image expo 2016

At today's Image Expo, writer Brian Azzarello announced Moonshine, an upcoming series with his frequent collaborator, artist Eduardo Risso. Due out in October of this year, the comic feature mobsters, werewolves, and "a sprinkling of hillbillies."

Jonathan Hickman’s creator owned work is known for tackling big, often metaphysical concepts such as the nature of media as propaganda, the transcendence of humanity beyond the limitations of the human form and the death and destruction of the entire world at the hands of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. His new series The Black Monday Murders with Tomm Coker, Michael Garland and Rus Wooton, announced today at Image Expo, takes things a bit simpler and is all about rival schools of magic, but instead of magic they are financial institutions battling for supremacy following the global stock market crash of the late eighties.

Following their departure from Batgirl, Babs Tarr, Cameron Stewart, and Brenden Fletcher will be launching an all new comic for Image, as announced at today's Image Expo. Coming in December 2016, Motor Crush is the story of Domino Swift, who spends her days racing in a legitimate worldwide racing league, and her nights competing in illegal motorcycle brawls, in an attempt to get her hands on a machine narcotic known as crush. "Everything's going to be a little bit amped up," explained Tarr.

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.

Ahead of Emerald City Comiccon, Image held its annual gathering of creators to announce a new slate of titles coming from the publisher in 2016 and beyond. The 2016 Image Expo brought with it wealth of information about the publisher's plans, including new books from the former Batgirl creative team of Babs Tarr, Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher; crime comic mainstays Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips; a new OGN from Leila del Duca; Jen Van Meter and Rick Burchett's ballerina crime caper; and a number of other promising projects.