Laura Sneddon

Jade Street Protection Services is an upcoming new series from Black Mask Studios that's billed as a mash-up between The Breakfast Club and Sailor Moon; the story of the delinquent students at an elite private school for magical girls. The release of the neon-pink-tinged cover by artist Annie Wu on social media was enough to create a surge of excitement --- What is it? Who is it? When is it? --- so we caught up with the creative team of newcomers Katy Rex and Fabian Lelay to find out more. The team also shared a preview of June's issue #1!

Welcome to Limbo, a world where ‘50s noir and ‘80s neon are smashed together to produce one truly surreal comic. Think Lovecraft meets Cronenberg as Innsmouth and Videodrome collide in an explosion of magic, myth, jazz and Kafka. It's an Image comic that's hard to define, but it’s clear that artist Caspar Wijngaard and writer Dan Watters are having the time of their lives. From color palettes that follow narrative and character while also setting the tone, to the clean sharp lines that somehow still scream punk, Limbo is worth buying for the art alone --- which makes it all the more satisfying that the story is so wickedly sharp, embracing the surreal world that Wijngaard brings to life with existential humour, a subversively twisty plot, and a complete refusal to hold the hand of the reader. This is subjective storytelling at its best, which made an interview an absolute must.

Long before Snowpiercer was a film starring Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton, Le Transperceneige was well known in Europe as a classic of the science-fiction genre. Created by writer Jacques Lob and drawn by Jean-Marc Rochette, the first volume – The Escape – was published in 1982 at the height of the severe global economic recession and the dawn of Thatcherism and Reaganomics on the world stage. The fact that the English translation didn’t arrive until last year, after the greatest post-war slump of all, is perhaps no coincidence – the tale of a massive train harbouring the last humans on earth, sorted by class from richest to poorest with no room for progression is as timely today as it was in the ‘80s. And now, one year later, not only do we have the subsequent sequels available on the English market but also a brand new volume (just released in France) that will hit our shelves in February – and we've had a chance to read and review it in advance.

One year on from the launch of the British Comic Award-nominated black comedy Beast Wagon from writer Owen Michael Johnson (Raygun Roads, Reel Love), illustrator John Pearson, and letterer Colin Bell (Curb Stomp, The Fiction, And Then Emily Was Gone), the second chapter will debut at this year's Thought Bubble festival in Leeds, continuing the story's spiral into anthropomorphic madness.

A brand new volume of Snowpiercer from Jean-Marc Rochette and award-winning writer Olivier Bocquet is set to debut in France next month, and Titan will race to publish the English edition in February, giving us the entire set in gorgeous matching hardcover.

August 5th sees the release of Young Terrorists #1, an explosive political sci-fi thriller by Matt Pizzolo and Amancay Nahuelpan, as a bumper size graphic novella released simultaneously in comic and book stores. When Marvel dropped news of their hip hop variants this week, the recent discussions on race in comics grew even larger. But it turns out, Marvel aren't the only publishers who thought to combine hip hop with their output, as Matt Pizzolo told ComicsAlliance.

Visiting the bustling hive of energy that was Edinburgh Comic Con back in mid-April, I was delighted to see that the table of dynamic duo John Lees and Iain Laurie had completely sold out of their critically acclaimed horror comic, And Then Emily Was Gone. With a highly anticipated prequel, And Then Emily Was Gone #0, as one of the highlights of the 2015 Free Comic Book Day slate, what better time to sit down and talk horror, David Lynch, Scottish folklore, and how such a wicked comic ever reached our shelves with Lees and Laurie?

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?

When world leaders are criminals… maybe the terrorists are the good guys. Black Mask Studios has an impressive slate of titles in the works for this year, and it’s nice to see that the upstart publisher is still pushing the punk envelope. Matt Pizzolo (Godkiller, Occupy Comics) has teamed up newcomer Amancay Nahuelpan to create Young Terrorists, a sci-fi thriller series that kicks off with explosive style in May with an 84-page graphic novella of a first issue. Check out the trailer, debuting exclusively on ComicsAlliance, and get a taste of what’s to come.

When a comics Kickstarter campaign is a success in less than 24 hours, and the launch party and gallery exhibition attracts creators from all over the country, it’s clear that something special is about to happen. Beast Wagon, described by its creators as “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with talking animals,” is the work of British Comic Award nominee Owen Michael Jones (Raygun Roads, Reel Love) and illustrator and comics newcomer John Pearson, and it could well be be the UK comic of the year. A black comedy about madness overtaking the animals --- and humans --- in a zoo, Beast Wagon is a stunningly beautiful work. ComicsAlliance sat down with the two young punk creators to find out where this madness came from, and just how far the contagion is going to spread…