Previews

Luthor's never met a Superman (or anyone else) that he didn't try to manipulate. So it's not really a surprise when he shows up at the headquarters of the Chinese Justice League in New Super-Man #9, to take Kong on a trip to Metropolis.

Writer Frank Tieri and artist Michael Walsh want to show you Archie's pal Jughead as you've never seen him before. He's always been hungry, but in Jughead: The Hunger, he completes his evolution into a voracious werewolf who feeds on human flesh. Considering the covers to this one-shot, it's not really a spoiler to let you in on that. What's more interesting is the identity of the werewolf hunter who shows up to stop him.

We've known for a while that the DC Universe was going to crossover with Looney Tunes. Batman writer Tom King had already let us know he was working on a crossover between the Dark Knight and Elmer Fudd. Now we have new details on all six DCU/Looney Tunes one-shots coming in June.

The Hero Initiative's "100 Project" is a cool recurring collaboration the charity undertakes with various publishers, where together they reach out to one hundred different artists to sketch exclusive sketch variants for milestone issues, with the goal of raising money for creators in need. The most recent "100 Project" was in conjunction with IDW Publishing's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #50 and now those covers are being collected into an exclusive art book featuring work from creators such as Stan Sakai, Bill Sienkiewicz and Walt Simonson, among many, many more.

Stieg Larsson's Millennium series of graphic novels gripped the world with their shocking Scandanvian approach to crime thrillers, and helped open the doors for some of the most exciting books, TV and films of this decade to find a larger audience. Later this year, Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime are presenting Sylvain Runberg and José Homs' graphic novel adaptation of the series in English for the first time, and have provided us with an exclusive first look at The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: Millennium #1

The X-Men have had a rough few years, going back all the way to House of M, but 2017 might be the year they turn it around in a big way (depending on how their war with The Inhumans goes). Later this month, Marvel re-organizes its rosters of X-Men within the pages of X-Men Prime #1, a one-shot dedicated to establishing the new status quo of books like X-Men Gold, X-Men Blue and Weapon X.

We have, as a people, had Judge Dredd comics for about 40 years now, so it's fair to say that maybe we've gotten used to having him around. I mean, as shocking as his sprawling thrill-powered future might be, and as strange as things can get in in the blocks of Mega City One, there's a level where we've come to terms with it --- or some of it, at least. But that's the trick with what's been happening in IDW's Dredd titles over the past year. Stories like Mega City Zero have somehow managed to drop Dredd into a world that he doesn't understand, recreating that feeling that we have when we're dropped into his world --- and in this year's Judge Dredd Annual, Ulises Farinas, Erick Freitas, Dan McDaid and Ryan Hill are taking it one step further.

The "Superman Reborn" arc that launches this Wednesday in Superman #18 is shaping up to be the culmination of a lot of plot threads that have been building since Rebirth, both in the Superman books and elsewhere. As we saw in an earlier preview, someone who appears to be obsessed with Superman has escaped from the mysterious Mr. Oz. And now, in these new unlettered preview pages shared exclusively with ComicsAlliance by DC, we learn that the apparent antagonist of the story is none other than... Clark Kent. Specifically the non-Superman Clark Kent who mysteriously appeared after Rebirth.

If you only know "Corto Maltese" as a war-torn island nation in various DC Comics properties, it's way past time to learn where that name came from. The original Corto Maltese isn't a nation, he's a man. Specifically, he's an enigmatic sea captain who has adventures around the world in a series of comics by the late Italian cartoonist Hugo Pratt. The very epitome of EuroComics, the Corto Maltese stories were first published in Italian, but moved to French when Pratt himself moved to France. Corto Maltese in Siberia is a landmark in the series, because it's the first epic novel-length adventure in what had previously been a series of short stories. IDW's Eurocomics imprint is publishing a new English-language trade paperback of the book in March.

Dick Grayson, the former Robin and occasional Batman currently known as Nightwing, has a lot of fans on social media. And what's interesting is that this turns out to be just as true in the DC Universe as it is in our world. In Nightwing #16, by Tim Seeley and Javier Fernandez, current Robin Damian Wayne discovers Nightwing's online popularity, and he's not thrilled about it. What really gets under Damian's skin is the assumption that Nightwing will eventually take the mantle of Batman for good. He also doesn't seem to love seeing Dick referred to with the hashtags #TheOriginalRobin and #BestRobin.