Chrystin Garland

Rebecca Sugar and Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe is one of the most heartwarming, beautiful shows on television, and the comics published via Boom Studios’ KaBOOM imprint have been an absolute hoot. Later this month sees the release of a brand new miniseries, Steven Universe and The Crystal Gems, and Fried Pie Comics has four exclusive variants from Missy Pena! The variants display the Crystal Gems in a gorgeous art nouveau style, each getting their time to shine on their own solo cover. Steven, Pearl, Amythest and Garnet all look resplendent on covers that still manage to capture the tone and the style of the show perfectly.

A great comic book cover is an advertisement, a work of art, a statement, and an invitation. A great comic book cover is a glimpse of another world through a canvas no bigger than a window pane. In Best Comic Book Covers Ever (This Month), we look back over some of the most eye-catching, original and exceptional covers of the past month. August offers a feast of shape and color, with striking covers by Scott Fischer, Victor Santos, Chrystin Garland, and Tula Lotay, some bold juxtaposition, and a quirky take on a pulp archetype or two -- including a Nazi airship and some poor sap being held in a giant hand. It's a classic!

In her review of the first two issues of Natasha Allegri's Bee and Puppycat comic, ComicsAlliance's own Juliet Kahn declared it to be the product of "a creator raised on Jim Davis and CLAMP," and really, that's the best way you could possibly describe the aesthetic heritage of this project: a perennially unemployed twenty-something magical girl and her strange, eternally scowling and space-faring pet of indeterminate species going on adventures in an equally uncertain but nevertheless compellingly cute universe of weirdness and wonder. For the third issue of BOOM! Studios' comic book version of the Cartoon Hangover animated series, Allegri hands her creation over to cartoonists and storyboard artists Tait Howard, Aubrey Aiese, Madeline Flores, Ian McGinty, Fred Stressing and Anissa Espinosa for a quartet of new stories. For their chapter, Howard and Aiese pit Bee and Puppycat against an apartment in desperate need of cleaning, and shows just what they're willing to do to get out of washing dishes. I think we can all relate.

Ryan North's Adventure Time run with artist Jim Rugg has yielded many welcome surprises (a mecha Lumpy Space Princess, for one) but fans have also paid a price for such a creative rampage as Finn and Jake have learned about mind-body dualism the hard way by becoming ghosts in a machine. Now the spectral heroes have to turn to the last person they can usually count on to return to being flesh and b

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund booth is always a necessary stop at Comic-Con. Their table is covered with great comics signed by great creators, and purchases go to a very important cause. They also always boast an impressive list of exclusives and other items, and this year is no different. If you swing by the CBLDF table, you can pick up an exclusive Adventure Time cover by regular AT contrib