Dan McDaid

We have, as a people, had Judge Dredd comics for about 40 years now, so it's fair to say that maybe we've gotten used to having him around. I mean, as shocking as his sprawling thrill-powered future might be, and as strange as things can get in in the blocks of Mega City One, there's a level where we've come to terms with it --- or some of it, at least. But that's the trick with what's been happening in IDW's Dredd titles over the past year. Stories like Mega City Zero have somehow managed to drop Dredd into a world that he doesn't understand, recreating that feeling that we have when we're dropped into his world --- and in this year's Judge Dredd Annual, Ulises Farinas, Erick Freitas, Dan McDaid and Ryan Hill are taking it one step further.

IDW's own-brand Judge Dredd has proved just how versatile the character is when taken away from his home of 2000 AD and transplanted to an American publisher. The current volume by Ulises Fariñas, Erick Freitas, Dan McDaid and Ryan Hill has taken Dredd to some exciting new places, and the current ten-part "Mega-City Zero" has been one of the best Dredd stories in recent memory.

As much as Dynamite might be known for picking up a few unusual licenses, the upcoming Kings Quest series is not actually a comic book adaptation of the classic Sierra adventure game about wandering around, picking up everything you can, and then banging them together to see what happens. Instead, believe it or not, it's actually something better. Coming in May, Kings Quest is Ben Acker, Heath Corson and Dan McDaid's sequel to Jeff Parker and Marc Laming's Kings Watch that finds the classic King Features adventure characters --- Flash Gordon, the Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, Jungle Jim and a time-tossed Prince Valiant --- reuniting to take on an entire army. In space.

If you're following any comic book artists on Twitter or Tumblr, then there's a pretty good chance that you saw the word "Inktober" pop up an awful lot over the past four weeks. Created by artist Jake Parker in 2009, it's a month-long exercise in getting better at working with ink (as opposed to just pencils) by producing a piece of art every day for all 31 days of October. And it's also exactly the kind of thing that we love to see here at ComicsAlliance.

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.

We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great images 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, and some of it's endearingly silly. All of it's awesome. In honor of this year's 75th anniversary of the first appearance of Superman and this weekend's release of Man of Steel, we present for the second time a compilation of some of the coolest portraits of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's brilliant creation that we've highlighted in this feature over the last few years. We know it's cheating but we didn't count on going away for a month and then coming back in the middle of a big media event. All-new next week evermore.

What's a superhero to do after the end of the world? That's the basic hook behind Catalyst Comix, a distinctly wild-eyed new Dark Horse miniseries written by Joe Casey (Sex, Gødland, Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker) and split into three distinct serials illustrated by Dan McDaid, Ulises Farinas and Paul Maybury.

We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great images 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 artwor

A sequel to the Eisner-nominated 2005 limited series Smoke (with artist Igor Kordey), writer Alex de Campi's graphic novel Ashes was one of comics' bigger Kickstarter successes, raising over $32,000 in 2011 via the increasingly influential crowd-funding platform...

Regular visitors to the all-star Comic Twart blog, as well as readers of Jersey Gods and Image's Popgun anthology have gotten to know the versatile, Jack Kirby-tinged illustration style of the UK-based Dan McDaid, but for those unfamiliar, prepare to be vaulted into alternate realities of comic book goodness...