarily) from Twitter, and the Best of the Year lists keep rolling in.

Legal: A Malaysian High Court judge has set aside five days in April to hear the cartoonist Zunar’s lawsuit against the Inspector-General of Police and 19 other defendants. Zunar, who has been charged with sedition and is currently prohibited from leaving the country, is suing for damages and wrongful arrest. In December 2016, police stormed the venue where a “Tea with Zunar” event was about to take place and arrested the cartoonist and several other people; they also confiscated books and T-shirts. In the lawsuit, Zunar is asking for monetary damages for wrongful arrest, the return of his merchandise, and a declaration that the defendants had violated his rights.

Twitter: Cartoonist Bosch Fawstin was suspended from Twitter for “hate speech” after one of his Tweets was reported by another user. At first Twitter refused to tell him why, but then they told him his account would be unlocked if he deleted a Tweet reply that read “@NyaDnart1 There are degrees. Muslims who follow in Mohammad’s footsteps mass murder. Christians who follow in Jesus’s footsteps?” They subsequently reinstated his account with a statement that it had accidentally been caught in a spam filter.

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Comics Lowdown: RIP James Vance

The man who finished ‘Omaha the Cat Dancer’ passes away, Frank Quitely finally gets that degree, and more.

James Vance

Passings: James Vance, the author (with artist Dan Burr) of the graphic novels Kings in Disguise and On the Ropes, died on June 5 at the age of 64. Kings in Disguise was first published as a limited series by Kitchen Sink Press in 1988 and in 1989 won the Eisner and Harvey awards for Best New Series, and the first issue won the Eisner for Best Single Issue. W.W. Norton published a collected edition in 2006, with an introduction by Alan Moore. The sequel, On the Ropes, was published by Norton in 2013. Vance was married to Omaha the Cat Dancer writer Kate Worley from 1994 to 2004, and many years later he collaborated with Omaha artist Reed Waller to complete the story, which was left unfinished at Worley’s death; it was published in 2013. Vance, who was also a playwright, talked about his work with Alex Dueben at CBR in 2013. His illness and death leaves his family in a difficult financial situation, so a GoFundMe has been set up to help.

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‘Monstress,’ ‘Paper Girls’ among this year’s Hugo nominees

‘Black Panther,” ‘Ms. Marvel,’ ‘The Vision’ and ‘Saga’ round out this year’s nominees in the ‘Graphic Story’ category.

The nominees for the 2017 Hugo Awards have been announced, including the “Graphic Story” category, which features six not-unexpected choices.

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