Marguerite Bennett

Check out the best horror comics in 2016, including our critics' picks, and the comics you voted the runner up and winner in this category!

Check out the best sci-fi comics in 2016, including our critics' picks and the comics you voted the runners up and winner in this category!

I'll admit that when Archie relaunched Josie and the Pussycats, I had my doubts as to whether Alexandra Cabot could really fit into the restructured and slightly more realistic take on the Archie Universe. See, while her primary role as Josie's power-hungry but tone-deaf antagonist was pretty standard teenage rival stuff, her more distinctive trait involved a witchy bloodline that allowed her to cast spells whenever she was holding her cat. It made for some weird stories, but I was worried that Alexandra's over-the-top abilities might not have survived the reboot. Now, though, I can see that I was wrong. When Josie and the Pussycats #3 hits shelves this week, she's back in full force, literally riding around on a giraffe and interrupting Josie's concert with an even more sinister force than dark magic: Capitalism! Check out a preview!

To mark Trans Week of Visibility, ComicsAlliance has put together a list of great comics for younger readers featuring transgender or nonbinary characters. These are comics that are suitable for a wide range of ages, and come from a wide array of genres, from fantasy to electro-pop to superheroes to slice-of-life --- so there should be something for everyone. If you're a young trans or nonbinary comics reader, or if you know someone who is, or if you just want to read some amazing comics, these are our recommendations!

The brave hero. The wicked villain. These archetypes, and the tales of their struggles, lie at the heart of the comic book medium, providing the basis for many of our favorite stories. While some may scoff at these aspirational stories, we know that they can be empowering, uplifting, and even inspiring. That's often especially true when the hero at the heart of the story is a woman. When women slay monsters, the stories are never just about protecting the kingdom and preserving the status quo. When women slay monsters, they challenge their own oppression, they overturn expectations, and they seize control of the future. When women slay monsters, they change the world. These are some of our favorite comic book stories that celebrate that idea.

Both books that Aftershock Comics announced at New York Comic Con this past weekend are essentially horror, but coming at the concept from two very different directions. Blood Blister looks too be a pretty intense examination of moral corruption through a body horror lens, and Animosity: The Rise offers insight into what happened all over the world as the animals rose up in the Animosity ongoing.

Batwoman's returning to her own solo ongoing in 2017, written by Marguerite Bennett with art by Steve Epting. This is about as exciting a creative team as Batwoman could possibly have. Bennett already writes an alternate version of Kate Kane in DC Comics Bombshells, and in that and her other books like Insexts and Angela: Queen of Hell, she has not only proven herself to be one of the most talented young writers on the rise, she's also shown a particular interest in portraying the lives of queer women, all of which makes her the ideal choice for Batwoman.

A while back DC announced plans to revive Jack Kirby's Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth in January in a form that, to say the least, is a little unique. It's called The Kamandi Challenge, and the idea --- loosely inspired by 1985's DC Challenge and its game of storytelling hot potato --- is that the twelve-issue series will feature a new creative team, randomly paired together from a list of twelve writers and twelve artists for each issue, each picking up the story where the previous team leaves off. It's an interesting way to mark the 100th anniversary of Kirby's birth in 2017. In advance of New York Comic-Con, DC has revealed a first look at some of the artwork from the series, plus new details of how the creative teams will approach the story.

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.

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!