Tana Ford

Every month, comic publishers release their solicitation announcements to provide information to readers and retailers on comics that are coming out in three months’ time, but there’s so much information dropped at once that a lot can slip through the cracks. This month in Marvel's June solicitations, there are some big returns of forgotten characters and costumes, a surprising-yet-welcome guest artist worth talking about, and two big debuts of mystery characters in familiar roles.

In superhero comics, there's nothing quite as iconic as seeing the triumphant hero clash with their ultimate nemesis, and for Spider-Man that rival is none other than The Green Goblin. In next month's The Amazing Spider-Man #25, Dan Slott and Stuart Immonen bring back a more cunning and deadlier version of Norman Osborn for a special oversized issue that also features stories by Cale Atkinson, Hannah Blumenreich, and more!

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.

The three Spider-Women who all somehow have solo titles right now are having their inevitable crossover, and it all starts in Spider-Women Alpha #1. This book leads into an eight-part crossover between Spider-Woman, Spider-Gwen, and Silk. The crossover is written by Jason Latour, Dennis Hopeless and Robbie Thompson, with art by Vanesa Del Rey, Bengal, Javier Rodriguez, and Tana Ford. Thompson and Del Rey are handling this first chapter.

The last few years have really nailed home how important it is to see representation in comics --- for readers to get the chance to see characters who represent them, or the heroes they spire to be. One of those comics is the Duck series by Tana Ford. A gay woman, the eponymous Duck is far from perfect; she faces problems, exhibits her own prejudice, and lives in a fully-realized, three-dimensional world where friends and society clash in ways that feel honest and realistic. The series has been hugely acclaimed, with the first volume winning the PRISM Comics Queer Press Grant, and volume two nominated for a LAMBDA literary award. And the good news is that third volume of the series, Duck! Third Time is the Charm, is now running on Kickstarter. ComicsAlliance spoke to Ford about the series, the character, and the overall importance of getting honest, interesting representation in comics.

Over the last several years, Vertigo has revived several forgotten anthology titles with good results: Strange Adventures, Mystery in Space, The Witching Hour and Time Warp. With Strange Sports Stories, Vertigo once again dips into comics history, drafting a lineup of heavy hitters and utility players for odd tales of sports and science fiction coming together in unexpected ways.

It was only last month that Marvel revealed a set of anti-bullying variant covers designed to get kids to stop being complete jerks to each other, but apparently, it seems that an image of Gamorra offering to space-murder a group of mean children wasn't enough to solve all the problems. As a result, Marvel has taken the next logical step: A full-length anti-bullying comic featuring the Avengers, Spider-Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy, all teaming up to try to put an end to bullying once and for all.