Andy Khouri

Hosted every year in France, the Angoulême International Comics Festival is the biggest comic con in the world, surpassing even San Diego’s mighty Comic-Con International by tens of thousands of attendees. But like the San Diego show and its Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, Angoulême comes with its own venerable awards celebrating sequential art from around the world, the most auspicious of which is the Angoulême Grand Prix, given every year to a living comics creator as a kind of lifetime achievement award. This year’s went to a most deserving artist indeed: Katsuhiro Otomo, creator of one of the medium's undisputed masterworks, Akira.

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.

Available for free right now is Pressure/Sensitivity, the very cleverly titled inaugural anthology project produced by Wacom. The book is a natural step for Wacom to make, as makers of the tablet technology used by an increasing number of comic book artists to create their work. Because Pressure/Sensitivity: An Awesome Comics Anthology is edited by former ComicsAlliance editor Caleb Goellner (currently Wacom's Social Marketing Specialist), it comes as no surprise that the book is populated by contributors well known to CA readers for their distinctive styles and technical prowess: Ben Sears, Giannis Milonogiannis, Ming Doyle, Meredith Gran & Mike Holmes, and Ulises Farinas & Ryan Hill.

Perhaps the most popular American comic book writer working today, Brian Michael Bendis joined Seth Meyers on NBC's Late Night to promote his upcoming Powers TV show, and to pitch Marvel's Secret Wars event series to everyone out there in TV land. According to Variety, Seth Meyers' nightly show is seen by over 1.5 million viewers, which is surely the largest number of people to be confused by superhero comics continuity in any one moment -- at least since the original Secret Wars was published in 1984, when there were more people buying comics to be confused.

Created by Karla Pacheco and Maren Marmulla, Inspector Pancakes Helps The President Of France (Solve The White Orchid Murders) is a twisted take on the popular children's storybook. The basic hook is that the beautiful illustrations and large print captions tell the kid-friendly version of this story in which a talking American dog detective travels to France to assist its President in locating his missing croissant, while the smaller type details the decidedly kid-unfriendly story of the hard boiled, depressive and nihilistic canine cop and his pursuit of a serial murderer who butchers his victims in deeply disturbing ways. It is hilarious and wrong.

Followers of ComicsAlliance's Best Art Ever (This Week) feature are doubtlessly familiar with the work of Killian Eng, but for those who aren't, get ready to meet your new favorite artist. Based in Stockholm and also known as DW Design, Eng has cultivated a loyal audience of illustration and commercial art aficionados for his imaginative synthesis of science fiction, surrealism, film design, architecture, and a liberal dose of vintage prog-rock album art. His work stands out even among the mighty roster of outfits like Mondo, for whom Eng has created posters for films like Heavy Metal, The Matrix, Starship Troopers and Ghost in the Shell. But because of the exclusivity of those products, it's relatively difficult to take Eng home with you. Thankfully, Floating World has made it easier with a long awaited reissue of the out-of-print Object 5, collecting Eng's early work.

The Image Comics slate for 2015 is something of an embarrassment of riches, with new work coming from some of the most exciting creators in North American comics, including those who've been building their fan bases with acclaimed work at Marvel and DC Comics for several years. Among those who'll be creating original work for the first time in a long time is Dustin Nguyen, who's been one of DC's most reliably great artists of the decade. Known for his fantastic chibi book Li'l Gotham, beautiful backups in Superman Unchained and all sorts of striking work in the Batman line, Nguyen's inkwash and watercolor technique has sort of typecast him as a go-to cute and/or gothic artist. But those who've followed his career closely know that Nguyen is passionate about science fiction. He's worked on DC's Justice League Beyond and his own Wildstorm creation Manifest Eternity, but what's likely to be the cartoonist's biggest impact in the genre he loves so much is Descender, his new Image monthly with Jeff Lemire.

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.

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.

Debuting later this month from Image Comics, The Dying & The Dead is the latest collaboration between Jonathan Hickman and Ryan Bodenheim, following A Red Mass For Mars and Secret. I was able to read issue #1 in advance, in the form of a lettered "first draft," and it is immediately notable for three reasons in particular: The Dying & The Dead takes a decidedly more personal approach to the theme of mortality that Hickman's been exploring in epic fashion in his New Avengers and East of West projects; the artwork by Bodenheim is his career best, not just in terms of technical drawing ability, but in the sense of pure graphic storytelling; and the huge page count makes a compelling case for big first issues.