Indie

Welcome to Cast Party, the feature that imagines a world with even more live action comic book adaptations than we currently have, and comes up with arguably the best casting suggestions you’re ever going to find for the movies and shows we wish could exist. This is Pride Week, as you've noticed by now, so I wanted to tackle one of the longest running LGBTQ comics of all time, Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For. Bechdel's comic strip ran in underground and queer publications from 1983 to 2008. Everyone remembers it for popularizing the Bechdel-Wallace Test, but to a lot of lesbians and other queer readers, it means a lot more than just that.

Dave Sim's iconic and often controversial self-published epic Cerebus was a testament to the creator's determination, and proof that a black-and-white independently published satire about an aardvark could span three decades and three hundred issues. The series finished in 2004, seemingly never to return --- but Sim has now announced a brand new collage comic, Cerebus In Hell, due for publication later this year.

Mark Millar and John Romita Jr's violent and often crude Kick-Ass is returning next year, and it's going monthly. Not only that, but Millar has confirmed that it instead of Dave Lizewski underneath the green and yellow mask, it will be a brand new character, a black woman, taking up the mantle of Kick-Ass.

The 2013 queer coming of age movie Blue Is The Warmest Color, directed by Abdellatif Kechiche and starring Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux, has been acclaimed as one of the most emotionally complex and compelling movies of recent years. A beautiful story about two women's love for each other, and their eventual heartbreak, it's based on the graphic novel by Julie Maroh. The movie is available to watch on Hulu and Netflix, so if you've seen it once, there's a chance you've seen it two or three or four times. If you're thirsty for more sorrow, love, or troubled adolescent relationships, here are some creator-owned or independent comics that you can check out next.

Cartoonist Ulises Fariñas is perhaps best known for his work on Judge Dredd and the Star Wars activity book Where’s The Wookie?, but now he’s turning his hands to comics publishing by launching a new comics imprint in partnership with Magnetic Press. Buño will feature titles curated by Fariñas and his publishing partner Storme Smith.

I'm a pretty big fan of Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness --- mainly because they hit the sweet spot of ridiculous comedy and goofball action, while the original Evil Dead is exactly scary enough to give me nightmares --- but there's something that I've noticed when it comes to comic book continuations of the series. The past few years have seen a couple dozen four-color sequels to Army of Darkness, but there's not a whole lot picking up on the threads left over from Evil Dead 2. "But wait," you might be saying, "Army of Darkness is the direct sequel to Evil Dead 2." And that's true, assuming that you're following Ash. If, however, you decide to follow poor, doomed Annie Knowby as she's dragged off to another dimension by deadites, then there's a whole new story to tell. And if that's what you're looking for, Space Goat Productions has a comic you might be interested in.

As an artist matures, their work changes. Sometimes that's visible across a wide range of projects; the output, considered as a whole, may show the crafting changes in approach or style. But sometimes you get lucky, and find yourself able to watch this process over the progression of one title. In those instances, the series becomes more than what it was --- itself squared, dimensions added by the idea that the books grew with the person making them, and that something like a human's gradual expansion was innate to the product as well. That series, as well as being a purposeful expression of sequential movement, becomes imbued with a lively, edifying, abstract meta-narrative. That's Windowpane.

Stephane Metayer was definitely in a "N.Y. State of Mind" when he created the manga-inspired series Tephlon Funk. As a native New Yorker himself, Metayer describes his increasingly popular series as a "love letter" to the five boroughs. Illustrated by David Tako and Nicolas Safe, Tephlon Funk serves as a unique and grounded representation of the everyday gritty life of the Big Apple, and as a Haitian-American born and raised in Jamaica, Queens, it's not hard to pinpoint where the 30-year-old Metayer gains his inspiration. But that's not the only feat that Tephlon Funk has accomplished. Last year, Metayer raised over $22,000 for the project on Kickstarter --- $7,000 more than his goal. The series is also a rarity in having not just one black lead, but four. The cast features Inez Jozlyn, a mixed youngster who's looking for a way out of the crime-infested Queensbridge; Gabriel, a '70s-esque character from Brooklyn's Coney Island; Giselle a Dominican badass with a mean spin-kick from the Washington Heights; and Cameron, an undercover cop who resides in The Bronx. Metayer chatted with ComicsAlliance to talk about how Nas' Illmatic influenced his work, the possibility of an animated series, and what readers can expect next from the four-member crew.

Northwest Press, known for its commitment to publishing LGBTQ comic books, has a long history of fighting Apple to get its books out to readers digitally through the iBooks store. The publisher's most recent release, Hard To Swallow, was recently rejected due to sexual content, so in response the publisher has made the comic free to download --- but with all the naughty bits covered up with pictures of apples.

So here's what you need to know: The canonical Sherlock Holmes, as written by Arthur Conan Doyle, has a brother named Mycroft who is presented as being arguably smarter than the famous detective, but far more secretive, choosing to spend his days in the Diogenes Club rather than galavanting around dealing with snake murders and tripping over waterfalls. This, of course, is not the obscure fact that it once was, as more recent portrayals of Holmes have played up Mycroft's role considerably --- to the point where he's now starring in his own comic. But I think it's fair to say that for this adventure of Mycroft Holmes, the character is far, far less notable than one of the creators working on the book. When it hits shelves in August, Mycroft Holmes And The Apocalypse Handbook comes courtesy of co-writer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who may be best known for his career as a basketball player, activist, novelist, and --- as an actor --- the only cast member of Airplane to also fight Bruce Lee. Check out a preview!