Rob Williams

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.

I'll admit that I've been a little skeptical about the idea of the Martian Manhunter holding down a solo book. I even wrote a column a while back about why I'm not sure if it could ever work, but one of the biggest problems that I identified back then was that his origin story feels like something that's been done on a much grander scale with Superman. So if you're going to fix him, well, maybe giving him a new origin story is a good place to start. And in case you missed it, that's exactly what happened this week in Martian Manhunter #10, in which Rob Williams, Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira and Gabe Eltaeb give us a brand new origin for J'onn J'onzz --- and it is both completely bonkers and completely awesome.

Assuming you're shopping in the UK or online, this week marks the release of 2000 AD prog 1961. It's this year's Christmas special, with a full hundred pages of not only the usual dose of thrillpower, but also... well, whatever the Christmas equivalent of that concept is, I suppose. Merrypower? Thrilljollies? Listen, I'm still pretty new to this whole thing. Point being, there's plenty of yuletide fun to be found in this week's issue, and as you might expect, absolutely none of that fun is being had by Judge Dredd, the stone-faced grinch of Mega City One's law enforcement, who is spending his Christmas doling out grim justice to snowmen who have come to life. No, really: It's Dredd vs. Frosty in this week's issue, and you can check out a preview below!

The weekend is here! Put down your paperwork, throw your stationery out of the window, and do a victory spin in your office chair, because it’s time to catch up on that greatest of all media: comics! What’s been going on this week? There’s so much comics that there’s no way anybody can keep up with all of it — so Weekender is here to catch you up on some of the stories you may have missed, and some of the best writing about comics from the past few days.

Vertigo is making a big push with its 12 new series this fall, with an impressive roster of creators including Gail Simone, Holly Black, Peter Milligan, Gilbert Hernandez, Darwyn Cooke, and Micheal Allred. Survivors’ Club, The Twilight Children, Clean Room and Art Ops launch next month, followed by Unfollow, Slash & Burn, Red Thorn and Jacked in November. The four books rounding out the dozen are Sheriff Of Babylon, Lucifer, New Romancer and Last Gang In Town, all launching in December and solicited in this month's Previews catalog. We have an advance look at those solicitations, and with it your first comprehensive look at the new Vertigo line-up. Check out the covers, creative teams, and synopses below, in order of release:

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.

As a Briton living overseas, I am always delighted to see people from the old country shamelessly milk their Britishness to sell themselves abroad. The more we ham it up, the more people seem to love it, as evidenced by Eddie Redmayne's Oscar win. So it's in that same glorious spirit that Titan Comics is playing up the "Downton Abbey and crumpets" angle for its May comics promotion, Best of British, featuring new and classic works from a roster of creators that includes Peter Milligan, Si Spurrier, Alan Martin, D'Israeli, and the late Brett Ewins. Check out the trailer above, debuting exclusively on ComicsAlliance.

  R.M. Guera may be one of the more under appreciated artists in comics. Guera's gritty, European-influenced line work is ideal for his recent work on the comic adaptation of Django Unchained, as well as his most notable series, the award winning Scalped, which he co-created with Jason Aaron for Vertigo. And if you asked me what artist, who had previously never illustrated a Judge Dredd story, was

The name of the game in licensed video game comics used to always mean going through a proper comics publisher, but following the success of its in-house webcomics effort ShiftyLook, Namco Bandai is once again going its own way with the launch of its Dark Souls II digital comic. Debuting yesterday with the first of what will be weekly page uploads on the Dark Souls Facebook page, "Dark Souls

At its outset, Vertigo built it's brand largely on the work of writers from the United Kingdom. Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan and more were part of the so-called "British Invasion" of American comics in the '80s, with a creative output that forever changed the industry. Decades later, its a relationship that's still working well for Vertigo, as to