Editor's Picks

After teasers and promo photos and a 'motion poster', we got our first substantial look at Marvel's forthcoming Netflix show Daredevil today, with a full length trailer that properly introduced us to Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin, Elden Hensen's Foggy, and Deborah Ann Woll's Karen --- and, of course, Charlie Cox as blind-lawyer-by-day, ninja-vigilante-by-night, Matt Murdock/Daredevil.

Convergence is drawing ever closer; a massive not-quite-in-continuity crossover event that replaces all of DC's monthly titles for two months this spring, to throw together interpretations of characters from throughout DC history on an isolated world where they will end up fighting a lot. The event is comprised of a weekly miniseries by writer Jeff King and artists Carlo Pagulayan and Jason Paz that delivers the central overarching plot line, and a number of character-focused two-issue miniseries that will expand on the themes of the weekly series, provide additional context, and revive fan-favorite versions of many classic DC heroes and villains. It's a huge, massively ambitious undertaking, so we spoke to DC co-publisher Dan DiDio to get a better idea about the publisher's plans, the company's overall goals for the event, and the impact it will have on the DC universe in the future.

There is no one, no one on the face of this planet, who is more excited about Kelly Thompson and Sophie Campbell's upcoming Jem and the Holograms comic than we are here at ComicsAlliance. But as much as we love the good guys, we have to admit that our heart belongs to the Misfits. I mean, their songs are better --- it says so right in the theme to the cartoon! That's why we're proud to reveal a set of exclusive character profiles for the Holograms' ruthless antagonists, featuring Campbell's character designs for the new series.

Brian Hibbs has put up his great yearly analysis of the Bookscan numbers over at Comic Book Resources, and they reflect a change that's slowly dawning on many people in comics right now: books for women and children are where the money is. Nine of the top twenty books sold and tracked by Bookscan last year were by women, and twelve of the top twenty were books for kids.

The Dress. For a little while there, in between one story and the next, the dress was all anyone seemed to be talking about --- or more specifically, a picture of a dress. Some people swore that the dress in the picture was white and gold; others felt certain it was blue and black. Color, which we tend to think of as a matter of fact, is really a matter of perception --- but, "it all depends how you look at it" is an unsatisfying answer to a question that nearly tore the internet in two. Thankfully there are people whose whole business is color, among them the talented artists who color our comics, applying color theory to create space, time, mood, and emotion on the page. One such artist is Nathan Fairbairn, whose projects include Multiversity and Wonder Woman: The Trial of Diana Prince. Fairbairn was as confounded by the mysteries of The Dress as anyone, but as an expert in his field he had a better idea than most of us on how they might be decoded.

Cartoonist Jeremy Bastian's Cursed Pirate Girl is an intricate work of art that follows, as promised, a cursed pirate girl who travels the seas engaging in adventures, in a piratical Alice in Wonderland kind of way. Illustrated like a late-19th century fever dream, it's a book that rewards repeat reads. The first graphic novel was released as a hardcover in 2012 by Archaia to great critical acclaim after a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2010. And now, a new Cursed Pirate Girl story is on its way from Archaia this summer.

As a Briton living overseas, I am always delighted to see people from the old country shamelessly milk their Britishness to sell themselves abroad. The more we ham it up, the more people seem to love it, as evidenced by Eddie Redmayne's Oscar win. So it's in that same glorious spirit that Titan Comics is playing up the "Downton Abbey and crumpets" angle for its May comics promotion, Best of British, featuring new and classic works from a roster of creators that includes Peter Milligan, Si Spurrier, Alan Martin, D'Israeli, and the late Brett Ewins. Check out the trailer above, debuting exclusively on ComicsAlliance.

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.

All right, look. I've been pretty late on getting around to reading the considerable library of titles that Osamu Tezuka produced over the course of his forty-year career in manga. Much as I've enjoyed going back through Astro Boy, and as much as I'm looking forward to continuing it when Dark Horse's line of omnibus editions drop this fall, I still haven't read Black Jack or Buddha or any of his other major works, despite knowing that I really should. But folks, I am doing my best, which is why I really hope you head over to Kickstarter and throw a few bucks towards DMP's project to bring Tezuka's Alabaster to America.

When Archie Comics announced a while back that it was relaunching its flagship character with a new series by Mark Waid and Fiona Staples, we all knew that the current series was going to come to an end, and today, Archie let us know exactly when that's happening. This June will mark the final issue for Archie, ending at... #666! Could this mean that Archie's universe gets rebooted due to some kind of sinister pact with the Devil himself?! Has the Author of All Lies finally wreaked his hellish revenge on Archie and his crew for all those weird religious comics they appeared in back in the '70s?Is Reggie actually Satan, as I have so long suspected?