Jim Lee

At the dawn of 1992, comic books were booming. Tim Burton's Batman had kicked off a new wave of big-budget film adaptations. Superhero products could be found in nearly every aisle of every department store and supermarket. New comic shops were springing up in shopping centers and malls, publishers were seeing their highest sales figures in years, and new companies were making names for themselves as serious players. And Marvel Comics was the unquestioned big fish in the pool, with their stock booming in the six short months since they'd gone public, and an unparalleled creative stable. But big changes were afoot. In December of 1991, Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, and Jim Lee, Marvel's three biggest artists, informed publisher Terry Stewart that the company's policies toward talent were unfair, that creators were not being appropriately rewarded for their work, and that they were leaving, effective immediately. In the month thereafter, they joined forces with a few more like-minded artists from Marvel's top-selling titles, worked out a deal with small publisher Malibu Comics for production and distribution, and decided on the title for their new company --- recycling a name that Liefeld had originally intended for an aborted self-publishing venture. On February 1st, 1992, a press release was sent out announcing the formation of Image Comics.

Listen, I gotta tell you about this dream I had last night. It was so weird 00- DC comics had launched a line of comics based on Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but they were doing these completely bonkers takes on all of them. Like, Scooby-Doo was set in the apocalypse and Scooby had a techno-monocle that allowed him to communicate through emojis, and Wacky Races was mashed up with Mad Max: Fury Road, and they even got one of the designers from the movie for it, and there was a big crossover with Space Ghost and Jonny Quest. And the weirdest thing of all was that the Flintstones were just the Flintstones, but drawn by Amanda Conner. Bizarre, right? Wait a second... I'm just catching up on the news, and --- holy cats. It wasn't a dream. DC Comics is actually doing a Hanna-Barbera line with post-apocalyptic Wacky Races and emoji-monocle Scooby-Doo. This is actually happening.

The second issue of the still mindblowingly titled Dark Knight III: The Master Race arrives in comic book stores on Wednesday, December 23rd, and DC Comics has just revealed five limited variant covers by Cliff Chiang, Klaus Janson, Eduardo Risso, Jim Lee, and Frank Miller himself. Unsurprisingly, all five of the cover artists are male, but at least three of them are people of color. I don't know that that mitigates the stigma of the series title, but hey, it's something.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years on the Internet, it’s that there’s no aspect of comics that can’t be broken down and quantified in a single definitive list, preferably in amounts of five or ten. And since there’s no more definitive authority than ComicsAlliance, we’re taking it upon ourselves to compile Top Five lists of everything you could ever want to know about comics. Nobody’s perfect, and just because the House of Ideas has been responsible for some of the greatest spectacles in comic history doesn’t mean they haven’t had their fair share of awful moments as well. This week, we point our all seeing eye of judgment at five of the worst offenders.

There are a lot of reasons that I could never be Batman, but I think that the most important one is the difference in how we react to illness. The second I catch even the smallest kind of sniffle, all I want to do is turn myself into a blanket burrito, groan about the inevitability of death and maybe, maybe, if I can muster up the strength for it, play Super Mario Bros. 3. Batman, on the other hand, reacts to a deadly virus by punching a crocodile man through a brick wall. That, at least, is the opening of Batman: Europa, the new miniseries that sends Batman on a world-traveling adventure and marks the return of Jim Lee to drawing Batman for the first issue. Check out an exclusive preview below for all the Croc-punching action (and a mild cough)!

When action figures and vinyl collectibles based on your favorite DC heroes aren't enough, you can always turn down the more prestigious statue road. Sure, they're a bit pricier than a six-inch figure, but they bring a certain air of respectability to your collection. Anyone can buy an action figure. It takes a refined eye to know which statues will make a collection pop even more. Probably. I just usually buy the ones that look the coolest. Today, we're debuting a few cool pieces from DC Collectibles upcoming slate of statues, courtesy of DC Comics. We've got the first look at three upcoming statues from DC Collectibles' Cover Girls, Icons and Super-Villains lines, featuring designs from Jim Lee and Stanley Lau. We've also got a bit more detail on the upcoming Wonder Woman: The Art of War by Bruce Timm statue.

The first thing I did when I woke up this morning was run to the window, throw open the sash, and ask a young urchin to tell me what day it was, and when he told me that it was only September 9, I rejoiced, for I had not missed Batman Day! Of course, I have always resolved to keep Batman Day in my heart year round and honor it each and every day of my life, but that's more of a personal thing. For the official version, we can all look forward to September 26, when DC teams up with comic shops, libraries and bookstores for a celebration of the Dark Knight, including giving away free copies of Batman: Endgame Special Edition, with new covers by Jason Fabok and Jim Lee.

More than a decade after it was originally announced back in October 2004, one of comics' long-lost projects, Batman: Europa by writers Brian Azzarello and Matteo Casali and artists Jim Lee and Giuseppe Camuncoli, is finally releasing its first issue in November. The book was previously solicited for a January 2011. Now DC has exclusively revealed to ComicsAlliance the new solicitation and Lee Bermejo's variant cover for Batman: Europa #1, ahead of next week's November solicits. DC also unveiled details of a series of special collector's editions for Frank Miller's Dark Knight III: The Master Race.

Created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, Cyborg has slowly moved up the ranks in the DC Universe, growing from Teen Titan into a fully-fledged member of the Justice League. To mark the launch of his new solo series from David F. Walker, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado and Adriano Lucas, we've collected some of the best Cyborg art ever.

Milestone Media, the publishing imprint at DC notable for creating characters like Static, Zombi and Icon and promoting the work of African-American comics-creators, has formally announced their publishing return today at SDCC. Original co-founders Denys Cowan, Derek Dingle, and Reginald Hudlin will partner with DC Comics to relaunch Milestone as a part of the DC Multiverse, designating their shared universe as "Earth M."