Smash Pages Q&A | Adam Cesare and David Stoll on ‘Dead Mall’

The two creators discuss their love for malls, their approach to ‘mall horror,’ the potential for a sequel and more.

Horror novelist Adam Cesare‘s signature novel has a title that contains the two scariest words in the English language, Clown in a Cornfield, so right from the get-go you know that he gets horror. He’s also been adding comics to his resume over the last few years, having worked on Power Rangers comics, Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and more.

David Stoll, meanwhile, was the artist for Pantomime, a Mad Cave title with writer Christopher Sebela from a few years back. The story featured students at a school for the deaf who become thieves, and I still remember how clever the visuals were in communicating what was being said and heard by the deaf characters.

The two of them more recently united on Dead Mall, a four-issue miniseries from Dark Horse Comics. Along with letterer Justin Birch, they told a complete story that combined horror and mall culture. The story takes place in — and is narrated by — the Penn Mills Galleria, a former mall that’s about to be demolished when a group of kids decide to visit it one last time. Only they find it isn’t quite so empty.

The miniseries was recently collected into a trade paperback by Dark Horse Comics, and it’s available now in comic shops and bookstores everywhere. I spoke with Both Cesare and Stoll about the story, abandoned malls and more.

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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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DC’s Webtoon series will come to print later this year

DC and Webtoon have announced collections of ‘Wayne Family Adventures,’ ‘Vixen’ and ‘Zatanna & the Ripper.’

The three webcomics series produced by DC Comics and Webtoon will come to print later this year, starting with Batman: Wayne Family Adventures in August.

The webcomic by writer CRC Payne, lead artist StarBite, storyboard artist Maria Li, background artist Lan Ma, letterer Kielamel Sibal, and colorists C.M. Cameron, Camille Cruz and Jean Kim debuted on the platform back in 2021 and is still going; it’s up to 76 episodes now. It was followed by Vixen: NYC by Jasmine Walls and Maniu Azumi, which is up to episode 44, and Zatanna & The Ripper by Sarah Dealy and Syro, which is up to episode 38.

“Fans can’t get enough of our DC and Webtoon content, and expanding DC’s creative partnership with Webtoon into print with books like Batman: Wayne Family Adventures reflects this demand,” said Anne DePies, DC’s senior vice president and general manager. “Each page of these new volumes is meticulously reproduced to be read seamlessly in book narrative format. DC’s continuing partnership with Webtoon combines legendary franchises with new technologies and global fandoms, and we can’t wait to get these new print editions into your hands.”

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Top Cow to publish J. Gonzo’s ‘La Mano del Destino’

The collection of Gonzo’s original six-issue miniseries arrives in May.

Here’s one I missed when Image’s solicitations came out for May, but Top Cow reminded me of it with a press release: After self-publishing six issues and crowdfunding a bilingual flipbook, J. Gonzo‘s epic luche libre comic La Mano del Destino will be collected and published by Top Cow in May.

“Top Cow is a place where creative ideas win,” Gonzo said in a press release. “If you look at their current projects, or even their back catalog, there is a rich variety of story types and approaches that is unlike most other publishers or studios. They are less interested in a homogeneity of some house style and truly promote the best, creative ideas. It really is an ‘artist’s company.’”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Takeshi Miyazawa on ‘Mech Cadet Yu’

The artist discusses his latest project with writer Greg Pak, involving giant robots, an interstellar war and the teenager in the middle of it all.

Takeshi Miyazawa has been drawing comics for years now. Some of us first noticed his work in Sidekicks and Love in Tights, others noticed his work when he started working for Marvel, with his runs on Runaways and Mary Jane and Ms. Marvel.

His current project, Mech Cadet Yu, is a book he co-created with writer Greg Pak and is about an interstellar war, an alien invasion and the unlikely teenager who finds himself at the center of this. It’s hard to make a book about giant robots that looks and feels new and dynamic, but Pak and Miyazawa have done just that. In every issue they manage to expand and deepen the world they’ve established in fascinating ways.

Next month the fifth issue of the series, and a collection of the first four issues come out, and Miyazawa answered a few questions about the project.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Rich Tommaso on ‘Spy Seal: The Corten-Steel Phoenix’

The creator of ‘She Wolf’ and ‘Dark Corridor’ discusses the first collection of his all-ages series ‘Spy Seal.’

From The Cavalier Mr. Thompson to Clover Honey, from 8 1/2 Ghosts to Dark Corridor, Viking’s End to She Wolf, to the Eisner Award-winning Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow, Rich Tommaso doesn’t just jump from one genre to another, but plays with tone and approach, style and color, and the result is an expansive body of work.

Spy Seal is a different book for him, but in truth, almost every comic he’s done has been a departure in some way. It’s an all-ages story about a spy who is, well, a seal. Set in the 1960s in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals, it owes a lot to Tintin and any number of cartoons. It’s a very different book than I admit to being used to from Tommaso but I was charmed by its inventiveness and world building – not to mention the fact that Tommaso is clearly having a lot of fun. Image just announced that Tommaso will be returning to his crime fiction roots early next year with Dry County, before returning with another Spy Seal series in the fall. With the collection, Spy Seal: The Corten-Steel Phoenix out next month and Tommaso was kind enough to answer a few questions about how he works.

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How about a monster-sized preview of ‘Kaijumax Season 2’?

The second miniseries of Zander Cannon’s “giant monsters in prison” comic from Oni Press gets collected on Wednesday. And boy is it worth your time.

Zander Cannon’s Kaijumax is one of the more oddly awesome comics out there, about a prison for giant monsters and all the crazy prison drama they get into. With the “season two” trade paperback set to arrive on Wednesday, Oni Press has released a 22-page preview, which you can see below.

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