There's a storybook playfulness to Liam Barrett's illustrations that simultaneously evokes Western folk art and modern digital art. So it's appropriate that so many of his pieces feature colorful monsters, coyly macabre cats and devils engaged in nefarious pursuits.

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Fearless Defenders #12 arrived in stores this week, the final issue of a series that in a short amount of time gained a cult following unlike any other in mainstream comics. Upon close examination, it's easy to understand why -- it was not only the rare team title that featured an all female cast, but it was easily one of, if not the, most diverse and progressive titles on the stands. With Fearless Defenders, writer Culllen Bunn and artist Will Sliney fully embraced the notion that women of color and queer women are just as qualified to be heroic as anyone else.

So when it was announced that Marvel was ending the title at issue #12, it was disappointing news for many, including the title's creative team. As one last gift to fans, Bunn took to his website to bid a final farewell to the title, while also sharing some background information, including various lineups considered for the team and notes on where the book may have gone next.

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The CW’s superhero series Arrow re-imagines Green Arrow for a TV audience as a tough, often ruthless vigilante bent on setting things right in his home of Starling City by punishing the wicked. ComicsAlliance’s Matt Wilson will be following along to see how he fares.

This week, super powers officially become a thing on Arrow, Barry Allen makes his long-awaited first appearance, and a lot of arrows go into a lot of legs.

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Just about everyone in Sam Taylor's hyperactive cartoon grotesqueries is drunk: three-eyed Woody Woodpecker, Doctor Manhattan and hard-partying octopodes. Hell, even his anthropomorphic drugs are drunk. His bug-eyed, brightly colored style is a neat match for the characters from The Simpsons, whom he makes just a little sadder and more twisted than usual.

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Following the current season of the dance/gun/dinosaur-themed Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger, Toei will launch its 38th Super Sentai series, Ressha Sentai Tokkyuger. It's all about trains! Train track helmets, railroad crossing chest motifs, a giant combined train mech known as the TokkyuOh, electronic train ticket device morphers called Tokkyu Chargers  -- this show looks like it's going to be the right kind off the rails.

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When it comes to the holiday gift-giving season, comic book readers are notoriously difficult to shop for. I mean, most of us are down at the shop buying our favorite stuff every single week, so when the time comes for people who like us to get us something we want, well, a lot of times we already have it. That’s why we’re stepping in with a public service, bringing you comics-related items sure to make the season brighter, whether you’re browsing for a gift or just looking for something to drop hints about so that you don’t get stuck with a random assortment of back issues again.

If there's one thing that we can all agree on this holiday season, it's that your wintertime needs more Batman. Even if you think your wintertime has the maximum allowable amount of Batman in it, there can always be more -- and Funko's Batman Boxox paper craft set is a pretty nice way to add a little without spending a lot.

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It's been a little over a month since Telltale games released a teaser for the second season of its wildly acclaimed The Walking Dead video game. It didn't announce a certain release date then, and it still hasn't done so yet, but Steam has potentially let the cat out of the bag.

According to the Steam Store, the first episode should be out in less than two weeks, on December 17.

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Mark Millar, who serves as a creative consultant to Twentieth Century Fox's Fantastic Four and X-Men movie franchises, already hinted at a potential shared universe this summer. Now, the studio is one step closer to making it a full-on reality.

Fox just signed a three-year, first-look deal with Simon Kinberg, a writer and producer on X-Men: Days of Future Past and the upcoming Fantastic Four movie reboot. That deal gives Kinberg the go-ahead to start up a shared universe similar to the one Marvel Studios has developed, and that DC/Warner Bros. is trying to get going.

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Another week, another Marvel crossover. No sooner has Infinity packed its bags and left the planet than the universe is propelled into Inhumanity, a more nebulously constructed event that weaves between a dozen or so books this winter, all marked by the sound of a disaffected teenager who doesn't want to take out the trash, "inh."

The event will lead up to a new ongoing series, Inhuman, by writer Matt Fraction, artist Joe Madureira, and whoever takes over art from Joe Madureira halfway through issue #1. (The book has already been bumped from January to April.) But it all begins with this week's Inhumanity one-shot, by Fraction, Olivier Coipel and others.

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Last week, cartoonist Rachel Dukes posted some eye-opening statistics to her Tumblr about a comic she made about what life as a cat owner is like. She originally published the comic with a copyright notice and a URL to her website. That version of the comic has been seen about 81,600 times.

Another version, from which someone removed the URL and copyright info, has been seen nearly 600,000 times, mostly on Tumblr and Facebook. This problem of lack of credit is one that lots of artists have dealt with and quite a few have talked about over the past several years, but it continues to persist. It makes me wonder if there could be some kind of fix.

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