Thrillbent

Over the past few years, zombie comics have become popular enough that zombie Christmas comics are a surprisingly thriving subgenre all of their own. As you might expect, the apocalyptic horror of surviving against a horde of the undead is usually at odds with the good cheer of the holidays, so most of those stories end up being pretty cynical. Every now and then, though, you get one that's pretty fun and captures the spirit in a very enjoyable way. That's the case with Karl Kesel, David Hahn and Grace Allison's Johnny Zombie Christmas, a fun, festive, and reasonably violent tale of yuletide cheer and flesh-eating monsters, and you can read the whole thing for free right this very minute!

You know that scene in Road House where Dalton talks about how a certain phrase is just two nouns put together to elicit a response? That's the way I feel about Chris Sheridan's Motorcycle Samurai. Except, you know, in a good way. Described pretty accurately as "Mad Max meets Kill Bill," the series originally ran digitally at Thrillbent, and in July, it's coming to print. Top Shelf will release Motorcycle Samurai Vol. 1: A Fiery Demise, a softcover clocking in at 176 pages, telling the story of the White Bolt and how she delivered a bounty to a town called Trouble, and if you haven't already read it, it's going to be something you'll want to pick up.

Mark Waid and Barry Kitson's Empire has had a pretty strange publication history. First there were two issues through the short-lived Gorilla Comics imprint at Image, then those later became the #0 issue of a seven-issue series from DC, and just last year, the story of a world where the ultimate supervillain actually succeeded in taking over the world was reborn as a webcomic at Thrillbent, Waid's webcomics concern, with new pages going up weekly. This week, however, IDW Publishing announced that the series was returning to the printed page. As the first part of a partnership between IDW and Thrillbent, Empire: Uprising will collect the digital chapters as a monthly series starting in April.

With more than 200 panels to choose from at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday alone, the programming at the show can be completely overwhelming -- and it's far too easy to miss a panel you know you might have loved, or to find yourself on the wrong side of the con floor five minutes before a great panel is about to start! Take heart, brave reader. ComicsAlliance has sifted through the schedule to offer up our pick of the best panels, screenings, and events, starting with programming for Thursday 24th July -- with an emphasis, of course, on comics programming.

As part of the short-lived Gorilla imprint of Image Comics in 2000, frequent collaborators Mark Waid and Barry Kitson launched Empire, a creator-owned title about the reign of a supervillain who succeeded where so many others failed, and actually conquered the Earth, uniting it under his brutal, iron-fisted rule. The initial run only lasted two issues, but a few years later, Waid and Kitson finished the first story arc under the DC Comics banner, and in so doing created something of a cult classic that some fans still regard as their best work together -- work that includes The Legion of Super-Heroes, JLA: Year One and Flash & Green Lantern: The Brave and the Bold. Now, fourteen years after Golgoth first took control of the world, Waid and Kitson have returned to Empire, releasing it as a webcomic through Thrillbent's monthly subscription model, whereby you get access to the entire Thrillbent catalogue for $3.99, and a free download of Empire volume 1. To find out more about the return of Empire, we spoke to Kitson about the initial idea, how he approached designing a world that had been conquered by evil, and where he and Waid intend to take the very long awaited Empire volume 2.

Thrillbent, the digital comics publishing website founded by writers Mark Waid and John Rogers, has spent the past two years offering up free comics for pretty much free. In a Wednesday blog post, Waid unveiled what he's calling "Thrillbent 3.0," which adds another layer of content that Waid is calling a sort of "Hulu Plus of comics." Fans can pay a $3.99 monthly fee -- about a

Ever since he started his digital-comics website, Thrillbent, Mark Waid has taken heat from a handful of comics retailers who have said he isn't supporting print comics. Now, those retailers can give him an earful in person at next year's Comics Professional Retail Organization meeting, because the Daredevil scribe is now officially the-co owner of Muncie, Indiana, comic shop Alter Ego Comics. Re

Want to expand your comics education, but can't currently commit to shelling out for university rates? If you've got an e-mail address, an Internet connection and access to certain titles, you're in luck. Yesterday Mark Waid, creator of digital comics site Thrillbent and current writer of Daredevil and The Indestructible Hulk, announced an upcoming free super MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) col

Holidays: It's Memorial Day in the United States today. We hope you had a great weekend (and a good day off today, if you're observing the holiday). Opinion: Mark Waid discusses the positive effects that file sharing have had on his new Thrillbent digital effort, and what it might mean for other creators...

This week on War Rocket Ajax, writer John Rogers joins the podcast to talk about the new digital comics initiative he's a part of with Mark Waid, Thrillbent! But the interview doesn't stop there, as he tells Chris and Matt about writing Blue Beetle for DC, his take on making Dungeons & Dragons fun for comics, and yes, how he became one of 28 writers credited in the Halle Berry Catwoman movie -