Namesake

Escapist fantasies are seductive in their power to take us away. Whatever mundane, excruciating chore you find yourself mired in, forget it. Imagine yourself in a fairy tale, where the fantastic and enchanting and eye-catching come to life. Or fashion yourself with some unshakable destiny, charted on a world-saving path that is only yours. In Megan Lavey-Heaton and Isabelle Melançon's Namesake, Emma Crewe gets both of those — she's plopped into a world of inter-stitched classic fairy tales (Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz) to find herself expected to serve as a "Dorothy." Her fantastical escape might not be quite what she expected. ComicsAlliance spoke with Melançon and Lavey-Heaton about genre subversion, color choices, and the problem with "grimdark."

If three years of mandatory French classes in high school taught me anything, it's that learning a new language is not only incredibly hard; if you're not motivated, it's pretty much impossible. Thankfully, there might be a new way around that thanks to LingoZing, a new app that teaches readers new languages via comic books, which has launched a Kickstarter campaign today.

It’s that blessed time of the year where we all try to take stock of what we’ve done with our lives and what other people have created that we enjoyed. That’s right, it’s time to start putting together our “Best of 2016″ lists, and today we’re going to take a look at the Best Boom Studios Covers of 2016.

Last week was tough for a lot of people, and as the US election results came in on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, a lot of us just didn't want to read comics or do much of anything as we adjusted to a changing world. Last Wednesday wasn't New Comic Book Day so much as "What Do We Do Now?" Day, and a lot of comics got lost in the shuffle. However, last week was packed with some really stellar comic debuts and new #1s, and many of them might not have got the attention they deserved due to the omnipresence of the election results. It was a bad week to launch a new book, and a weak launch can be very bad news for a book's future. With that in mind, we've gone back to highlight six new comics from last week that are worth picking up this week.

Words have power, and so do names. In Namesake, a fairy tale fantasy comic by Megan Lavey-Heaton and Isabelle Melancon, certain names have even more power; they can transport you to other worlds.

Writer Steve Orlando's career has gone from strength to strength thanks to his work on critically acclaimed books such as Midnighter, Undertow, and Virgil. He's now working with some of the most fascinating heroes in the DC universe in his new ongoing Supergirl series and the upcoming Midnighter & Apollo, and he was recently announced as the new writer on Justice League of America. But he continues to balance these books with more personal projects, like the four-issue Boom fantasy miniseries Namesake, about a man hopping worlds to bury his two fathers' remains. ComicsAlliance sat down with Orlando at Flame Con in Brooklyn last month to talk about queer heroes, the market for marginalized fans, and building bridges between creators and their critics.

Meet Jordan, a young man on a mission. You see, Jordan has two dads, one from Earth and one from the planet Ektae. And sadly, both of them are dead. But that's the end of Jordan's responsibilities as a son. He has to transport both of his fathers' remains from Earth to Ektae, which can only be done when the planets align once every seven years. What's more, the urns containing those remains are illegal on Ektae, because they're made of iron, which disrupts the magic that's common on that planet. Also, there's a powerful man on Ektae with a vendetta toward Jordan, and he might be pretty justified. This is the fascinating premise of Namesake, a new four-issue series by writer Steve Orlando and artist Jakub Rebelka, coming in November from Boom Studios.