Vikings! Giant Robots! Darwyn F’ing Cooke! Spawn for some reason! Unsurprisingly, this year’s installment of the Image Expo brought with it a deluge of exciting new announcements for 2015. Here’s All-Comic’s handy-dandy resource for them in one convenient place, just click any of the links below to get all the details on these exciting new (and returning) series:
What if we found a cure for death?New York Times bestselling writer Scott Snyder (WYTCHES, Batman) and artist Jeff Lemire (Trillium, Sweet Tooth) come together to launch AD: AFTER DEATH, from Image Comics this November 2015. AD: AFTER DEATH will be set in a near future where death has been cured and one man must come to grips with what comes next.
Bestselling artist Skottie Young (Fortunately, the Milk, 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.
New York Times bestselling and multiple Eisner Award-winning writer Brian K. Vaughan (SAGA, Runaways) reunites with artist Cliff Chiang (Wonder Woman) for an all-new ongoing series—PAPER GIRLS, the story of four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls who experience something extraordinary one day…
A new ongoing series from very interesting person Chip Zdarsky (SEX CRIMINALS, Howard the Duck, much unpublished poetry) and award-winning illustrator Kagan McLeod (Infinite Kung-fu)! KAPTARA 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!
New York Times bestselling writer Kieron Gillen (THE WICKED + THE DIVINE, Young Avengers) and artist Jamie McKelvie (THE WICKED + THE DIVINE, Young Avengers) return to the beloved, fan-favorite PHONOGRAM with an all-new story arc that explores Emily Aster’s origins.
A new comic by Kieron Gillen (THE WICKED + THE DIVINE, PHONOGRAM), David Lafuente (Ultimate Comics: Spider-man), Jim Rossignol, and Ricardo Venancio.“The Ludocrats is a decade-in-the-making opulent fantastical comedy,” said writer of THE WICKED + THE DIVINE and PHONOGRAM, 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.”
Making a rare U.S. appearance for Image Expo this year, comics creator Emma Ríos officially announced ISLAND and 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. “The idea is to make longer-form stories in each issue than you get in many anthologies,” explained Graham. “The chapters will be 20 to 30 pages each. So it will be like a bundle of several comics in one book. 8HOUSE is a shared universe to be built by different teams working in independent miniseries. 8HOUSE begins with two stories, MIRROR by Emma Ríos and Hwei Lim and ARCLIGHT by Brandon Graham and Marian Churchland, as well as a slew of others.
Brian Buccellato and Toni Infante spin a tale of cults, murder, and psychological horror. SONS OF THE DEVIL is a dark look at a blue collar 25-year-old orphan who learns he is the son of a cult leader. Like True Detective and The Following, SONS OF THE DEVIL is an exploration into the dark side of human psychology. It’s a grounded take on cults that balances the real world with the supernatural. It’s gritty, character-driven, and tonally lays somewhere between SOUTHERN BASTARDS and NAILBITER.
Eric Canete (The End League, Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin) and Jon Tsuei (Comic Book Tattoo) are announcing their ambitious take on sci-fi and action-centric storytelling in their book RUN LOVE KILL. They will be joined by designer and color artist Leonardo Olea, with Manu Fernandez providing eye-catching CGI build models for the covers. The series will be published through Image Comics in Spring 2015. 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.
Darwyn Cooke (Parker, DC: The New Frontier) will launch REVENGEANCE, 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.
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Ríos announce the second story arc of their hit fantasy western series. n this second story arc of PRETTY DEADLY, 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.
Writer 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—PLUTONA, which 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, Plutona, laying dead among the mud and grass.
Bestselling writer Alex de Campi (Smoke/Ashes, Grindhouse), Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), and Jenn Manley Lee (Dicebox) team up for NO MERCY, coming from Image Comics this Spring 2015. t 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.
James Robinson (The Saviors) and Phillip Tan (SPAWN, Uncanny X-Men) team up for an all-new space opera series titled HEAVEN. The story introduces 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.
100 years from now, a heroic group of Canadians must defend their homeland from invasion… by the United States. New York Times bestselling and Eisner-Award-winning writer Brian K. Vaughan (SAGA, Ex Machina) teams up with co-creator and artist Steve Skroce (Doc Frankenstein, storyboard artist for The Matrix and Jupiter Ascending) for an all-new mini-series—WE STAND ON GUARD, an action-packed, 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.
Writer Brian Wood (Star Wars, DMZ, The Massive), Danijel Zezelj (Northlanders, Loveless), & Dave Stewart (THE WALKING DEAD, Star Wars) are cooking up a story set in the near future, where celebrity chefs are idolized and reality television has taken a decidedly unsavory turn, in STARVE. 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.
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, TADAIMA. 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.
BLACK ROAD marks 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 (The Massive, Iron Patriot) first project together since The Massive. Lauren Affe provides colors. 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?
This HUGE, TRIPLE SIZED 250th ANNIVERSARY ISSUE marks only the second time an independent comic book has reached such a lofty number! Todd McFarlane, creator of the vast SPAWN universe, is celebrating the anniversary with this massive 64 page-issue filled with jaw-dropping artwork. In SPAWN #250, readers are hit with the cataclysmic climax of the current Spawn: Jim Downing’s final struggle against his costume while the fate of New York City hangs in the balance. From the ashes of that battlefield comes the long-awaited return of the original Spawn… AL SIMMONS in SPAWN: RESURRECTION #1!
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