Image Expo is on.
Can you feel the comics industry shaking?
Image revealed multiple new series from legendary and best-selling writers and artists at their one-day Image Expo in San Francisco.
A brand new number one and milestone for Image Comics co-founding father Todd McFarlane.
Here’s the rundown of today’s announcements:
AD: After Death
New York Times bestselling writer Scott Snyder (WYTCHES, Batman) and artist Jeff Lemire (Trillium, Sweet Tooth) come together to for AD: AFTER DEATH, from Image Comics this November 2015. “Set in a near future where death has been cured and one man must come to grips with what comes next.”
BLACK ROAD
Writer Brian Wood’s (Star Wars, DMZ, Northlanders) first return to the Viking genre since the acclaimed Northlanders series and his and Garry Brown’s first project together since The Massive.
Set in Viking Age Norway, BLACK ROAD follows Magnus The Black, a fixer for the Christian Church who loses a Roman official to bandits on the infamous Black Road. Heading north to fix the problem and complete his contract, he uncovers a secret, something so big it threatens to change the balance of power in all of Europe. But with one foot in the world of the pagans and the other in that of the Church, who can trust where his loyalties lie?
I Hate Fairyland
“Skottie Young (Rocket Raccoon, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz) and Jean-Francois Beaulieu (Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz) would like to introduce you to Gertrude, a snarky, slightly deranged 40-year-old with a battle axe who happens to be trapped in a Shirley Temple-esque body and confined to the technicolor funworld that is Fairyland. I HATE FAIRYLAND is an all-new series full of morbid, dark humor and snark—perfect for fans of Invader Zim and Fight Club.”
ISLAND & 8HOUSE
Emma Ríos officially announced three upcoming projects. ISLAND & 8HOUSE, both collaborations with Brandon Graham, are due in 2015.
ISLAND, a collaboration spearheaded by Ríos and Graham “and featuring a murderer’s row of the most interesting artists in comics,” will be an oversized 72-page monthly magazine, scheduled for June 2015.
KAPTARA
KAPTARA, a new ongoing series from Chip Zdarsky (SEX CRIMINALS) and award-winning illustrator Kagan McLeod (Infinite Kung-fu)!
“The story follows Keith Kanga, a young bio-engineer flung across the universe onto a strange planet filled with weird danger. And if he doesn’t get home then Earth—the place where YOU live—is DOOMED!”
THE LUDOCRATS
A new comic by Kieron Gillen (THE WICKED + THE DIVINE, PHONOGRAM), David Lafuente, Jim Rossignol, and Ricardo Venancio.
“The Ludocrats is a decade-in-the-making opulent fantastical comedy,” said writer Kieron Gillen, “This is a book which has hyperbole as its baseline, and considers the impossible as an aim only fitting for underachievers. It’ll change your life. Primarily by letting you own a comic called The Ludocrats, where BARON OTTO VON SUBERTAN and PROFESSOR HADES ZERO-K are the last defenders of a ludicrous aristocracy against the insipid forces of normalisation.”
MONSTRESS
Marjorie Liu (X-Men, Tiger Eye) and Sana Takeda (Ms. Marvel) are teaming up for MONSTRESS.
“Readers are transported into the early 1900s, where immense Leviathans roam the Earth, wielding unimaginable powers that many have long desired to exploit. When a teenage girl with a mysterious past forms a tenuous psychic bond with the most dangerous of all the Leviathans, she becomes the target of both human and otherworldly authorities who will stop at nothing to possess her—to control her, and control the Lord of the all the Leviathans. What they don’t count on is the courage of the girl herself—and the fact that she is slowly becoming more than human…”
NO MERCY
Alex de Campi (Smoke/Ashes, Grindhouse), Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), and Jenn Manley Lee (Dicebox).
“It was just a trip, before college. Build schools in a Central American village; get to know some of the other freshmen. What could go wrong? After tragedy strikes, these once-privileged American teens must find their way home in a cruel landscape that at best doesn’t like them, and at worst actively wants to kill them. No phones. No passports. No mercy.”
PAPER GIRLS
Brian K. Vaughan (SAGA, Runaways) reunites with artist Cliff Chiang (Wonder Woman) for an all-new ongoing series. “The story of four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls who experience something extraordinary one day…”
PHONOGRAM
Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie (THE WICKED + THE DIVINE, Young Avengers) return to their fan-favorite PHONOGRAM with an all-new story arc that explores Emily Aster’s origins.
“Emily Aster’s the hyper-acerbic cover-queen whose one liners are sharper than her fringe; she’s been the one people love and love to quote. In this new chapter of the PHONOGRAM series, readers discover how she got that way, and where it got her. She sold half her personality for power. This is what happens when that faustian deal catches up with her, and what that half her personality has been doing all these years.”
PLUTONA
Jeff Lemire, artist Emi Lenox, and colorist Jordie Bellaire will team up “to explore the nature of friendship and the line between good and evil in an all-new series. This follows the story of five suburban kids who make a shocking discovery while exploring the woods one day after school… the body of the world’s greatest super hero, Polara, laying dead among the mud and grass.”
PRETTY DEADLY
Kelly Sue DeConnick (BITCH PLANET) and Emma Ríos reunite for the second story arc of their ethereal fantasy western story.
In this second story arc “the mantle of Death has fallen to a little girl, Sissy, who, along with her tattered band of reapers, is tasked with gathering souls whose time has come, or come and passed. An old woman has a dying request. Her son has been missing for more than a year, gone east, and from there to fight in the trenches overseas. She wants to see the boy one last time before she passes. And so Deathface Ginny is dispatched through clouds of mustard gas to find the young man, but between her and her quarry, atop bitter black mount of twenty hands, sits the Reaper of War himself.”
REVENGEANCE
Cartoonist Darwyn Cooke will launch his first fully creator-owned project from Image Comics in June 2015.
“REVENGEANCE is a psychological thriller with darkly humorous overtones. When Joe Malarky is faced with a criminal tragedy, he sets out to make things right on his own. What follows is Joe’s odyssey through the underside of the city and the madness that seems to drive his crazy world.”
RUN LOVE KILL
Blak Boks LLC collaborators Eric Canete and Jon Tsuei announced their ambitious take on sci-fi and action-centric storytelling in their book. They will be joined by designer and color artist Leonardo Olea, with Manu Fernandez providing eye-catching CGI build models for the covers.
“The story follows a wanted woman in hiding named Rain Oshiro. The narrative style will prominently feature two very different but significantly connected moments throughout her life: “The Past”—which will explore her history as an impressionable student, an abiding soldier, and a wanted fugitive; and “The Present”—which will show her as she is now and how she copes with (and runs away from) the decisions made in her past. At its core, the story is an exploration of choices—both good and bad. And now, how her choices have formed her into the person she has and will become. Set against a background of a futuristic world as only artist Canete can imagine, Rain has just 24 hours to escape a barricaded city while trying to evade a military force determined to either capture or kill her.”
SAVIOR
Todd McFarlane, one of the biggest names in comics, is launching a new series with co-writer Brian Holguin and artist Clayton Crain. This eight-issue miniseries arrives in April, 2015.
“A man appears with no background, no memory, and no place to call home. But this much is clear—this individual possesses certain powers, abilities that harken from the Old Testament… Could he possibly be this corrupted world’s SAVIOR in the flesh? Or will he be the world’s undoing?”
SONS OF THE DEVIL
Brian Buccellato and Toni Infante are teaming up for an all-new psychological horror story “about one man’s discovery of familial blood ties to a cult. A dark look at a blue collar 25-year-old orphan who learns he is the son of a cult leader.”
STARVE
Brian Wood, Danijel Zezelj, & Dave Stewart team up for a story set in the near future, “where celebrity chefs are idolized and reality television has taken a decidedly unsavory turn.
STARVE is set in a world where chefs are practically royalty, and access to them is the ultimate status symbol. Chef Gavin Cruikshank, back from self-imposed exile, finds his little foodie television program “Starve” transformed into a gonzo arena sport where chefs slice and dice rare and endangered species for their super-rich patrons. Since his personal life is as much a shambles as his professional career, Chef Cruikshank works to repair his relationship with his grown daughter while dismantling the monstrosity that Starve has become.”
TADAIMA
Writer and illustrator Emi Lenox (EMITOWN) takes readers along on her personal journey back to Japan in a touching and in-depth look at Japanese roots and cultural influences in a new graphic novel.
“Throughout childhood, Emi visited her Grandmother in Japan frequently. But through the years of high school and after, she hadn’t been back in nearly twelve years. Sadly, within those twelve years, both her Japanese grandparents passed away. TADAIMA is a travelogue documenting a trip back to Japan with her mother for a memorial service to renew the sobota, a wooden grave marker, at her grandparents’ tomb in Fukushima. Touching on Japanese spirituality and cultural differences, TADAIMA is more than a book about landmarks and foreign cuisine. It’s about family.”
WE STAND ON GUARD
Brian K. Vaughan teams up with co-creator and artist Steve Skroce (storyboard artist for The Matrix and Jupiter Ascending) for an all-new mini-series.
This is a “military thriller set in the 22nd century. The series follows a heroic band of Canadian civilians-turned-freedom fighters who take up arms against a violent invasion of their country by a technologically superior nation: the United States of America.”
HEAVEN
James Robinson and Phillip Tan team up for an all-new space opera series introducing readers to “a distant future where the forces or man and alien combined have used religion to conquer this universe and are now ready, about to invade the next one — Heaven itself. The “Good War” between man and angel will span galaxies and dimensions, building to a final conflict that threatens to negate all of reality itself. Along the way many players on both sides of the war will be featured; soldiers, spies and politicians all with different goals and agendas even as their two distinct and differing realities explode around them.”
SPAWN
One of the books that started it all – Todd McFarlane’s SPAWN hits a 250 issue milestone. Watch for anniversary issues SPAWNS covers from some of the biggest names in comics plus a long-awaited mass digital release, SPAWN RESURRECTION #1.
Stay tuned for more news and preview images.
By Editor