Lauren Beukes

I don't like scary movies, and if we're going to be honest with each other, it's basically because I am a very easily frightened person who does not enjoy being frightened in the slightest. But that said, I can recognize a great premise when I hear one, and Survivors' Club, by Lauren Beukes, Dale Halvorsen and Ryan Kelly, most definitely has one. The basic idea is that it follows the survivors of a rash of paranormal attacks with very familiar plots --- poltergeists, killer dolls, and all the other stuff that scared me out of video stores when I was a kid --- that happened back in 1987. As adults, the survivors have been drawn together, and find themselves dealing with all manner of horrors. Now, as the series hits its 8th issue, they're fighting their way through a haunted house and trying to escape without being murdered by the mysterious Mr. Empty. Even though I don't like the scares, I have to admit that it's worth checking out. Catch a preview!

With most of its major hits and standout series having run their course months or years ago, Vertigo has been due for a renaissance for a while now. Judging from the announcements made at San Diego Comic Con late on Thursday, the publisher may be rallying, with 12 new series set to launch in the closing months of 2015 at a rate of one new issue #1 every week. Those 12 titles include a couple of previously announced books that have been rescheduled, but enough new announcements to suggest that Vertigo means to impress with its ambition. Sci fi and the supernatural are inevitably well represented, and the roster includes veteran talents, emerging names, and a few cross-disiplinary transfers in the form of novelists Lauren Beukes and Holly Black — the latter on a relaunch of Lucifer — and Supernatural creator Eric Kripke.

Over the last several years, Vertigo has revived several forgotten anthology titles with good results: Strange Adventures, Mystery in Space, The Witching Hour and Time Warp. With Strange Sports Stories, Vertigo once again dips into comics history, drafting a lineup of heavy hitters and utility players for odd tales of sports and science fiction coming together in unexpected ways.

Many ComicsAlliance readers will be glad to know that Vertigo is launching an all-new ongoing series set in the enduringly popular and consistently excellent Fables saga created by Bill Willingham. Called Fairest, the book will star Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White and, in Willingham's words, anyone who could be interpreted as "fairest in the land...