Vertigo

In the fourth volume of Transmet, "The New Scum," the election turns upside down, the storytelling shifts to accommodate a traumatic event, and we settle the question once and for all: is the current POTUS the Beast, or the Smiler?

Colleen Doran made her first comic when she was twelve, and she's still writing and drawing it today. A Distant Soil stands apart as a unique project within the comics sphere; an epic longform story that has spanned decades in the real-world, and yet remained contemporary and compelling. Doran has also worked at Marvel and DC, and collaborated with writers including Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis. Along the way she's gained many admirers, but also vocal critics who tried to push her out of the industry. ComicsAlliance looks back over some of the milestones of her career, to chart how she became one of the most acclaimed artists in the industry today.

The CW’s iZombie is more or less bringing up the rear of 2017 debuts, but isn’t afraid to make a statement with its first Season 3 poster. See for yourself, as Rose McIver does her best Che Guevara in a stylized first look at the April premiere.

It’s election season in book three of Transmetropolitan, "Year Of The Bastard," and the worst sicknesses of politics are bubbling to the surface. There’s reactionary monsters in suits, there’s heartbreak for Spider, and there’s the hot question of the moment: which politician in Transmet most resembles the current US head of state, and is the answer less obvious than it appears?

The question most often asked of the ComicsAlliance staff is a variation of, “Which comic books should I be reading?” or, “I’m new to comics, what’s a good place to start?” The Wednesday deluge of new comic books, graphic novels and collected editions can be daunting even for the longtime reader, much less for those totally unfamiliar with creators, characters and publishers, and the dark mysteries of comic book shopping like variants, pre-ordering, and formats. It’s with these challenges in mind that we’ve created Best Comic Books Ever (This Week), an ongoing guide curated by the ComicsAlliance staff. This is where new comics readers and seasoned Wednesday shoppers alike can find our picks of the best books the medium has to offer.

Courtesy of DC Comics, ComicsAlliance brings you an advance look at new periodical comic books, collected editions, graphic novels and collectibles going on sale in May 2017 (and in some cases beyond) from the publisher’s superhero line, Gerard Way's Young Animal, and the mature readers Vertigo imprint.

Noted screenwriter Andrea Berloff has something of a scattered resume at present. Back in 2005, she drafted the script for Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, remembered primarily today as the 9/11 movie that isn’t United 93. She‘d later earn an Oscar nomination for serving as a co-writer on the Straight Outta Compton script along with Jonathan Herman, before pivoting to pulpy genre work this past year with the Mel Gibson-fronted revenge tale Blood Father and the Jamie Foxx potboiler Sleepless earlier this year. Her next move keeps the in-demand writer right in her wheelhouse of crime fiction, but presents her with a new challenge — directing.

In the 1990s, Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson foresaw a future of twisted behavior, renegade politics, and uncontrollable technology in Transmetropolitan. We're revisiting the series book by book, because in a time of unrest and uncertainty we could all use some Filthy Assistance. In book two, Lust For Life, the world is brought into sharper relief as the new and the old crash into each other repeatedly, leaving our characters dealing with the fallout. Spider Jerusalem also confronts assassins putting a hit on his life as part of a convoluted scheme tied up in a messy divorce --- in a storyline that may go a bit too far...

Courtesy of DC Comics, ComicsAlliance brings you an advance look at new periodical comic books, collected editions, graphic novels and collectibles going on sale in April 2017 (and in some cases beyond) from the publisher’s superhero line and the mature readers Vertigo imprint. All of the following books can be purchased at finer comic book shops, where you can also pre-order your selections to ensure you’ll get a copy before they sell out.

Today is Inauguration Day, and Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States. And really, it's obvious why he won. After eight years with one of the most qualified and accomplished presidents in generations, what America really needed was a vain, egotistical, thin-skinned braggart with a long history of bullying and abusive statements, absolutely no experience in public service, and a track record of astonishing failure. If you voted to Make America Great Again, here are some comics to dig into while you wait for all those manufacturing jobs to come back, and for those pesky SJWs to finally be put in their place.