Itty Bitty Hellboy

The 2014 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards ceremony took place Friday 25th July in the Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, as part of San Diego Comic-Con. It was a good night for Saga, Hawkeye, and the Hernandez brothers. Presenters included Orlando Jones, Reginald Hudlin, Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConnick, Sergio Aragonés, Phil LaMarr, and Kevin Eastman. ComicsAlliance has a full list of winners, as well as the other nominees in each category.

After spending decades trying to prove that comics "aren't just for kids anymore", the last few years have seen a number of creators and publishers making a concentrated push to bring younger readers back into the industry and create titles that appeal a wide spectrum of audiences. Art Baltazar and Franco are on the forefront of this movement. They're a pair of artists and writers with distinct styles that combine to convey a single, unmistakable, irresistible persona: the "Baltazar/Franco" name is an automatic seal of approval for kids and parents alike. Tiny Titans ran for 50 issues (plus a three-issue miniseries that co-starred Little Archie), and in the two-and-a-half years since that title wrapped up, Baltazar and Franco have been insanely prolific, producing the 12-issue follow-up series Superman Family Adventures for DC, the Itty Bitty Hellboy limited series for Dark Horse, the Lil' Battlestar Galactica one-shot for Dynamite, the Captain Action Cat title for Dark Horse and Dynamite, drawn innumerable covers for various publishers, and published more than a half-dozen issues of their own crowdfunded original ongoing series, Aw Yeah Comics. The duo have also founded the Aw Yeah Comics! comic shop in Illinois, and partnered with Mark Waid on a second comic shop in Indiana. And in the midst of all this hubbub, they took some time out to speak with ComicsAlliance about their brand new Tiny Titans: Return to the Treehouse limited series and talk about their other projects – past, present, and future.

What's so impressive about Art Baltazar and Franco -- the Eisner-winning team behind Tiny Titans, Superman Family Adventures and Patrick The Wolf Boy -- isn't just that they create great all-ages comics; It's that they can seemingly take any concept and manage to give it a humorous, kid-friendly spin. The latest example comes courtesy of Dark Horse Comics, as the duo have teamed up to create Itty