Gerard Way

DC’s mature readers imprint Vertigo has had a rough few years; where once it was the benchmark of challenging and thought-provoking creator-owned comics, many of its classic titles have wrapped up their runs, and Vertigo has struggled to find new epics to replace them. In what DC describes as an effort to "set the business up for future success," the publisher has announced a restructuring of the imprint that includes the elimination of its executive editor role. Unfortunately that means letting go of veteran editor Shelly Bond, who has been with Vertigo since almost the very beginning.

This summer, DC Comics aren’t just relaunching their entire line, they’re starting a whole new imprint headed up by The Umbrella Academy’s Gerard Way. The imprint, Young Animal, will be overseen by Way who will also write or co-write several of the titles which will take place in DC Universe continuity, but with a mature readers edge. Described as “comics for dangerous humans”, DC referred to Young Animal in their announcement as a “pop-up imprint” and Way cited the influence of experimental comics from the eighties and nineties as guides for how to take classic characters and concepts to new places.

In this bountiful week of San Diego-related comics news, Dark Horse has announced a first-look deal with Universal Cable to develop television shows based on Dark Horse properties past and present, including Umbrella Academy, Harrow County and Concrete.

If there's one thing that you need to know about ComicsAlliance, it's that we are very much in favor of Supaidaman, the '70s tokusatsu series where Marvel's Spider-Man was reimagined as Takuya Yamashiro, a dirtbike racer chosen by an alien from Planet Spider to defend the world from Professor Monster with the aid of a giant robot. It's one of my favorite things in the world, and if you asked me to pick one thing that I'd want to see from Marvel, it would be for Yamashiro to return to action in the pages of the modern Marvel Universe. As a result, it's hard for me to look at this week's Edge of Spider-Verse #5, by Gerard Way, Jake Wyatt, Ian Herring and Clayton Cowles, without just seeing that it's a tokusatsu-inspired take on Spider-Man that simply isn't the one I want it to be. It took a lot of effort to get past that -- effort that was mostly motivated by how great last month's "Spider-Gwen" issue was -- but in the end, I'm glad I made it. It might not be the book I wanted, but it's definitely pretty fantastic in its own right, even if it suffers from a distinct lack of dirtbikes.

Each weekday, ComicsAlliance brings you a carefully selected variety of links from around the web about comics and comics-related media, including movies, video games, toys, and whatever else might be worth noting. Quite frankly, these are items you may just need to know about to have a productive day. Take a look at today's hand-picked links after the jump.

One of the things I love most about Spider-Man (and let me tell you, there's a lot I love about Spider-Man) is how adaptable the character is to different situations, settings, and even different characters taking on the role. Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott and an assembled team of writers and artists are picking up that ball and running with it in the upcoming "Spider-Verse" event, and they're getting a little bit of a head start with what they're calling "Edge of Spider-Verse," a series of one-issue stories that introduce readers to the various iterations of Spider Men and Women. Marvel has released solicitations for the first three issues of the five-issue series, which feature Spider-Man Noir, a new spin on Spider-Woman, and a futuristic Spider-Man who wears a helmet (and who probably isn't from 2099).

Umbrella Academy creator and former My Chemical Romance frontman/recently announced solo artist Gerard Way has a huge Twitter following -- 740,000 followers -- and he's good about using it to share his comic book work. For example, he used his Twitter account as a springboard for his new comic starring cats, All Ages. Still, he doesn't seem to be the biggest fan of the way some users abuse the soc

With the third and fourth chapters of The Umbrella Academy on the way this year, you'd think former My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way, who just wrapped up The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys at Dark Horse last month, would be plenty busy on the comics front. But the writer and singer just keeps on revealing new character designs. Last week, he revealed images of three cats, Jones, Lemon,

It's been a while since we've seen anything new from Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá's The Umbrella Academy, but for fans of the Dark Horse series and its bizarre bunch of superpowered orphans, Way has offered up a pretty timely Christmas present over the past few days. Not only has he confirmed that he and Bá are planning to have Volume 3 and Volume 4 out in 2014, he's also been posting concept art for

We've been waiting a long time for the third volume of The Umbrella Academy, "Hotel Oblivion." It was first announced in 2009, initially scheduled for last year, and now it appears to be "a really long time" before it's published, given writer Gerard Way's plans to move away from comics to focus on music. And yet Way still teases us. In a series of tweets over the weekend, the