Indie

The weekend numbers are in, and Marvel Studio's latest, Doctor Strange, is a hit! It takes the now classic Marvel origin formula and gives it a fresh coat of mystical paint while expanding what we know about the shared universe and offering innovative solutions to world-ending problems. Comic books outside of the Big Two superhero universes are full of stories about magic, demons and alternate dimensions and we've put together a list of five of the best independent titles for you to try next.

The weekend is here! Take a look back at what’s happened in the past seven days. New comics, new stories, new podcasts, new art being made — it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

It's Fantasy Week here at Comics Alliance, and many of my fellow CA contributors are writing about their favorite monsters. And I can respect that, but why would I choose one monster when I could highlight a book with lots of monsters instead? Especially when these monsters are all really, really sexy. Published by Iron Circus Comics and edited by C. Spike Trotman, Smut Peddler Presents: My Monster Boyfriend has ten short comics about monsters and the humans who love them. Its highly successful Kickstarter earlier this year (paired with the femdom erotica comic Yes, Roya) raised over $160,000. There is clearly a market for comics full of sexy monster boys, is what I'm saying.

Comics and fashion have always had an interesting relationship, but comics have never centered fashion as much as Danielle Colman hopes to do in the upcoming anthology Couture, currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. Couture features the work of an impressive array of artists focusing on fashion as a storytelling device.

The weekend is here! Take a look back at what’s happened in the past seven days. New comics, new stories, new podcasts, new art being made — it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

Odds are, you're one of the millions worldwide who binged all of Luke Cage when it premiered on Netflix last weekend. With its sterling cast, gripping story & standout score, Marvel's newest original TV series for the streaming giant is the best one they've made yet. If you loved the NYC authenticity & hip-hop/R&B-infused aesthetic of the series --- and you've read all the Luke Cage comics you can get your hands on --- we've got five of the best creator-owned comics that capture that same feeling. Love that? Try this!

Yesterday, Fabian Rangel Jr and Javier Caba launched a Kickstarter for their upcoming original graphic novel Blood Brothers (Los Hermanos Sangre); today we learn that the comic is just the first part of a much larger plan, as a number of popular independent creators have come together to launch self-publishing imprint Two-Headed Press, or 2HP.

Joamette Gil is a queer Afro-Cuban cartoonist who, earlier this year, put out the call to other women of color to see if anyone was interested in making comics about queer witches. It turns out that quite a few were, and that was the origin of Power & Magic: The Queer Witch Comics Anthology. The black and white book features 15 original stories about witchcraft and the queer women of color who practice it, stretching across genres and featuring a wide variety of art styles. Now Gil has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund publication and pay the artists.

Warren Ellis and Colleen Doran's Orbiter might be one of the most underrated comics of either of those creators' considerable careers. Released as an original graphic novel in 2003, it told the story of a space shuttle that returned to Earth after being missing for ten years, and it's the kind of beautifully rendered high concept story that makes you wonder why Ellis and Doran don't work together more often. Now, though, 13 years later, they're reuniting for a new project: Finality.

Wildly popular writer Marguerite Bennett, known for Insexts, DC Comics Bombshells, Animosity, and more, has a horror anthology one shot coming out tomorrow from A Wave Blue World. Ghastly Tales features three stories by Bennett and artist Varga Tomi.