Here's your weekly roundup of comics news, from Image Expo announcements to the GLAAD Awards:
20 titles unveiled at Image Expo
The (usually) biannual Image Expo has become one of the biggest events in comics, and the latest event - ahead of Emerald City Comicon - didn't disappoint with 20 titles announced from a decent mix of new and established talent.
Catching our eye are:
- Jonathan Hickman and Tomm Coker's The Black Monday Murders, a tale of "classic occult indoctrination where the secret schools of magic are actually clandestine banking cartels who control all of society".
- Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Elizabeth Breitweiser's Kill or Be Killed, a new thriller from Brubaker and Phillips, the uncontested masters of crime comics.
- Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso's Moonshine, reuniting the 100 Bullets team for a Prohibition Era gangster tale with a horror twist.
- Brenden Fletcher, Cameron Stewart and Babs Tarr's Motor Crush, a sci-fi series from the unbeatable Batgirl team.
- Rick Remender and Jerome Opeña's Seven to Eternity, bringing the Uncanny X-Force pair back together again for the story of "Adam Osidis, a dying knight from a disgraced house, on a mission to rid his world of an insidious God who ensnared him in a Faustian deal". Yikes!
- Sara Kenney, John Watkiss, James Devlin and Jared K Fletcher's Surgeon X, a near-future sci-fi edited by Vertigo legend Karen Berger.
And that's just for starters. Check out the full list here. There are some good'uns.
Gerard Way is coming back to comics... with his own DC imprint
My Chemical Romance's former frontman has form in comics, and even won an Eisner Award for his Umbrella Academy series.
Well he's back and fronting DC's new "mature reader pop-up imprint" Young Animal.
He'll also be writing a new version of the classic Doom Patrol team book, while Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye, Mother Panic and Shade, The Changing Girl were also announced at Emerald City.
Oh, and this Doom Patrol features Way's pal Grant Morrison's Flex Mentallo. We did not see that coming.
Kingpin comes to Civil War II
Add this Wilson Fisk-fronted four-issue miniseries to the expanding list of Civil War II tie-ins.
Writer Matthew Rosenberg and artist Ricardo Lopez Ortiz are collaborating on Civil War II: Kingpin, which launches in July.
'Plus-size superhero' Faith gets an ongoing series
It is a truth universally acknowledged that in superhero comics the only characters without Adonis-like bodies are the bad guys.
Well, almost, but that's not true of Valiant Comics' Faith. The extremely likeable Harbinger character (no small feat among a bunch of angry superpowered misfits) has graduated from a miniseries to her own ongoing series.
Writer Jody Houser and artists Pere Pérez and Marguerite Sauvage will launch the comic in July.
Lumberjanes wins a GLAAD Media Award
BOOM! Studios' fantastic Lumberjanes is the recipient of GLAAD's latest Outstanding Comic award for its LGBT content.
Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Kat Leyh, Carolyn Nowak and Brooke Allen's comic centres around the fantastic adventures of a group of campers at Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's Camp for Hardcore Lady Types, and features a lesbian couple and a trans character.
It is also adorable.
