tom king

Our judges have adjudicated; our readers have voted. We’re proud to present to you the outstanding writer of 2015 — and four great runners up.

Our judges have adjudicated; our readers have voted. We’re proud to present to you the breakthrough talent of 2015 — and four exceptional runners up.

The last few ICYMIs on this site have featured Scooby-Doo meeting Harley Quinn, the Justice League teaming up with the Creature Commandos, and a dude taking a cinderblock to the spine. In that context, inviting the new neighbours round to show off what you've done with the place might not really seem worth celebrating. It's for that exact reason, though, that the opening scene of Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta's The Vision #1 is interesting. This is the first issue of a new superhero comic trying to sell readers on a relatively minor character --- recent movie appearances notwithstanding. You might expect the first page to feature explosions, revelations, or at least a dead supporting character to spice things up a bit.

Tom King might have the most impressive résumé in comics. Long before he became one of the breakout stars of superhero comics with books like Grayson and Omega Men, he specialized in counter-terrorism, including working for the CIA in Iraq. Now, he's drawing on those experiences for The Sheriff of Babylon, a new ongoing series from Vertigo with artist and co-creator Mitch Gerads. To find out more, I spoke to King and Gerads about the origins of the project, their approach to research, and the three characters taking center stage in their crime story.

If you haven't been keeping up with Tom King and Barnaby Bagenda's Omega Men, well, you need to get on that because it's easily one of DC's most compelling comics. It's a space opera with a political twist, a story about cultures trying to conquer each other and an insurgency that's trying to resist a far-reaching government and a compelling character piece about manipulation and duty that still has time for wry jokes and fight scenes involving a giant tiger-man named Tigorr. It's got a lot going for it is what I'm saying. Anyway, the story so far has found the Omega Men kidnapping both Kyle Rayner (after faking his death) and a space princess who turned out to be in on the whole thing, and now, as the series closes in on its forecast halfway point, they're set to ransom her back to her father. The trick is, it might all be a plot to get at the Space Pontifex. If that sounds rad, and it should, check out the pages below!

Barnaby Bagenda, Romulo Fajardo Jr, and Tom King's The Omega Men from DC Comics has become a critics' favorite since its debut in June, though it unfortunately never found the audience it deserved. The book is filled with twists, turns, questions of morality, questions of politics --- and some absolutely gorgeous art and colors. Omega Men has helped elevate the profile of penciller and inker Barnaby Bagenda, making him one of the artists to watch out for in 2016. ComicsAlliance sat down with Bagenda to hear about his inspirations and his thoughts on structure.

Vertigo is making a big push with its 12 new series this fall, with an impressive roster of creators including Gail Simone, Holly Black, Peter Milligan, Gilbert Hernandez, Darwyn Cooke, and Micheal Allred. Survivors’ Club, The Twilight Children, Clean Room and Art Ops launch next month, followed by Unfollow, Slash & Burn, Red Thorn and Jacked in November. The four books rounding out the dozen are Sheriff Of Babylon, Lucifer, New Romancer and Last Gang In Town, all launching in December and solicited in this month's Previews catalog. We have an advance look at those solicitations, and with it your first comprehensive look at the new Vertigo line-up. Check out the covers, creative teams, and synopses below, in order of release:

Ever since it debuted a few months ago, Tom King and Barnaby Bagenda's Omega Men has been one of the most engaging comics on the stands, and not just because of the story of the title characters and the intergalactic insurgency that has seen them manipulate the power structures of an entire planet and fake the death of Kyle Rayner before the series even started. Don't get me wrong --- all that stuff is interesting, and it makes for a fantastic read, but what really sets Omega Men apart is the visual style that its creators have adopted to tell their story. Or, more accurately, about one very specific and very well-implemented element of the book's visual style: The Nine-Panel Grid.

With most of its major hits and standout series having run their course months or years ago, Vertigo has been due for a renaissance for a while now. Judging from the announcements made at San Diego Comic Con late on Thursday, the publisher may be rallying, with 12 new series set to launch in the closing months of 2015 at a rate of one new issue #1 every week. Those 12 titles include a couple of previously announced books that have been rescheduled, but enough new announcements to suggest that Vertigo means to impress with its ambition. Sci fi and the supernatural are inevitably well represented, and the roster includes veteran talents, emerging names, and a few cross-disiplinary transfers in the form of novelists Lauren Beukes and Holly Black — the latter on a relaunch of Lucifer — and Supernatural creator Eric Kripke.

I'll be honest, folks: I have very little interest in Future's End as a line-wide crossover. DC Comics' tactic of derailing their books into weird tangents every September, a tradition that goes back to the relaunch of the "New 52" universe, never quite works as well as I want it to, and when you throw in the fact that we're peering into the dim and distant future of a world that we've only actually had for three years, and, well, no thanks, I'm good. What really had me worried, though, was Grayson. I've really been enjoying what Tom King, Tim Seeley and Stephen Mooney have been doing with this book over the first few issues, but as I think we all know, there's no faster way to derail a brand new comic's momentum than to drop it into a crossover after two months. I almost didn't bother to read it, but I'm glad I did. It turns out that King, Seeley and Mooney have taken their Future's End tie-in as an opportunity to produce one of the most enjoyable single issues I've read in a long while.