We've got Wood

Some new Ashley Woodness for you. First, a page from his FUCK IT! magazine:


And the cover for the concluding ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS AVENTURE #4:

Almost Famous

FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND ISSUE #251 HISTORIC COVER PREVIEW

Limited Poster Giveaway and Full Cover Art to Be Unveiled at WonderCon

LOS ANGELES, CALIF. and SAN DIEGO, CALIF., March 29, 2010 - Famous Monsters of Filmland and IDW join forces to bring fans a second exclusive sneak peek at the cover for Famous Monsters of Filmland Issue #251, a landmark issue, featuring new, dynamic artwork by legendary comics artist Richard Corben.

The final cover will premiere at WonderCon, one of the country’s leading comics and pop culture conventions, held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, April 2-4. IDW will host Famous Monsters at their booth #519 and during their panel discussion on Friday, April 2 at 5:30pm in room 220/224. We will have 1000 limited exclusive posters on hand for giveaway to WonderCon attendees.

The magazine will be available for pre-sale at the Famous Monsters Convention in Indianapolis, July 9-11, and will be officially released at Comic-Con International, in San Diego, July 22-25.

Royal decrees

The first issue of our new TANK GIRL series, THE ROYAL ESCAPE, got a couple nice early reviews, here at Comics Bulletin (4-1/2 stars!) and here at Blair Butler's Fresh Ink video podcast, too.

Diamond head

Diamond's Bill Schanes talked to Comic Book Resources about what it means for IDW to now be classified as a Premier Publisher. You can read the piece here.

GETAWAY Driver

Darwyn Cooke’s Second Parker Novel Previewed at WonderCon
Friday, Mar 26th, 2010
Prelude to The Outfit offers bargain-price, oversized first look
Available in comic stores in July

San Diego, CA (March 26, 2010) - IDW Publishing and award-winning creator Darwyn Cooke are pleased to announce an exclusive prelude to The Outfit, the second of Richard Stark's Parker novels that Cooke is adapting. Cooke's initial Parker release, The Hunter, has been a critical and popular success, appearing on over 50 "best of the year" lists as well as the New York Times best-seller list.

Titled The Man With the Getaway Face: A Prelude to the Outfit, a limited number of copies will debut next week in San Francisco at WonderCon, one of the country's leading comics and pop culture conventions. This 8"x12" preview book offers one entire chapter of The Outfit and will be included in the finished graphic novel, coming in October. Available for the bargain price of $2.00, the prelude will offer fans a beautiful introduction to The Outfit. Cooke, a special guest of WonderCon, will be on hand to sign copies at the IDW booth #519. WonderCon will be held April 2nd through the 4th at the Moscone Center.


"The Man with the Getaway Face special is a fun and inexpensive way for new readers to check out Richard Stark's famous master criminal," commented Cooke. "It's our hope that this oversized, underpriced kidney punch will pull them in to the violent world of Parker."

In addition to debuting at WonderCon, the preview will be available in comic stores everywhere in July at the same low price and large size. Retailers should check the IDW section of the Diamond May Previews catalogue for details.

"We wanted to do something to make this preview special, something to make Darwyn's incredible work really pop off the shelves," said IDW Special Projects Editor, Scott Dunbier. "And at this size and price point, I think we've succeeded!"

Beat on, the Brat-Halla

Back when I was running MoviePoopShoot for Kevin Smith, one of the best Web comics I ran at the site was the ever-reliable and entertaining BRAT-HALLA by Jeffrey Stevenson and Seth Damoose. Now the strip about the young Norse godlings is finally getting collected into a TPB, and Jeff asked me to do the intro for it. Seth then took all the words I tossed their way and dressed it up nicely while at the same time serving my seemingly insatiable need (well, want) to see myself illustrated as often as possible... although I should mention that many of these cameos, like this one, are just nice surprises for me and certainly not anything I request...

The TPB'll be available for order soon. Keep an eye on the BRAT-HALLA site for more information. Meanwhile, I'm off to Memphis for the ComicsPro meeting for the rest of the week.

June-I. Joe

Covers for a couple of G.I. JOE books being released in June -- available for viewing in various places online today and in the Previews catalog that'll be in stores next Wednesday. First up, Max Brooks' G.I. JOE: HEARTS AND MINDS #2, by Howard Chaykin:



And an all-new image on a reprint TPB, the cover to G.I. JOE: SPECIAL MISSIONS, VOL. 1 by Robert Atkins:

World Premier

IDW co-founder/CEO Ted Adams -- also the keynote speaker at this year's retailer summit around the C2E2 convention in Chicago next month -- talked with Comic Book Resources about our new move to Diamond's Premier status. You can read the whole piece here.

The original lizard kings

Earlier today, the press release mentioning our upcoming JURASSIC PARK comics made the rounds and included the Frank Miller/Dave Stewart cover that'll adorn issue 1. The text of the release is reprinted below if you haven't seen it (among other details, it talks up Bob Schreck, our Senior Editor who's making his comic-writing debut here, as well as other upcoming variant covers by guys like Arthur Adams (issue 2), Paul Pope (issue 3), Bernie Wrightson, Bill Stout, and Mark Schultz) but I also wanted to show the other cover for issue 1, from artist Tom Yeates and colorist Jamie Grant. Tom's doing covers for issues 1-5, and Jamie's the series colorist.

Welcome Back to Jurassic Park
IDW partners with Universal Partnerships & Licensing to develop
all-new comics based on blockbuster property

San Diego, CA (March 23, 2010) – IDW Publishing is pleased to announce a publishing agreement with Universal Partnerships & Licensing to create an entirely new series of comics based on the always-popular Jurassic Park franchise. Launching in June, IDW’s Jurassic Park comics will bring all of the oversized action and prehistoric adventure that fans love in a brand-new story. Plus, IDW will also reprint all the original Topps Jurassic Park comics in a trade paperback collection, most of which have never before been reprinted. Fans attending WonderCon 2010, one of the country’s leading comics and pop culture conventions, held April 2nd through the 4th in San Francisco, can get a sneak peak of the new series at the IDW booth #519 and at the Jurassic Park panel on Friday.

“I’ve been a fan of Jurassic Park since we first published it at Topps back in the 90’s, and it’s exciting revisit and reinvigorate the property after all these years,” said IDW chief operating officer, Greg Goldstein. “There’s so much potential for interesting stories, and we have a great team in place to bring them to life.”

Available in both print and digital, IDW’s Jurassic Park comics kick off with a five-issue story arc, written by IDW Senior Editor and comics veteran Bob Schreck. Nate Van Dyke provides interior art, while comics’ legends Tom Yeates and Frank Miller offer their awesome and gory covers to the first issue, with Arthur Adams, Paul Pope, and Bernie Wrightson also providing variant covers for the first storyline. IDW will be giving away a Jurassic Park poster at WonderCon, featuring Frank Miller’s cover art for issue #1. Schreck, Van Dyke and Yeates will also all be on hand throughout the weekend to sign autographs.

“Having been born in the Jurassic Era myself, I just couldn’t pass up this opportunity,” Schreck commented. “I was raised on a strict diet of Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen movies and adore the Jurassic Park films. I can’t begin to convey the thrill of bringing this tale to life with so many old (and new) super-talented friends and fellow dinosaur lovers.”

The first five-issue story arc in IDW’s new Jurassic Park series, Jurassic Park: Redemtion, takes up thirteen years after the very first Jurassic Park motion picture and finds John Hammond’s grandchildren, Tim and Lex Murphy, as well-to-do young adults. While Lex is working with the UN to continue keeping people off of both Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna -- her brother Tim has other ideas about how to get their grandfather’s name back in good standing.

Each issue in the arc will feature a cover by Yeates and a variant by another major artist. For issue #2, fans can expect great things from Arthur Adams, followed by Paul Pope on issue #3, Bernie Wrightson on issue #4 and the hugely popular dinosaur connoisseur Bill Stout on issue #5.

Wrecked 'em? Damn near killed 'em!

I think I've used this particular blog title before, but come tomorrow and the release of TRANSFORMERS: LAST STAND OF THE WRECKERS #3, you'll see that it's especially appropriate. Issues 1 and 2 are now up on iTunes as downloadable comic apps if you want to do any digital cramming before that issue's released on Wednesday, too.

*Poster design by New York Times bestselling author/designer Chris Mowry.

Desperado in June

Continuing the look at June books being featured in the next issue of Previews, here're a couple titles from Joe Pruett's Desperado Publishing imprint, a new NEGATIVE BURN collection and a hardcover artbook featuring Dave Dorman.

Craig Yoe's bag of tricks

IDW's June solicits will be released at Diamond's site this Wednesday, so here're a couple more titles coming that month. Both of these are for our Yoe Books imprint, produced by Craig Yoe.

No murder in the Rue Morgue

Not murdered at all -- WEEKLY WORLD NEWS got a nice write-up in Rue Morgue magazine.

* Thanks to Josh Jabcuga for the scan.

Picks of the Week

Some recent IDW reviews, including this one for the latest episode of Fresh Ink, where Blair Butler anoints LOCKE & KEY: CROWN OF SHADOWS #4 as her Pick of the Week, and further confesses that Gabriel Rodriguez is her favorite artist working in comics today (starting at the 6:15 mark).

Another good L&K: CoS #4 review, this one at IGN.com.

A glowing review of STAR TREK MOVIE ADAPTATION #2 at TrekWeb.com.

GeekWeek reviews our iPhone-only GARTERS & GHOULS digital comic.

Making advances

Some advance copies fresh off from the printer and just delivered today:

John K talks Milt G

Over at his blog, REN AND STIMPY creator John Kricfalusi had some very nice words about the Craig Yoe-produced THE COMPLETE MILT GROSS COMIC BOOKS AND LIFE STORY book. Among other things, John K said:

"This is a must for every funny cartoonist and fan of cartoons!"

Read the entire blog entry, complete with images, here.

Giant-Sized Shadow-Thing

Here's what you're in for in LOCKE & KEY: CROWN OF SHADOWS #5, coming April 28.

Weekly World Twos

Issue 2 of WEEKLY WORLD NEWS by Alan Robinson and I is now available for download at the Sony PSP comics store, complete with a separate audio commentary track from me, too.

The Premier Five

Starting in Diamond's June Previews catalog, you won't be able to find IDW if you go to our usual spot toward the mid-back of the catalog. We've been made Diamond's fifth Premier Publisher (Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and Image are the others. Wizard mag was given that status way back when the Premier spots were established, too). This is the first time in the two decades of Diamond's four Premier Publishers that an upstart has been able to crack those hallowed ranks. So this means, like them, we'll also have a "Gem of the Month" each month that gets additional coverage (wait'll you see what ours is, too. Fans attending WonderCon in SF over Easter weekend will get to hear and see the news first, as well as another big announcement that'll end up being our July "Gem"), and other bits of focus (and Previews covers) given to the other Premiere publishers.

This is something we've really worked hard to accomplish, and we're very proud of the recognition on Diamond's part, as well as on retailers' part. Us winning the Diamond Gem Award for Best Publisher (Under 4%) five out the six years--an award voted on by comic retailers--has meant a lot to us, and no doubt helped Diamond recognize our significance to the industry. Of course, this also means that we're not playing in the "Under 4%" category, so now we have to go head to head with Marvel and DC for that award... but still, it's great to be aligned with publishers who've done so much for the industry, and we hope to keep making valuable contributions for a long time to come, too.

You can read Heidi McDonald's story about this over at PW's The Beat, and the text of the press release is here:

Diamond Comic Distributors and IDW Publishing announced today that IDW has become the first publisher to advance to “premier” status since the classification was implemented in 1996. Diamond and IDW have signed a new, multi-year agreement that features a number of fresh initiatives, including premier status, in recognition of IDW’s success as a top tier comic book and graphic novel publisher. Under the agreement, Diamond will continue to be the exclusive distributor of IDW comic books and graphic novels to the comic book specialty market, and to the bookstore market through its Diamond Book Distributors division.

“This change recognizes the growth and importance of IDW Publishing,” said Diamond President and CEO, Steve Geppi, “and we look forward to working with them for many years to come.”

Diamond VP Purchasing Bill Schanes added, “Since IDW began publishing, they have grown consistently each and every year, while at the same time establishing one of the best editorial, marketing, and business teams in our industry. They’re easy to work with, understand our market, and are forging ahead with new strategies and plans to grow the consumer appetite for comics and graphic novels.”

In April, Diamond’s PREVIEWS catalog and PREVIEWSworld.com website will showcase IDW’s new vendor status as the company moves to the “Premier Comics” section. IDW will have an exclusive section in the front of the catalog each month, highlighting their new offerings to comic shop retailers and customers.

“We are very pleased to have completed this groundbreaking agreement with Diamond,” said Ted Adams, CEO of IDW Publishing. “By combining Diamond’s leadership in distribution with IDW’s ten-plus years in developing, creating and marketing comic books and graphic novels, we have created an ideal relationship for each of our companies. The comic book medium is trending upward in all parts of consumer awareness and we are proud to be a partner with Diamond for the future.”

Key points to the agreement include:

Premier Publisher
Under the new agreement and as a result of the company’s consistently strong market share, IDW will have premier status within Diamond and Diamond’s PREVIEWS, including an exclusive section at the front of the monthly catalog.

Discount and Terms of Sales
IDW Publishing will remain in a traditional buy/sell relationship with Diamond, with their books continuing to be sold to comic shops under Diamond’s Terms of Sale (unlike Diamond’s brokerage arrangement with publishers like Marvel and DC Comics where Diamond acts as a sales agent). Discounts will remain unchanged at this time.

Final Order Cut-Off
IDW will be added to Diamond’s Final Order Cut-Off Program sometime in the near future. “Since IDW is a traditional buy/sell vendor, we have some programming work to do, but we expect to have that finalized later this year,” said Schanes.

Book Market Distribution
Diamond remains the exclusive book market distributor of IDW’s publishing efforts. “We’re extremely proud of the progress we’ve made in helping IDW grow its sales in the book store market over the last five years,” said Diamond Book Distributors VP Sales & Marketing, Kuo-Yu Liang. “From their strong licensed properties to their successful launch last year of the Worthwhile Books line for kids, IDW has adeptly shown what products will sell into the book market channel.”

The Next Unicorn

At the WonderCon convention over Easter weekend, Peter S. Beagle's THE LAST UNICORN comic will be making its debut with a special WonderCon-only edition. Peter is a guest of the show and will be signing copies at the IDW booth at the show. Here're the final regular covers of the book, the first by series artist Renae De Liz and Ray Dillon:


And the reverse image for the signed edition:


And the variant cover by artist Frank Stockton:

A Wormwood-y St. Patrick's Day to all o' ye

Crowning Shadows

LOCKE & KEY: CROWN OF SHADOWS #4 is in stores on St. Patrick's Day, and as you can see, the issue will very much live up to the "shadows" part of its title.


And, I don't normally show pages toward the end of an issue so as to avoid spoiling anything, but this page serves as a nice tease more than it actually spoils. You saw the Giant Key introduced in issue 3. Now, what do you imagine is going to happen when it's actually used, like here on this page...?

Trans-five-mers

Might as well keep the Transformers posts going this week, since I've shown some WRECKERS and DRIFT art already. This time around, Don Figueroa's b&w cover art for issue 5, coming at the end of the month, and James Brown's colored version above. And below, a couple interior pages from Don and James, too.

The Premier Five

Starting in Diamond's June Previews catalog, you won't be able to find IDW if you go to our usual spot toward the mid-back of the catalog. We've been made Diamond's fifth Premier Publisher (Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and Image are the others. Wizard mag was given that status way back when the Premier spots were established, too). This is the first time in the two decades of Diamond's four Premier Publishers that an upstart has been able to crack those hallowed ranks. So this means, like them, we'll also have a "Gem of the Month" each month that gets additional coverage (wait'll you see what ours is, too. Fans attending WonderCon in SF over Easter weekend will get to hear and see the news first, as well as another big announcement that'll end up being our July "Gem"), and other bits of focus (and Previews covers) given to the other Premiere publishers.

This is something we've really worked hard to accomplish, and we're very proud of the recognition on Diamond's part, as well as on retailers' part. Us winning the Diamond Gem Award for Best Publisher (Under 4%) five out the six years--an award voted on by comic retailers--has meant a lot to us, and no doubt helped Diamond recognize our significance to the industry. Of course, this also means that we're not playing in the "Under 4%" category, so now we have to go head to head with Marvel and DC for that award... but still, it's great to be aligned with publishers who've done so much for the industry, and we hope to keep making valuable contributions for a long time to come, too.

You can read Heidi McDonald's story about this over at PW's The Beat, and the text of the press release is here:

Diamond Comic Distributors and IDW Publishing announced today that IDW has become the first publisher to advance to “premier” status since the classification was implemented in 1996. Diamond and IDW have signed a new, multi-year agreement that features a number of fresh initiatives, including premier status, in recognition of IDW’s success as a top tier comic book and graphic novel publisher. Under the agreement, Diamond will continue to be the exclusive distributor of IDW comic books and graphic novels to the comic book specialty market, and to the bookstore market through its Diamond Book Distributors division.

“This change recognizes the growth and importance of IDW Publishing,” said Diamond President and CEO, Steve Geppi, “and we look forward to working with them for many years to come.”

Diamond VP Purchasing Bill Schanes added, “Since IDW began publishing, they have grown consistently each and every year, while at the same time establishing one of the best editorial, marketing, and business teams in our industry. They’re easy to work with, understand our market, and are forging ahead with new strategies and plans to grow the consumer appetite for comics and graphic novels.”

In April, Diamond’s PREVIEWS catalog and PREVIEWSworld.com website will showcase IDW’s new vendor status as the company moves to the “Premier Comics” section. IDW will have an exclusive section in the front of the catalog each month, highlighting their new offerings to comic shop retailers and customers.

“We are very pleased to have completed this groundbreaking agreement with Diamond,” said Ted Adams, CEO of IDW Publishing. “By combining Diamond’s leadership in distribution with IDW’s ten-plus years in developing, creating and marketing comic books and graphic novels, we have created an ideal relationship for each of our companies. The comic book medium is trending upward in all parts of consumer awareness and we are proud to be a partner with Diamond for the future.”

Key points to the agreement include:

Premier Publisher
Under the new agreement and as a result of the company’s consistently strong market share, IDW will have premier status within Diamond and Diamond’s PREVIEWS, including an exclusive section at the front of the monthly catalog.

Discount and Terms of Sales
IDW Publishing will remain in a traditional buy/sell relationship with Diamond, with their books continuing to be sold to comic shops under Diamond’s Terms of Sale (unlike Diamond’s brokerage arrangement with publishers like Marvel and DC Comics where Diamond acts as a sales agent). Discounts will remain unchanged at this time.

Final Order Cut-Off
IDW will be added to Diamond’s Final Order Cut-Off Program sometime in the near future. “Since IDW is a traditional buy/sell vendor, we have some programming work to do, but we expect to have that finalized later this year,” said Schanes.

Book Market Distribution
Diamond remains the exclusive book market distributor of IDW’s publishing efforts. “We’re extremely proud of the progress we’ve made in helping IDW grow its sales in the book store market over the last five years,” said Diamond Book Distributors VP Sales & Marketing, Kuo-Yu Liang. “From their strong licensed properties to their successful launch last year of the Worthwhile Books line for kids, IDW has adeptly shown what products will sell into the book market channel.”

Con-voluted

In June, we're doing another holiday-themed GHOSTBUSTERS one-shot (this one featuring art by DEAD @ 17 creator Josh Howard). It's called GHOSTBUSTERS: CON-VOLUTION and involves a comic convention that takes place on Independence Day (what? It could happen...). The variant cover for the issue, seen above, is by Nick Runge once again. But as interesting as the cover itself is the story, and reference photos, behind it. You can see all of that here at GBFans.com.

Wreck-building

TRANSFORMERS: LAST STAND OF THE WRECKERS #3 is out soon. In addition to showing the original lineart of the cover underneath the finished version, I thought I'd show how a page itself came together.

First, it started with Nick Roche's pencils:


From there, Andrew Griffith inked the pencils:


And finally, Josh Burcham did his thing with the colors. We then lettered the finished art:



You can see more--all of it, in fact, on March 24, when the comic hits the shelves.

Transformational Drift

Since Amazon.com has a listing up for the TRANSFORMERS: DRIFT TPB, it's not exactly a big secret that we're going to be doing a miniseries based around the character. The listing also details the creators, writer Shane McCarthy and artist Alex Milne (along with colorist Josh Perez), but doesn't show any cover image. So let's show a little bit here--the cover for issue 1 by Milne and Perez, and page one of issue 1 as well. The 4-issue series will be shipping bi-weekly in August and September.

I love it when a review comes together

Major Spoilers gave a nice nod to our first A-Team comic, A-TEAM: SHOTGUN WEDDING #1, by Tom Waltz and Stephen Mooney.

"Waltz is able to create characters that have unique personalities, and while words are at a minimum in this issue, the work between Waltz and Mooney works to deliver an action packed first issue. This isn’t Shakespeare kids, this is a comic book based on a television series from 28 years ago. While there may be some cliched moments, the issue is done well, and is an enjoyable read."

The entire review can be found here.

Weekly World Reviews #3

Issue 3 of WEEKLY WORLD NEWS got another nice review from Pendragon's Post, where they said, among other things:

"Weekly World News #3 is here! IDW's hilarious journey through the cavalcade of freaks and Ed Anger's quest to run them out on a rail continues, and I'm excited to be along for the ride. Chris Ryall and Alan Robinson team up once again to create a book that's fun to read."

You can read the full review here.

Additionally, The Deal magazine ran a big story on the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS as a brand, and talked to me about the comics. The piece can be found here.

Two TRIBES go to war

One of the titles you'll see in the June Previews being released later this month is an all-new, standalone graphic novel called TRIBES: THE DOG YEARS. This one is something special, as you can hopefully see from the preview pages alone. The whole book, a nearly 200-page standalone graphic novel, is being presented as an oversize, widescreen affair, 11" x 8." The art is by Inaki Miranda, with colors by Eva De La Cruz. For a description, I'll refer you to the Tribes site, which features full story outline, dozens of finished pages, character designs and descriptions and much more. It's been put together by Michael Geszel of Soulcraft Media, who created the project and co-wrote this graphic novel with Peter Spinetta.

The feel of the book reminds me a bit of Suzanne Collins' HUNGER GAMES, in tone only, not story, in that it features young characters trying to make their way in a feral near-future. (Incidentally, the Tribes site states the book will be out in July, but it's actually now been moved to a June release because we feel that strongly about it. I want to ensure that it's something people can see at Comic-Con). A few preview pages are below, just to further showcase the Miranda/De La Cruz art team even more than just the cover.