This week sees the debut of Effigy, a new Vertigo title from Grayson/Revival scribe Tim Seeley and Madame Xanadu artist Marley Zarcone. The series follows Chondra Jackson, a woman who, as a child, starred in a beloved kids' sci-fi/mystery TV show, and now lives a quiet life as a police officer in small-town Ohio – until she gets pulled into a mystery involving ritual sacrifices, a shadowy celebrity-worshipping cult, and pieces of her past coming back to haunt her.

To mark the launch of the book, we spoke with Seeley about his work process, his inspirations, and how the world of celebrities and comics intersect.

Read More

DC fan-favorite Li'l Gotham might not be around any more, but that doesn't mean it's been forgotten completely. After already getting the action figure treatment from DC Collectibles late last year, now Kotobukiya has announced plans for its own unique take on the characters from Derek Fridolfs' and Dustin Nguyen's alternate Bat-verse.

Read More

Aside from the obvious, I don't usually like to refer to things as being my "favorites." I talk about so much stuff that I love all the time that every time I settle on a favorite, I almost immediately end up contradicting myself when I remember something else that I love, like when I went on and on about how Impulse #3 is my favorite single issue of all time right before I re-read G.I. Joe #21. There's just so much out there that's great that nine times out of ten, settling on a single thing as my favorite ends up being pretty limiting, and if there's one thing I hate, it's having to go back and admit that I might've been wrong about something. For me to actually settle on something as a favorite, it has to be so obvious that it's above and beyond everything else out there that it's self-evident.

So with that in mind, believe me when I say this: Gotham Academy is, without question, my favorite comic on the stands right now, and it just keeps getting better.

Read More

Boom Studios has a reputation in the comics industry for publishing an increasingly diverse group of books and creators. This commitment to diversity in genre and people is reflected in an all-new initiative the publisher announced today in Previews with a letter from founder Ross Richie. While 2015 is the 10th anniversary of Boom, the publisher wants to talk about what's next rather than what's come before. They call this discussion of the future Push Comics Forward and they don't want it to be only about Boom.

Push Comics Forward is Boom's way of focusing on the ongoing conversation about diversity and the future of the industry. To learn more about this initiative and what to expect from Boom for the next ten years and beyond, we spoke with Editor-in-Chief Matt Gagnon.

Read More

Welcome back to Up To Speed, home of the the Flashest Recaps Alive. Here we’ll recap the episode, dispense some Flash Facts and talk about what works, what doesn’t and where the series might be headed, as we try and keep up with the adventures of Central City’s (for now) second-fastest man, Barry Allen, more widely known as The Flash.

This week, we’re looking at the eleventh episode of the first season, “The Sound & the Fury,” which has nothing to do with the Faulkner novel; sorry, lit nerds. It does, however, feature a figure from S.T.A.R. Labs' past, dirtbike villainy, sound warzzz and Joe West delighting at breaking glass.

Read More

Chris Evans and Chris Pratt have made a bet on the outcome of this weekend's Super Bowl that will see one of them show up at the other's choice of children's hospital or hospice in their Marvel superhero costume brandishing their rival's team colors. Either Captain America will carry the flag of Pratt's Seattle Seahawks, or Star-Lord will don the jersey of Evans's New England Patriots. We couldn't let this titanic tussle between two of Marvel's super-Chrisses pass by without a contest of our own, so we're pitting the worlds of Star-Lord and Captain America head-to-head in a series of polls that we call... the Superpoll.

Round two currently sees honors divided between the two heroes, with Red Skull and Redford claiming victories for Cap, and Kitty Pryde and the 1980s bringing it home for Peter Quill, but you still have time to make a difference. Today we pit the two heroes' teammates head-to-head in five rounds of titanic tussling, using a special matching algorithm (not really) to determine the fairest fights (we picked the match-ups we thought were the most fun). Welcome to the Superpoll: Round III.

Read More

A few years ago, around the time that Matt Smith was gearing up to replace David Tennant, I briefly made an attempt to get into Doctor Who. Sadly, it didn't really take -- as much as I liked reading stuff about the show, and as much fun as I had with bits and pieces of it, the show never really hooked me the way that it did my friends, and I ended up being quite possibly the only person in the world who liked Doctor Who Magazine more than Doctor Who.

Last week, though, it all clicked into place with the release of Fred Van Lente, Clayton Henry, and Brian Reber's Ivar, Timewalker #1 and its story of time-spanning action and underlying mystery. Basically, this was the version of Doctor Who that I actually wanted.

Read More

The deluge of Avengers: Age of Ultron merchandise is almost upon us, and in some places, it's already begun. We got our hands on some of Hasbro's Age of Ultron All-Star Series figures ahead of their scheduled release, and while they lack the articulation of the Marvel Infinite series, they get the job done well enough.

Read More

Legendary Batman artist Norm Breyfogle has been in the news quite a bit lately, owing to the recent tragedy where he suffered a stroke, leaving the left-handed artist paralyzed on his left side and stuck with $200,000 in medical bills. A crowdfunding campaign has brought the comics community together to raise $86,000 for Breyfogle's care, but now it looks like we're getting another opportunity to support him and his work.

This week, DC announced the solicitation of Legends of the Dark Knight: Norm Breyfogle, a new hardcover collection of the highlights of his work on Batman in the late '80s and early '90s -- one that seems to have been rushed to publication to help out.

Read More

When Mike Carey and Peter Gross launched The Unwritten in 2009, it seemed like a concept tailor-made for a Vertigo series. It's the story of Tom Taylor, whose name and likeness were used by his father as the foundation for a wildly popular series of Harry Potter-esque fantasy novels, who grows up to find himself embroiled in increasingly bizarre situations, fighting for his life against supposedly-fictional adversaries.

Now, seventy-odd issues, an original graphic novel, and a widely acclaimed crossover with Bill Willingham's Fables later, Carey and Gross are bringing their tale to a close with tomorrow's release of The Unwritten: Apocalypse #12, a special oversized finale that sees Tom come face-to-face with his father, and battling for the fate of the world. Vertigo have provided us with an exclusive seven-page preview, so read on for your first look at the final act...

Read More