Much of the news round-up comes from C2E2 – the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, which took place this weekend.
Dark Horse have announced their plans to co-publish Athena Voltaire with Sequential Pulp Comics. Athena Voltaire is a 1930’s heroine originally launched as a part of the Modern Tales family of webcomics in 2002. The title was nominated for a Best Digital Comic Eisner Award in 2005 and included in St. Martin’s ‘The Year’s Best Graphic Novels, Comics and Manga (2004 edition)’. The good news for fans of Voltaire is that Dark Horse have plans for the character up to 2015!
Dark Horse have also announced a new horror/thriller in the form of Tim Seeley’s Ex Sanguine. Seeley, famous for creating ‘Hack/Slash’ and his work on ‘The Occultist’ and ‘The Guild’ amongst others, said “Ex Sanguine is my take on the vampire-romance genre, but instead of being full of longing and anguished staring, it’s full of brutal flirtations between two savage predators, one a vampire, one a serial killer.” Look out for ‘Ex Sanguine’ in November.
DC featured many of their panels live on their blog, which can still be viewed after the event. The panels were discussing the ‘New 52’, ‘Before Watchmen’, ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Comics for Kids’. There was also a feed for ‘DC Collectibles’, who unveiled some new merchandise including Arkham City figures of ‘Mr. Freeze’, ‘Catwoman’, ‘The Riddler’, ‘The Mad Hatter’, ‘Hush’ and ‘Killer Croc’. There was a special, four-figure ‘Flashpoint’ boxset and Justice League figures ‘Aquaman’, ‘Cyborg’, ‘Flash’ and a ‘Parademonon’ on display. Also on the way are a number of great statues including some new ‘Batman: Black and White’ releases, ‘Batman’ and ‘Superman’ patina statues, ‘Green Lantern Animated’, ‘Before Watchmen’ and new entries in the ‘Ame-Comi Girls’ digital series statues. ‘MAD’ fans can look forward to addition to the ‘”Just-Us” League of Stupid Heroes’ figures, including a rather excellent Alfred E. Newman ‘Joker’!
There were a whole host of Marvel announcements. Artist Khoi Pham will be joining ‘Scarlet Spider’ from July, while Ryan Stegman will move to ‘Fantastic Four’. There’s to be a new Hawkeye series from Matt Fraction and David Aja, who’ve worked together previously on ‘Iron Fist’. In the Ultimate universe there will be a crossover event called ‘Divided We Fall’ running through Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men and the Ultimates while ‘Everything Burns’, a seven part event from Matt Fraction, Kieron Gillen, Alan Davis and Carmine di Giandomenico will run through ‘The Mighty Thor’ and ‘Journey Into Mystery’. Matt Fraction is to be joined on ‘Defenders’ by artist Jamie McKelvie and Remy Lebeau will return as Gambit gets a new ongoing series from James Asmus and Clay Mann this August.