Phil Jimenez

Do supervillains know that they're supervillains? In Superwoman #5, by Phil Jimenez and Matt Santorelli, Lena Luthor is a floating head situated above a green-and-purple battlesuit. That's a pretty key indication that history will not view her kindly, but alas, it doesn't seem to be affecting her decision to blow up large chunks of Metropolis. Next week, we'll find out if Lana Lang can stop her, but you can check out the preview right now!

To mark Trans Week of Visibility, ComicsAlliance has put together a list of great comics for younger readers featuring transgender or nonbinary characters. These are comics that are suitable for a wide range of ages, and come from a wide array of genres, from fantasy to electro-pop to superheroes to slice-of-life --- so there should be something for everyone. If you're a young trans or nonbinary comics reader, or if you know someone who is, or if you just want to read some amazing comics, these are our recommendations!

There's been a lot of talk in recent weeks about queer characters in superhero comics and how to appropriately convey the information that the character is queer while not having them scream it at the top of their lungs. While most attention has naturally gone to Wonder Woman, even though she has yet to be confirmed queer on the page, this week's Superwoman #3 by Phil Jimenez, Emanuela Lupacchino, Ray McCarthy and Hi-Fi tackled the revelation of a supporting character's sexuality in an effortless way.

On June 12th, 2016, a gunman entered the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and killed forty-nine people, as well as wounding fifty-three more. It was the biggest terror attack on American soil since September 11th, and a purposeful attack on predominantly Latinx gay and bisexual men in what was supposed to be a safe space. This December, DC Comics and IDW are coming together to publish an anthology titled Love Is Love, which sees over one hundred comics creators coming together to contribute stories, with all proceeds going to Equality Florida and the fund to benefit the survivors of the attack.

Phil Jimenez is an award-winning creator known for his work at both DC Comics and Marvel on such titles as Wonder Woman, Angela: Asgard's Assassin, New X-Men, The Invisibles, JLA/Titans, and countless more. He's currently working on Superwoman for DC Comics. ComicsAlliance got the chance to sit down with him at the LGBTQ comic convention Flame Con in Brooklyn last month to talk about visual design, industry change, and superheroes as drag queens.

When DC Comics announced its slate of DC Rebirth titles, Superwoman was one of the books that really stood out as coming from left-field. For a time, we weren't sure who Superwoman would be, and when it was confirmed to be Lois Lane donning the costume, there were still more questions surrounding how she got her powers, and even which incarnation of Lois Lane it would be. (There have been two versions in the DC Universe since the reality-mashing events of Convergence.) This week finally saw the release of Superwoman #1 by Phil Jimenez, Matt Santorelli and Jeromy Cox, which firmly establishes the new status quo for Lois Lane and Superwoman, while raising a lot more questions about the future of the comic and its lead than anyone was expecting. This article contains spoilers for the ending of Superwoman #1.

Phil Jimenez is many things; he’s an artist known for work on on seminal comics runs such as Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, he’s a writer renowned for his work on Wonder Woman, and he was one of the first out gay men in work-for-hire comics. Today, we celebrate Jimenez’s birthday, and in doing so we also celebrate his lengthy career as both a writer and artist, and as an advocate for LGBTQ rights and representation within the industry.

Hajime Isayama’s Attack On Titan has been one of the biggest crossover hits in modern manga, with a successful anime series, movies, video games and more spinning off from the original manga. The series is set in a post-apocalyptic world where society lives behind giant walls to keep the monstrous Titans at bay, and follows members of the military who seek to keep their cities safe from the Titan threat. This October, Kodansha Comics USA will release an Attack On Titan Anthology, featuring some of the best creators from the worlds of manga and western comics, and we’ve got exclusive pages from the likes of Michael Avon Oeming, Evan Dorkin, and the Batgirl team of Brenden Fletcher, Cameron Stewart and Babs Tarr.

DC Comics hosted a special livestream event at WonderCon in Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon to unveil the creative teams behind its DC Rebirth event, which relaunches the entire DC Universe line with new issue #1s and multiple double-shipping titles. The relaunch will set the future course of DC Comics at a time when fans are wondering whether the company will embrace a new and diversifying audience or double down on serving a shrinking core audience. The event was introduced by DC All Access host Tiffany Smith, with DC co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio and chief creative officer and Rebirth chief architect Geoff Johns introducing and interviewing the creative teams as they joined them on stage at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Angela has a, shall we say, somewhat interesting path into the Marvel Universe, beginning life as an angelic hunter in the long-running Todd McFarlane superhero horror comic Spawn. However, you don’t need to know a thing about what happened in Spawn to read this series, since the only common thread is the name and the costume (and even then, the costume doesn’t last long). In this series, Angela is revealed to be Thor and Loki’s sister, raised by angels and beholden to their way of thinking, which is purely transactional --- nothing is done without a price, and selflessness is considered weak. This makes her a difficult character to like, but fortunately, the book surrounds her with more sympathetic characters, one of which is the subject of this column.