fantasy week

It's Fantasy Week, which seems like the perfect time to look at one of DC's classic fantasy properties: Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld. Created by Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, and Ernie Colon, Amethyst stars Amy Winston, a young girl from Earth who learns that she's actually a princess from a fantasy kingdom, where she's already grown up because time moves differently.

For our latest fantasy draft, in honor of Doctor Strange, our writers must compete to put together the best superhero teams made up entirely of Marvel magical characters, featuring one occultist, one demon, one vampire, one undead character, and one were-monster. In day two of the draft, Tara Marie added Pixie and Carnage to the team of Sera, Jubilee, and FrankenCastle; Steve added Dead Girl and Mephisto to the team of Spitfire, Nico Minoru, and Robbie Reyes; Kieran added Doctor Doom and Throg to the team of Dracula, Elsa Bloodstone, and Captain Britain; Andrew added Satana Hellstrom and Jericho Drumm to the team of Agatha Harkness, Billy Kaplan, and Cullen Bloodstone; and Elle added Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch to the team of Magik, Blade, and Zombie. With two picks left apiece, it's time to round out the teams and see which one comes out on top.

James Robinson's anthology-style Scarlet Witch series has taken the often maligned mutant witch and spun her into the center of a spellbinding occult detective narrative. ComicsAlliance caught up with Robinson to talk about what makes Wanda's adventures so different this time around, and how this story separates her from her traditional Marvel settings. We also have an exclusive first look at Jonathan Marks' art for Scarlet Witch #13, featuring breathtaking colors by Rachelle Rosenberg.

As part of a new series of interviews with webcomic creators, ComicsAlliance talked with artist Keezy Young about her webcomic Yellow Hearts, a story where children consider making a deal with a demon — over cakes.

While it may be overstating the case to describe superhero comics as our modern myths in a post-religious age, there are certainly some stories that have taken on a near-mythic quality as "the stories you have to read": Watchmen; The Dark Knight Returns; All-Star Superman; The Death of Captain Marvel; "The Night Gwen Stacy Died." These stories are held in high esteem, often for a generation or more. For Fantasy Week here at ComicsAlliance, I wanted I'd dive into a run that's not only held up as one of the defining Marvel stories of the 1980s, but also the high point of its particular character's history. I wanted to know: is Walter Simonson's legendary four-year run on Thor, and the stories related to it, really that good, or just fondly remembered by the people who read it as kids?

I first met Mazikeen as a teenager reading Sandman. She’s a demon in the form of a beautiful dark-haired woman, but with half a face; the daughter of Lilith and lover of Lucifer Morningstar. The left side looks to have rotted away, leaving bone and teeth and an empty eye socket. And she's my favorite monster.

Throughout its run, Shutter has delighted in pushing the boundaries of comics. Leila Del Duca turned her pen to pastiches of everyone from Hergé to Winsor McCay to Richard Scarry. Owen Gieni separated his colors out into cyan, magenta and yellow to tell three stories on a single page. One memorable sequence depicted the creation of a single panel of the comic itself, from Joe Keatinge's script to final lettered product, before being printed, delivered, and finally read by someone in a coffee shop. By those standards, the storytelling in issue #23 is almost disappointingly conventional. It's the most straightforward the comic has been since it debuted. Since the very first issue, in fact. Come to think of it, doesn't that cover look a little familiar?

A young girl sets off on a mission to earn her father's respect in Unsounded. But her father is the King of Thieves, the girl herself has got a tail, and her guardian is more than he seems.

It's Fantasy Week here at Comics Alliance, and many of my fellow CA contributors are writing about their favorite monsters. And I can respect that, but why would I choose one monster when I could highlight a book with lots of monsters instead? Especially when these monsters are all really, really sexy. Published by Iron Circus Comics and edited by C. Spike Trotman, Smut Peddler Presents: My Monster Boyfriend has ten short comics about monsters and the humans who love them. Its highly successful Kickstarter earlier this year (paired with the femdom erotica comic Yes, Roya) raised over $160,000. There is clearly a market for comics full of sexy monster boys, is what I'm saying.

Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight? That question, posed by Jack Nicholson's Joker in the 1989 Batman movie, comes across as an esoteric threat in that context; a destabilizing glimpse into the mind of a madman. Yet the exact same question asked by the X-Men character Nightcrawler would seem like an invitation to possibly the most romantic night of your life, and you'd probably be swept off your feet. If Nightcrawler is a devil, he makes it look good --- perhaps just as much as the Joker makes clowns look bad.