Rick Burchett

With the season of spookiness upon us, I thought for sure that the one thing I was guaranteed to get from 75 years of seafaring adventures was a story where Aquaman had to fight a ghost ship. It's one of those things that feels like it has to have happened at some point, but... here we are. As near as I can tell --- and please tell me if I'm wrong about this --- there has never actually been a story where Aquaman took on an undead crew of pirates out for blood and vengeance. The closest we ever got was a story where he actually teamed up with one instead --- and even that didn't happen until 2011.

This year's Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series was one of the most purely fun comics in a good long while. It was the platonic ideal of a crossover, one that played with the pre-existing ideas of invading dimensions that we've already seen in TMNT, and threw them up against Gotham City's arch-criminals until we got to the perfectly logical conclusion of Mr. Freeze being turned into a mutant polar bear. The thing is, James Tynion IV and Freddie E. Williams did so much with that book that I was really left wondering just what they'd do in a sequel. In retrospect, the answer is obvious: Revive The Batman Adventures, the jaw-droppingly good tie-in to Batman: The Animated Series, and mash it up with the TMNT's own current cartoon universe to see what happens. It looks amazing, and we're revealing the covers and solicitation for the second issue below!

Every once in a while, you come across a premise for a story that has so many great hooks that you want to start reading it before you even finish the sentence where it's announced. Prima, announced this week at the Image Expo as the next project from Jen Van Meter and Rick Burchett, is one of those comics: The story of a ballet company that was secretly a resistance cell during World War II, and uses their skills as thieves after the war. To find out more, I spoke to Van Meter and Burchett about Prima's roots in mid-century illustration, the collision of wartime resistance and high fashion, and the troubles of building an entire cast of characters who all have one big lie to tell to each other and the audience.

We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, as well as the special qualities of comic book storytelling, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great pinups, fan art and other illustrations on sites like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and seemingly infinite art blogs that we’ve created Best Art Ever (This Week), a weekly depository for just some of the pieces of especially compelling artwork that we come across in our regular travels across the Web. Some of it’s new, some of it’s old, some of it’s created by working professionals, some of it’s created by future stars, some of it’s created by talented fans, awnd some of it’s endearingly silly. All of it is awesome.

If you've been wondering why people have been asking you "a/s/l?" all day and then following it up with a friendly "haha nice," it's because it's Cyber Monday! Today, we all set aside a little time for the tradition of shopping as our ancestors did so many snowy winters ago: on the internet in pajamas. Truly, it is the most wonderful time of the year. To that end, a lot of your favorite online retailers are having sales today, including the digital comics retailers at Comixology! In fact, there's so much on there that we have decided to take it upon ourselves to guide you to the best of Comixology's Cyber Monday Sale!

Here's something that you already know: Batman: The Animated Series is arguably the single best representation of Batman in the Dark Knight's 75-year history. It boiled down the character to his essentials, creating a beautiful and thrilling version of Batman that was acessible to fans of all ages and still holds up as a high point over twenty years later. Now here's something you might not know: The comic book that was created to go along with the show, The Batman Adventures, was every bit as good as the show. This week, DC Comics released a collection of the first ten issues by Kelly Puckett, Mike Parobeck, Ty Templeton, Brad Rader, Martin Pasko and Rick Burchett, and that means this is a great time to talk about how that comic is about as close to being perfect, and how it's essential for anyone who wants to read some of the greatest Batman comics ever printed -- including the single best Riddler story ever.

We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, as well as the special qualities of comic book storytelling, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great pinups, fan art and other illustrations on sites like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and seemingly infinite art blogs that we’ve created Best Art Ever (This Week), a weekly depository for just some of the pieces of especially compelling artwork that we come across in our regular travels across the Web. Some of it’s new, some of it’s old, some of it’s created by working professionals, some of it’s created by future stars, some of it’s created by talented fans, awnd some of it’s endearingly silly. All of it is awesome.

Okay, so there's good news and bad news. The good news is that ComiXology is having a massive sale on Batman comics, and has knocked a bunch of them down to 99¢ each, which means that you can grab some great stories on the cheap. The bad news? Since this whole thing is in honor of Batman's 75th anniversary, they've put 750 comics on sale, plus a handful of graphic novel collections. All things considered, that's a pretty good problem to have, but still, that can be pretty overwhelming. Fortunately, we're here to help. As the World's Foremost Batmanologist, I've sifted through the sale to bring you safe bets for what you should be grabbing during the sale. Assuming you've got the obvious ones -- like The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One and the recent runs by Morrison, Snyder, and Capullo -- here's what to grab next!

As much as I love Batman, and I think the record will show that I love Batman a whole heck of a lot, I haven't really been looking forward to sitting down and cracking open the new Batman: A Celebration of 75 Years hardcover. Last year's Superman anniversary hardcover was a disaster of revisionist history, 300 pages that would have you believe that one of the world's greatest superheroes did nothing for seven and a half decades but cry. With that in mind, I had no idea what DC Comics was going to do with Batman. If you'd asked me to bet on it, I would've put good money on a prediction that they'd craft a narrative that acknowledged Batman only as a scowling vigilante, consumed with vengeance and every bit as crazy as the villains he fought. But it turns out I didn't have to worry. The Batman hardcover is exactly what it says it is -- a celebration of Batman across different eras, with a roster of stories that highlights one of the character's true strengths: How well he works across different kinds of stories.

  With apologies to Batman, The Question is my favorite DC character. Originally created by Steve Ditko for Charlton Comics, the Question, a.k.a Vic Sage, started off as a determined investigative journalist by day and a ruthless crime fighter by night, his roots lying in the same philosophy of Objectivism that Ditko himself is an ardent supporter of. In the 1980s, DC Comics acquired the rights t