garth ennis

It’s been a good long while since we’ve heard from AMC’s Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg shepherded Preacher, even as our first photo failed to shed much light on its characters. Now, new set photos have revealed a much clearer look at fan-favorite characters ‘Arseface’ and the vampire Cassidy, though you may wish to gird your stomachs.

Good war comics are much harder to come by than they used to be, but there's at least one source that will remain consistent. Garth Ennis has written some of the most emotionally compelling and contextually complex stories in the genre over the course of his career, and that continues with Avatar's War Stories, with artist Tomas Aira.

AfterShock Comics, the new publisher formed earlier this year by Joe Pruett, has announced a huge slate of writers who'll be penning creator-owned stories for their eventual launch line - including Justin Jordan, Garth Ennis, Marguerite Bennett and Amanda Conner.

Anyone can make fun of DC comics. Don't believe me? Go ahead and look around the Internet. I'll wait. The publisher's long life, huge catalog of characters and hundreds of thousands of pages of material have certainly provided a target-rich environment. But it takes a very special mindset and skill set to make fun of DC comics within the pages of a DC comic – and I'm not just talking gentle ribbing or affectionate teasing, but fairly scathing satire. That Garth Ennis and John McCrea were able to do so on such a regular basis for so long in the pages of their 1997-2001 Hitman is pretty remarkable; almost as remarkable as the fact that DC invited them back for All Star Section Eight, a series that necessarily focuses on and amps up the superhero parody of the pair's Hitman series.

This week's DC Comixology sale features one of the best lineups of dollar books that the publisher has ever done, with great comics like JM DeMatteis, Keith Giffen and Shawn McManus's highly underrated Dr. Fate, Mark Waid and Bryan Hitch's all-too-brief run on JLA, and Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham's Batman Incorporated — including the issue Burnham wrote about Batman Japan fighting Lady Tigerfist, a lady with tigers for fists — but really, those books are all tied for second. If you don't already own Garth Ennis and John McCrea's Hitman and you take this as anything other than an opportunity to get as much of it as you can, then you're doing something wrong.

While this week's cheap comic news might be dominated by DC's big ol' New 52 sale, digging a little deeper on Comixology will provide even more: A short but thorough sale on Dynamite's pulp-themed comics, featuring the Shadow, Doc Savage, the Spider and more, dropped down to as little as a buck an issue.

It was Grant Morrison's favorite comic of 2013, my favourite comic of the 21st century, and it delighted even the most stone-hearted of comic critics. Ballistic, a five-issue series from Black Mask by filmmaker Adam Egypt Mortimer and blockbuster artist Darick Robertson, last hit the streets in 2014. Now it's back --- collected, polished, buffed to a shine for your delectation. It's on your shop shelves now people! So what better excuse to look back on the career of Darick Robertson, and Ballistic in particular, with the man himself?

The latest Marvel Secret Wars tie-in is an unlikely story from the likeliest of sources. Garth Ennis, a writer who specializes in off-kilter war stories, is bringing back the 1960s ace pilot hero The Phantom Eagle for the second time, alongside artist Russ Braun, to pit him against a lost land of dinosaurs in Where Monsters Dwell. The Phantom Eagle, aka Karl Kaufman, was created in 1968 by Gary Friedrich and Herb Trimpe in Marvel Super-Heroes #16 as a fantastical version of a Word War I flying ace. Ennis and artist Howard Chaykin offered an alternative spin on the character in the 2008 Marvel MAX mini-series War Is Hell -- a name borrowed from a 1970s Marvel war comic. Where Monsters Dwell is of course the title of another 1970s Marvel comic, as is the previously announced Master Of Kung Fu.

DC rocked the comics Internet pretty hard today with a massive announcement of 24 new comics spinning out of their Convergence event, and I can assure you that no one is more excited about this than I am. But the one thing that's most impressive about it is just how weird the publisher is getting. And folks, DC is getting weird. Not only is the publisher reviving some of the deepest cuts in DC history, but it's also putting the spotlight on some truly weird characters -- including a few that I didn't think would ever make a comeback. So for the benefit of those of you who haven't been obsessing over DC Comics for the last three decades, here's a quick breakdown of the three weirdest comics coming up in DC's new lineup!

Writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are slowly but surely working on the pilot for AMC's new TV adaptation of the Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon Vertigo series Preacher, and as they write, it appears they're also recruiting cool directors. Rogen struck up a Twitter conversation with Duncan Jones, director of Moon (which is super great) and Source Code (which is flawed but well made) -- and also, incidentally, the son of David Bowie -- to gauge his interest. Right now, Jones is working on a Warcraft movie, but he seemed extremely enthusiastic about taking the reins on some Preacher episodes.