madeleine flores

What a week! I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to sit back and read some comics. The weekend is finally here, and the world can relax and rest once more — but the comics industry has been busy too, you know, and the last seven days have seen a flurry of comics-based news and announcements fly past at high speed. ComicsAlliance has got your back, though: when it comes to comics, we never slow down, so here’s a look back and just what’s been going on. New comics, new stories, new podcasts, new art being made — it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

Boom Box's print version of Madeleine Flores' webcomic Help Us, Great Warrior sadly reaches its conclusion next week with issue #6. The series tells the charming tale of a brave (and great!) warrior who looks kinda like a jellybean, who protects a whole village full of people who look kinda like jellybeans from all sorts of terrible and wonderfully designed threats. As the final issue opens, Great Warrior and the villagers have been dumped into the dark land of Demonside. The situation looks bleak for our bean-shaped pals, but Great Warrior has one last awesome power up in her pocket that may be enough to save the day. (It's a metaphorical pocket; I don't think she has any actual pockets.)

Madéleine Flores’s Help Us! Great Warrior begs the question: must great power always come with great responsibility? Don’t get our heroine, the eponymous Great Warrior, wrong -- it’s totally important to help people, slay monsters, loot dungeons, all that stuff. But can’t you take a break sometimes too? Can’t you celebrate your victory with some pizza bagels and a stack of trashy magazines instead of brooding over the cruel paradox that is your life? Responsibility is great, but every good hero needs to know how to treat herself and her friends. It is this commitment to fun and fearlessness that defined Help Us! Great Warrior as a webcomic and now enlivens its pages in print. In the wake of the comic’s inaugural issue, ComicsAlliance sat down with Flores to discuss fun, friendship, and fantasy.

Spinning out of Madéleine Flores' charming, adorable, and funny webcomic about a powerful warrior who protects her village from all kinds of threats, Help Us! Great Warrior #1 hits stands next week from Boom's all-ages line, Boom Box. Fans of the webcomic will find more of the comic they know and love, quite literally -- more hilarity, longer stories, more color, and more battles. In this exclusive preview Great Warrior faces off against an enemy as old as time, and that enemy is... not having time to shower before going to work. She also faces off against an actual enemy with her requisite humor and toughness. Plus, check out the variant covers by Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb, and MAiS2.

Marvel Comics readers know the precious joy of reading a good "What If...? " comic. Artist Madéleine Flores obviously enjoys such pleasures, too, as her hypothetical take on Iron Man shows. In addition to speculating about an alternative uni-beam placement on Tony Stark, Flores has also tackled the contents of Batman's cowl ears. She's...