Matt Taylor

Back in 2014, Mondo released a Harley Quinn print by Matt Taylor at San Diego Comic-Con that was both beautiful and managed to capture Harley in a way we'd never really seen her before. The print was so popular, Mondo decided to make a statue capturing Harley Quinn in her room listening to her favorite records. We've seen the piece a few times now in prototype form, but now the pre-orders have opened, and we can't throw our money at the screen fast enough.

This year seminal British publisher and #1 provider of Thrill-Power, 2000 AD is celebrating its 40th anniversary and is throwing a big old bash in London on February 11th. As part of the celebrations, a number of 2000 AD's licensees have put together an amazing roster of art and merchandise to commemorate the anniversary, including new prints from Sean Phillips, Carlos Ezquerra and Mick McMahon along with statues, pins and more.

This December, Mondo plans on going out in style... Marvel House Style that is. On Dec. 11, the Mondo Gallery in Austin, TX will kick of a nine-day exhibit focused exclusively on Marvel called “Snikt. Bamf. Thwip: A Celebration of Marvel Comics.” It's the final gallery show of the 2015 calendar year for Mondo, and it will feature more than a dozen different artists from the Mondo family contributing works celebrating more than 75 years of Marvel's comic and cinematic history. We've got the details on which artists will be presenting original works, when you'll be able to see them, and we've got an exclusive first look at Matt Taylor's Thor and Loki pieces making their debut at the show next month.

This past weekend, you may have been lucky enough to find yourself in Austin, TX to attend the second annual MondoCon. If you weren't (like me), you apparently missed out on a whole mess of cool announcements (like me). In addition to the requisite vinyl and print teases for upcoming releases, Mondo also hinted at the future of its collectibles line. We already knew licenses like He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Madballs would be on hand, but Mondo's creative director of toys and collectibles Brett Otterbacher had a few surprises for those in attendance, too. According to a recap in the Austin Chronicle, Mondo will be crafting statues based on two different DC Comics prints that have already been released. First, a cast version of Francesco Francavilla's "Red Rain" print will be coming soon. Like the Godzilla statue based on the work of Phantom City Creative, the Batman-as-Dracula piece will be stylized as a 3D recreation of Francavilla's scrawny, bony, fang-bearing art. There will also be a Harley Quinn statue based on the 2014 SDCC-exclusive print from Matt Taylor (above). How this Harley will be translated to a statue remains to be seen, as this piece is just as much about her room as it is her. It will be interesting to see which elements make the leap to physical form when the statue begins development.

The week’s over! And with it we reach the final days of September --- which you've all done a dazzling job with, by all accounts. But while you’ve been off working and living and doing all those things that humans do, what have you missed in the world of comics? With Weekender, ComicsAlliance is here to give you a heads-up on some of the stories that you might have overlooked, and to showcase some great writing on comics for you to enjoy over buttery crumpets this weekend.

Wolf #1, written by Ales Kot with art by Matt Taylor and Lee Loughridge, opens with one of the most beautifully distinct images I've seen in a comic this year: a man on a hillside overlooking LA; the buzzy glow of the city's lights just visible in the distance; the man is singing a blues song, Robert Johnson's Hellhound on My Trail; also, he's on fire. It's a haunting image, all the more because of the complete lack of explanation. “How do you feel about myths?” reads the single caption, and there's something genuinely mythic about these opening pages. This image of a burning man, picked out in flames of unnaturally bright orange by colorist Loughridge, is eerie, primal and immediately iconic. These pages set the tone for the rest of the issue, and most likely the series to follow --- and even if the rest of the issue's sixty-something pages never quite match the highs of these first few images, it's a promising start.

Over the past few months, we've been slowly freaking out over the Mondo gallery's tribute to Batman's 75th anniversary. Every time a new set of art was revealed, the show looked better and better, and now that it's actually open down in Austin, our suspicions have been confirmed: The art for this show is incredible. Not only do they have the portraits inspired by Batman '66 and the beautifully designed posters inspired by the movies and classic episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, but the gallery features work from comic book artists Francesco Francavilla and Jock, too. Fittingly enough, the two collaborated on an amazing piece based on "The Black Mirror," the excellent Scott Snyder story they both contributed to, but Francavilla also took on a poster inspired by Kelley Jones and Doug Moench's classic Elsewords Batman & Dracula: Red Rain, and Jock produced a pair of pieces based on Frank Miller's Batman: Year One that I'm pretty sure I desperately need to own.

The boutique merchandise arm of the celebrated Austin movie theater the Alamo Drafhouse, Mondo's about to level up with its most ambitious music plan yet: a series of vinyl-only releases of Danny Elfman's music from Batman: The Animated Series.

We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, as well as the special qualities of comic book storytelling, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great pinups, fan art and other illustrations on sites like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and seemingly infinite art blogs that we’ve created Best Art Ever (This Week), a weekly depository for just some of the pieces of especially compelling artwork that we come across in our regular travels across the Web. Some of it’s new, some of it’s old, some of it’s created by working professionals, some of it’s created by future stars, some of it’s created by talented fans, awnd some of it’s endearingly silly. All of it is awesome.

  We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, as well as the special qualities of comic book storytelling, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great pinups, fan art and other illustrations on sites like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and seemingly infinite art blogs that we’ve created Best Art E