Stuart Immonen

Mark Millar’s comic books have inspired some mixed reactions among fans and critics, but the author’s works have also inspired some entertaining films, including last year’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and the upcoming Captain America: Civil War. Millar has a handful of projects in development based on his books, and you can add another to the pile, as his fantasy series Empress, with artist Stuart Immonen, is the latest set to make the jump from page to screen.

Stuart Immonen is an artist’s artist. In fact, that’s probably not going far enough. It’s probably more accurate to say that he’s an artist’s artist’s artist. That’s not easy to say, but it’s not easy to have a career like Stuart Immonen, so he’s earned it. With the arrival of the fantasy/science-fiction epic in the making Empress, his new creator-owned book with writer Mark Millar, there’s no better time to take a look back at his incredible body of work with a collection of some of his best covers and splash-pages.

Mark Millar has been the lynch-pin of Marvel’s creator owned imprint Icon for the past several years, way back to the first volume of Kick-Ass in 2008. Since then, at Icon and beyond, he’s generated a wave of new independent comics with A-List collaborators such as Steve McNiven, Frank Quitely and Sean Gordon Murphy, and many of those books have been adapted to films. Empress continues Millar’s trend of superstar collaborators as he teams with Stuart Immonen (plus inker Wade von Grawbadger and colorist Ive Svorcina) to tell a sprawling sci-fi story about an enslaved intergalactic queen on the run from her tyrannical husband, with her three children in tow. Check out a preview!

Welcome back to All For the Wookiee, where we take a look at the recent Star Wars universe offerings from Marvel and pick the most Star Wars-ish moments. This month we'll look at Hutt fanboys, killer cat-people, Sherlock Holmes in Space and a muder-bear celebration. In this installment, we cover Star Wars #9 by Jason Aaron and Stuart Immonen, Lando #4 by Charles Soule and Alex Maleev, Kanan #6 by Greg Weisman and Jacopo Camagni, issue #9 of Darth Vader from Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca and the debut issue of the post-Return of the Jedi miniseries, Shattered Empire, by Greg Rucka and Marco Checchetto.

If you don't have a chance to get to Bethesda, Maryland, this coming weekend, and you still want to keep the spirit of Small Press Expo in your heart, you're in luck! Comixology and SPX have teamed up to put 100 Comixology Submit titles on sale at 50% off, from now through to September 21, just by using the code 'SPX' at checkout. With so many great independent comics to choose from, we've selected some standouts that you might want to try.

Welcome back to All For the Wookiee, where we take a look at the recent Star Wars universe offerings from Marvel and pick the most Star Wars-ish moments. It's another jam-packed installment, with two-fers for Star Wars, Kanan and Lando, alongside Darth Vader issue #8. We'll take a look at the highs, the lows, the in-betweens and rate the Star Wars-iness of each moment.

The Marvel Comics line is about mid-way through its giant line-wide crossover event Secret Wars, in which reality has been rewritten by god-emperor Doom, and the heroes have been re-imagined more than a dozen times over in different domains paying tribute to stories from throughout Marvel's publishing history. One of those domains is a version of House of M, another reality-rewriting crossover event that cast the Marvel heroes in different roles, which ran ten years ago. House of M launched the current era of Marvel events, kicking off a steady steam of universe-shaking storylines that continues into Secret Wars. To mark the tenth anniversary of House of M, and ten years of event-driven storytelling, we're asking you to determine which of these events was the very best.

We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, as well as the special qualities of comic book storytelling, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great pinups, fan art and other illustrations on sites like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and seemingly infinite art blogs that we’ve created Best Art Ever (This Week), a weekly depository for just some of the pieces of especially compelling artwork that we come across in our regular travels across the Web. Some of it’s new, some of it’s old, some of it’s created by working professionals, some of it’s created by future stars, some of it’s created by talented fans, awnd some of it’s endearingly silly. All of it is awesome.

I think we can all agree that Nextwave was the pinnacle of superhero comic books as an art form. Of course, while I'm not sure the world could have handled more than 12 issues of beautiful perfection, I will say that if Marvel isn't going to have more comics about Elsa Bloodstone beating broccoli monsters to death with a shovel and declaring herself to be President Frankenstein, the least they can do is give us more comics featuring the incredible art of Nextwave's Stuart Immonen.

In the process of writing my article about muscles vs curves, and how the big dudes of superhero comics typically fail to represent the tastes of most androphile women, I gathered a collection of images and recommended artists from my correspondents that illustrate the sort of art they'd love to see more of -- but which there's sadly very little of compared to all the T&A fan-service targeted at straight men. I had far too many recommendations to put in the article, so I've compiled the collection (and a few personal favorites) into a very special one-off post. The collection includes pin-ups, fan art, sketches, and some traditional superhero art from artists who aren't afraid to put a little male eye candy in their work!