Here's your weekly roundup of comics news, from a new Deadpool series to a Rat Queens hiatus:
The Walking Dead one-shot has a surprising revelation for the Grimes family (spoilers)
Brian K Vaughan and Marcos Martin released their The Walking Dead: Alien one-shot comic this week - the first time the series has been written by someone other than Robert Kirkman.
The Y: The Last Man writer and his Private Eye collaborator's in-continuity story reveals the fate of Rick Grimes's long-lost brother, Jeff.
The comic is available digitally on Vaughan and Martin's Panel Syndicate website as a pay-what-you-want, DRM-free download.
Batman and Robin meet the (other) Avengers
The latest instalment in DC's inspired digital-first series will see the Dark Knight and Boy Wonder teaming up with the Avengers your parents always think of first in Batman '66 Meets Steed and Mrs. Peel.
Writer Ian Edginton and artist Michael Dow Smith are working on the 12-part team-up with BOOM! Studios, which combines everyone's favourite Batman (Adam West, obvs) with Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg's secret agents.
Batman '66 Meets Steed and Mrs. Peel will launch in June, with print releases for the series following in July.
Marvel and DC flag in the 2016 Eisner Award nominations
The nominations for this years Eisner Awards are out, with Image and Fantagraphics taking the lead with 18 and 17 nominations.
One-time industry leaders Marvel and DC continued to fall behind with 12 and 8 nominations.
Female creators received a record 61 nominations (spread out between 49 women), including three each for Colleen Coover (Bandette) and Joëlle Jones (Lady Killer, Brides of Helheim) and two for Erica Henderson (The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Jughead), Lucy Knisley (Displacement: A Travelogue), Marjorie Liu (Monstress) and Sydney Padua (The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage).
The Best Continuing Series category featured nods to Paul Tobin and Coover's Bandette, John Allison, Lissa Treiman and Max Sarin's Giant Days, Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley and Cliff Rathburn's Invincible, Dan Slott and Michael Allred's Silver Surfer, and Jason Aaron and Jason Latour's Southern Bastards.
Read the full list of nominations here.
Rat Queens is going on hiatus
Image Comics' much-loved fantasy series Rat Queens has had a short but troubled history - including the arrest of one of its creators - and the latest hurdle thrown in its way is the sudden departure of its current artist Tess Fowler.
She announced it on Twitter, with the Rat Queens co-creator later saying that the series was going on hiatus (which is apparently the cause rather than result of Fowler's departure).
Alan Moore reveals the cover to Jerusalem
We're edging ever closer to the September release of Alan Moore's long-awaited Jerusalem - a 6,000-year history of his home town Northampton, the first draft of which was over one million words long.
And now we have our first look at the cover, created by Moore himself.
Deadpool and the Mercs for Money gets a new ongoing series
Riding on the renewed wave of Wade Wilson-mania, when the Deadpool and the Mercs for Money miniseries ends it will be quickly followed by an ongoing series of the same name.
The omnipresent Cullen Bunn will write the comic with art by Iban Coello (Batman Beyond Universe).
Vertigo let's executive editor Shelly Bond go
Long-time DC editor and Vertigo vice president Shelly Bond has left the publisher under a restructuring.
Reports are that she was fired by the company, and the controversy over her departure has led to the latest round of accusations of sexual harassment in the company.
Bond became head of DC's once highly-successful imprint after the departure of its founder, Karen Berger.
Suspicions that Gerard Way's new DC imprint Young Animal will replace Vertigo are reportedly unfounded, at least for the time being.
