Closing the (comic) book on 2009

2009 is a year that saw IDW take over the "three-spot" a few months of the year, and finish a firm fourth for the year behind Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse. It was also the year that saw the publication of my first prose book, and saw IDW be the leading comic book publisher at iTunes. In short, it's one of those years that, even in the middle of tough economic times, will be tough to beat. But 2010 gives me lots of reasons to be optimistic, even if I can't quite divulge many of those reasons just yet (those reasons will become evident as 2010 convention season gets rolling). 2010 will be my sixth year as IDW's Editor-in-Chief, a job I like as much or more now than when I started in 2004. Never would've thought I'd be able to read ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS on my PSP when I started, either, and yet here we are. So I'm greatly looking forward to things to come, and I appreciate the support of both the retailer base and all of you who picked up an IDW book, too. Happy new year!

And from Nick Runge:


...G.I. JOE: OPERATION HISS artist Agustin Padilla...


...Jose Aguilar...


...and Stewart McKenney (not quite sure who these characters are, but it's a nice piece of art that Stewart sent me, anyway):

Tainted Love

Little bits more tomorrow, but as far as projects go, I'll end the year with this look at the upcoming Valentine's Day-themed GHOSTBUSTERS one-shot, TAINTED LOVE, coming in February. Script by Dara Naraghi, art, some color-tweaking and all the lettering and sfx hand-lettered by by Salgood Sam. Colors by Bernie Mireault.

Locked in

Gabriel Rodriguez's complete cover progression for issue 3 of LOCKE & KEY: CROWN OF SHADOWS, from pencils to inks, colors and the final, logo'd version of the incentive-only cover. This is the issue that also includes a special preview of Joe Hill's HORNS novel in the back, too.

"Wrecked 'em? Damn near killed 'em!"

Nick Roche's TRANSFORMERS tour de force LAST STAND OF THE WRECKERS starts up next month (issue 1's out on January 27), and not all that much of it has been seen online. Here're the two covers for the issue (Nick and Josh Burcham on the first, Trevor Hutchsion's logo-less image on the second) and a page of interiors from the first issue, too:

Locke & Key: the Head Key

Courtesy of Joe Hill and Israel Skelton, whose Skelton Crew Studio created this key and last year's "Skull Key," one of the best Christmas gifts I received this year:




Check the link to the Skelton Studio site for more, including the actual locking Ghost Door that he created for Joe's house.

Happy 87th Birthday, Stan "The Man" Lee!

The new Frontier

While it's still technically the long holiday weekend, I wanted to show off a little new art. In the Spring, John Byrne's next STAR TREK series, McCOY: FRONTIER DOCTOR, set in the time leading up to the first STAR TREK movie, launches, not only with this great cover (colored by Lovern Kindzierski):


...but also the first of four "incentive" "gag" covers featuring the good doctor (ask your retailer how to get these):

Merry Christmas

We Wish You An Arty Christmas 11: The Finale

TRANSFORMERS artist Andrew Griffith, celebrating with "Robot Santa" vs Zombies:


TRANSFORMERS maestro Don Figueroa:


Luca Erbetta:


Diego Greco:


Danilo Guida:

We wish you an arty Christmas 10: Fuso, McCaffrey & Sera

G.I. JOE: COBRA artist Antonio Fuso:


ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS AVENTURE: "Masques" artist Paul McCaffrey:


Daniele Sera:

Groom Lake on a Best Comics of 2009 List

Re-Generator magazine named GROOM LAKE one of its Best Comics of 2009:

Chris Ryall and Ben Templesmith teamed up for Groom Lake, a sci-fi comic that departs from what you’d usually expect with aliens. Forget higher beings and all that, aliens are just short grey autistic children who can smoke and drink as much as they want without getting ill, and have an unhealthy preoccupation with human coitus. Going deeper into experiments on humans and abductions, Ryall’s writing gives us plenty of inappropriate laugh-out-loud moments while Templesmith’s art does well to deal out the gritty and dark undertones of government conspiracies. If you like being offended, put this one up on your reading list. —Sam Pagan

Weekly World Wishes

From artist Alan Robinson (who colored it as well), as well as from me, series colorist Tom Smith, and the entire WEEKLY WORLD NEWS team.*

*WEEKLY WORLD NEWS #1: in stores on January 13, 2010!

We wish you an arty Christmas 9

The inimitable (yet often imitated) Ben Templesmith:


Mirco Pierfederici:


James Biggie:

Ghosts of Christmas future 2: the all-Urru version

No commentary here yet, just a few visions of things to come for ANGEL, courtesy of Franco Urru. Two separate projects being shown in these three images.

Legionnaires

At the Apple site's page of movie trailers, the LEGION trailer also contains an animated trailer for our LEGION prequel graphic novel, LEGION: PROPHETS. It's cool to see up there, and Sony did a nice job on the trailer, even getting Paul Bettany to read voice-over written by the book's writer, Tom Waltz. Although I do feel compelled to point out that the trailer's word balloons were re-lettered by the studio's people and that the lettering in the comic books themselves is more in line with what you'd see in a typical IDW comic. The trailer can be viewed here.

We wish you an arty Christmas 8

From IDW mainstay Stephen Mooney:


Shane Oakley:


Jason Whitley:

We pity the fools who skip this

Our March solicitations that were released online today, and one of the things we managed to keep secret until now was the return of the A-TEAM to comics. In March and April, we'll be doing two series that lead into the big summer movie opening in June.
Details can be found elsewhere and more will come out here later on, but for now, let's get to the good stuff, in the form of John K. Snyder III's covers for one of the series, "Shotgun Wedding," by Joe Carnahan, Tom Waltz and Stephen Mooney. Snyder's covers for three and four (Face and Murdock) aren't finalized yet, but they still look good enough to show even in rougher form here.

Incidentally, Chuck Dixon & Erik Burnham will be writing the other series, "War Stories," which offers up four solo tales featuring Hannibal, B.A., Face and Murdock in their time before they joined forces.

Traffic lights

From FALLEN ANGEL artist J.K. Woodward:

Fallen Angel Joins the Comic Creator's Alliance
The Comic Creator's Alliance is a project founded by Lora Innes (THE DREAMER,IDW 2009) as a way of raising Money for the purpose of ending human trafficking in the world today.

It started as a group of web comic creators coming together and donating art. Shortly after announcing the project on an episode of popular comicbook podcast Comic Geek Speak, Peter David and J.K.Woodward, along with other print comic creators started getting involved as well.

Currently there are over 60 creators donating illustrations of their female protagonists to be assembled later in a single illustration. This illustration will be available as a downloadable wallpaper for those who donate to the fund raising drive.

The donation drive will start on January 11th which is no coincidence. January 11th is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day here in the U.S.

There are currently 27 million enslaved people worldwide. UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children every year are sold into slavery, most of it sexual. You can help and get one hell of a collaborative work of art while your at it!

Check out http://comicalliance.weebly.com/index.html to learn more and get a preview of some of the artwork to be included in the project