Jim Campbell

Check out the best letterers of 2016, including our critics' picks, and the creators you voted the runners up and winner in this category! This is the very best of 2016!

There’s an expectation of what comics will be when we pick one up, particularly in the monthly "floppy" format that most of us are reading. At Thought Bubble recently, on the Image Comics panel, a few of the creators were talking about how they were able to play around with the medium a little more, and change expectations of what comics are, especially away from "mainstream" books. This week, rather than dissect a single storytelling approach in a comic, I want to look at a comic doing something unusual with the form --- the Boom Studios roller derby comic Slam, by Pamela Ribon, Veronica Fish, Brittany Peer, and Jim Campbell.

The 28th annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards took place this Friday at San Diego Comic-Con, where the creators, editors and publishers of your favorite comics were honored for their accomplishments. While many will be nominated, only a select few will take home the top honors in one of comic's most respected awards. It was a particularly good night for publishers Drawn and Quaterly and Fantagraphics, with fan and critical favorites like Over the Garden Wall, Cliff Chiang and Bandette being recognized as well. Check out the complete list of winners and nominees below.

Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez and Rico Renzi's Spider-Gwen has been one of Marvel Comics' most ceaselessly inventive and exciting properties since the character first debuted in what was meant to be a one-off starring role. Since then, we've been followed Gwen Stacy's ongoing adventures as Spider-Woman, and encountered her world's versions of Captain America, Daredevil and The Punisher --- but there's still a hankering to learn more about this universe. This week's Spider-Gwen Annual #1 scratches that itch as Latour explores the larger world of Earth-65 with stories featuring Koala Kommander, She-Hulk as a pro wrestler, and a terrifying alternate version of Donald Trump who is even more dangerous and has even tinier hands.

Boom Studios' comic adaptions of Cartoon Network shows such as Adventure Time and Steven Universe, published through their KaBoom imprint, has resulted in some of the best all-ages comics in recent memory. Hot on the heels of a successful miniseries, this week sees the release of a brand new Over The Garden Wall ongoing series that delves into and fleshes out the world of the show. The new series is split into two, with Jim Campbell --- who served as a storyboard artist on the cartoon --- contributing to the ongoing adventures of Greg and his frog Jason Funderburker, while Amalia Levari and Cara McGee uncover the story of Anna, The Woodsman's Daughter from the show. We caught up with Campbell to chat about adapting the series from animation to comics, the freedom the medium grants, and splitting up the brothers. Plus, Boom has provided us with an exclusive preview of Levari and McGee's story in Over The Garden Wall #1

This April, Boom Studios' all-ages imprint KaBoom is launching Over The Garden Wall as an ongoing series, written by Jim Campbell and show writer Amalia Levari, with art by Campbell and Cara McGee. Over the Garden Wall began life as an animated miniseries created by Patrick McHale for Cartoon Network, which led to a one-shot tie-in comic from Kaboom, which led in turn to a comic miniseries, and now this ongoing book.

This August, Boom Studios is bringing us back to the weird world of Over The Garden Wall with a four-issue miniseries written by show creator Patrick McHale and illustrated by colorist and cartoonist Jim Campbell. Set between episodes three and four of the show, the miniseries promises more of the sort of old-timey curiosities that the show and last year's one-shot comic special delivered. Check out our exclusive five-page preview.

Sleepy Hollow is my favorite show on television, and has been since that scene in the first episode where the Headless Horseman showed up and tried to kill Ichabod Crane by blowing him away with a machine gun in each hand. It was, and remains, the single most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and while I initially worried about whether the show would be able to keep that energy up as the story rolled on, well, there was an episode last week with the premise of Benjamin Franklin building a Frankenstein's Monster out of the most powerful soldiers who died in the Revolutionary War, so, y'know, they've pretty much maintained a constant level of being absolutely bananas. So needless to say, I was pretty excited when Boom Studios announced that they were going to be releasing a comic tie-in by Marguerite Bennett, Jorge Coelho, Tamra Bonvillain and Jim Campbell, because if nothing else, Sleepy Hollow's particular brand of horror-themed kookiness is exactly the sort of thing that would lend itself well to comics. Having read the first issue, out this week, I can confirm that the team did their absolute best to make the comic as weird as the show, and while it's not a perfect translation, it's definitely a good one.