roger langridge

The weekend is here! Take a look back at what’s happened in the past seven days. New comics, new stories, new podcasts, new art being made — it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

In just over a decade, Boom Studios has established itself as one of the most important publishers in comics, and key to its success is the all-ages Kaboom imprint, headed up by editor Shannon Watters. A former Tokyopop copy editor and assistant editor on titles like Irredeemable and Elric, Watters has been a part of Boom from the ground up, and even with licenses for some of the biggest properties on the planet, Watters and the creators under her have consistently traced their own path, to the delight and benefit of critics and readers.

Betty Boop #1, a new Dynamite comic from Roger Langridge and Gisèle Lagacé, brings an 86-year-old animated star to comics, and a whole world follows behind her. As a longtime fan, I'm excited not just to see Betty in a comic, but to see all her friends and co-stars. They're all products of Fleischer Studios, an animation house run by brothers Max and Dave Fleischer, which was also responsible for the original Popeye cartoons. If you've picked up this comic only knowing Betty Boop from T-shirts and tattoos, you may be wondering who all these characters are and why everything seems a little weird. As an expert on this subject (which rarely comes up), I thought I'd provide a quick intro to Betty and her friends.

I don't want to assume anything about your life, but I can definitely tell you that I didn't wake up this morning expecting to be really excited about a new Betty Boop comic, and yet, here we are, in a world where that is exactly what I'm feeling. As part of a string of announcements leading up to this week's San Diego Comic-Con, Dynamite Entertainment has revealed an all-new Betty Boop series from Roger Langridge and Gisèle Lagacé, set to make its debut in October. And just in case that wasn't enough of a surprise for today, it's also going to have covers by Howard Chaykin.

What a week! I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to sit back and read some comics. The weekend is finally here, and the world can relax and rest once more --- but the comics industry has been busy too, you know, and the last seven days have seen a flurry of comics-based news and announcements fly past at high speed. ComicsAlliance have got your back, though: when it comes to comics, we never slow down, and so here’s a look back and just what’s been going on. New comics, new stories, new hirings, new podcasts, new art being made --- it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

Sherlock Holmes is surely one of the most versatile characters in fiction; he can be updated, reinvented, pitted against vampires, or reimagined as a mouse, and still the essential qualities of the great detective endure. That's even true in stories where Sherlock Holmes isn't Sherlock Holmes, and that's an idea that Roger Langridge and Andy Hirsch will explore in their upcoming all-ages adventure series The Baker Street Peculiars, from Kaboom, unveiled exclusively here on ComicsAlliance. In the Baker Street Peculiars, there is no Holmes; the real brains of the operation is his supposed housekeeper, Mrs Hudson. With too many cases to solve, she's brought in some new help in the form of three precocious kids and a dog, for what promises to be a wonderful all-ages action comedy. Roger Langridge, who usually provides his own art for books like Fred the Clown and Abigail and the Snowman, is providing the scripts this time around, joined by artist Andy Hirsch, best known for his work on Adventure Time and his all-ages Western Varmints. Langridge and Hirsch spoke to ComicsAlliance about working together, the idea for the series, and what makes Sherlock Holmes so iconic.

The question most often asked of the ComicsAlliance staff is a variation of, "Which comic books should I be reading?" or, "I'm new to comics, what's a good place to start?" The Wednesday deluge of new comic books, graphic novels and collected editions can be daunting even for the longtime reader, much less for those totally unfamiliar with creators, characters and publishers, and the dark mysteries of comic book shopping like variants, pre-ordering, and formats.

This week marks the release of Prince Valiant #1, and with it, the final building block in the foundation of Dynamite's increasingly weird "King" universe. Built around the King Features characters that are best known as newspaper strips --- and in the case of The Phantom, a Billy Zane movie that invited viewers to 'slam evil!' --- the line got its start in the Kings Watch crossover in 2013. While Flash Gordon has stuck around and been pretty fantastic, it's only in the last month that the rest of the characters have rolled out into their own books to flesh out the world. Now, with everything in place, the King line has pulpy sci-fi, mystic adventure, superhero action and swords and sorcery from the days of King Arthur all jockeying for position and trying to come together as a cohesive unit. And to be honest, it's actually pretty awesome to see.

Muppet Show and Popeye writer/artist Roger Langridge has announced a new series completely of his own creation at Boom Studios, and it looks downright adorable. Abigail and the Snowman will be a four-issue, all-ages miniseries that focuses on a 9-year-old girl who moves to a small town where she knows no one. She has a tough time making friends, as kids sometimes do, until she meets a yeti named Claude.

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.