Mike Norton

With all apologies to our readers in the Sunshine State --- and let's be real here, you know this better than the rest of us --- every headline that comes out of Florida paints a picture of a sunny, tourist-friendly peninsula that also seems to exist in a combination of Mad Max times and The Purge. So really, it was only a matter of time before those terrifying yet intriguing headlines made their way into comics. Now, fresh off their adventures in "Welcome To Clowntown," Valiant's mismatched Archer and Armstrong are coming face to face with... well, pretty much everything, from bath salts on down, as they take a trip to Florida. Check out a preview below!

Over the past month or so, it seems like everybody and their mother has become obsessed with the latest hit Netflix original series, Stranger Things. The '80s-inspired horror series blends the likes of Stand By Me and ET: The Extraterrestrial with elements of eldritch horror and X-Files-style conspiracies and the lead cast of kids is one of the most engaging group of youngster on television. If you've found yourself craving more stories in a similar vein, we've put together a list of five of the best independent comics that deal with similar themes of horror, nostalgia, friendship and conspiracy. Love that? Try this!

If you're a fan of Valiant's Faith --- and you should be, she's great --- then you're in for a pretty good time next Wednesday. Not only does July 20 see the release of the all-new Faith ongoing series from Jody Houser, Pere Perez, Marguerite Sauvage and Colleen Doran, which picks up where the fantastic "Hollywood and Vine" miniseries left off and introduces an all-new supervillain, but we're also going to see her in a pretty significant guest appearance. In A&A: The Adventures of Archer & Armstrong #5, by Rafer Roberts, Mike Norton, and Allen Passalaqua, Faith and Archer are finally going on their first date, and if you thought seeing Archer trying to use emojis was cute, wait'll you see the conversation they have over dinner. Of course, given their night jobs --- and the fact that there's a shady dude watching them over mozzarella sticks --- I'm going to guess that the night might not go as smoothly as they'd like. Check out a preview!

Marvel’s reveal of its Marvel NOW line of comics set for release in the wake of Civil War II has taken the form of a steady drip of announcements over the past week and a half, but now news is flooding in, and not all from official sources. Leaked scans of this week's Marvel NOW Previews magazine revealing the publisher's line-up for October and beyond have hit the internet via sites such as Reddit and 4chan. We’ve rounded up all the information we could find to give you a sense of the new landscape of the Marvel Universe this fall.

Here's the thing about unlettered preview pages: They are, by their nature, incomplete, so you're only really getting half of the story. Still, since comics are first and foremost a visual medium, you can still sort of follow along with sequential art. Unless, of course, you're reading a book like A&A: The Adventures of Archer & Armstrong. If that's the case, well, your guess is as good as mine. Don't get me wrong, it's not that the storytelling is bad. Far from it, in fact --- the art by Mike Norton is great. It's just that this book gets so weird, so fast that one second you're reading about jogging in the park, and the next you're seeing a monkey in a top hat, a frog with a crown made of fire, and a bunch of circus strongmen who may or may not be failed clones of Armstrong. That's just how it goes in Clowntown.

Ever since their return in 2012, Archer and Armstrong have had a series of adventures that I think it's fair to describe as "increasingly weird." They've fought a cult made up of the super-rich, they've fought a different cult that worships the number zero, they've followed a treasure map that was tattooed on a hobo's rear end, and --- most recently --- they've been journeying to the bottom of Armstrong's magic bottomless bag, which was otherwise full of a thousand years' worth of pocket litter. With all that, I have to imagine that it's pretty weird to come up with new situations that are somehow even weirder. But that is a challenge that Rafer Roberts and Mike Norton have decided to tackle head on in the next arc of A&A. In "Welcome To Clowntown," Valiant's second-favorite mismatched pair find themselves trapped in a carnival staffed entirely with clones of Armstrong.

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.

It's always nice to have a good news day in comics -- and DC probably agrees after the rapturous reception to yesterday's announcement of the new direction for Batgirl from the new creative team of Cameron Stewart, Brenden Fletcher, Jordie Bellaire, and new discovery Babs Tarr (who we've been telling you about for aaages). Judging by all the Batgirl fan-art produced since yesterday's announcement, we feel sure there's a big appetite out there for a Batgirl comic deliberately designed to appeal to a female and family audience -- and for Batgirl's smartly designed and stylish new costume. With credit to Batgirl fan ComixBookGurl for her Twitter call-to-action, we collected all the new Batgirl fan art we could find in order to celebrate what may be the best Batgirl... ever?

Having wrapped his landmark Courtney Crumrin series last year, artist Ted Naifeh is set to launch his next ongoing series at Oni Press with Princess Ugg #1 on June 4. The book stars Princess Ülga of Grimmeria, a barbarian from the land of Grimmeria who has made her way into polite society to attend Princess Academy riding the back of her trusty war mammoth. Celebrating the series' launch, Battlepug creator Mike Norton has swapped his series' warrior with Ülga for a special variant uniting Ugg with pug. Oni's provided us with a first look at the variant cover, along with ten interior pages from Princess Ugg #1, which you can check out below.

Click through for all of Wednesday's links.